HomeWomen's sexualityEmotional bondingWomen have sex for emotional (rather than erotic) reasons

Women have sex for emotional (rather than erotic) reasons

Women have sex for emotional (rather than erotic) reasons

Sexual phenomena, such as arousal and orgasm, rely on explicitly adult themes. Anyone, who assumes these phenomena only occur in a relationship [i] with one person, is mistaking the romantic rewards of lovemaking with a loving partner for an erotic response that provides a sexual release.

It is often suggested that women enjoy sex. This can mean many things. Orgasm is a specific erotic phenomenon that arises as a consequence of our brain’s response to eroticism. It cannot be consciously engineered but we can apply instinctive stimulation in response to mental arousal. This is quite different to the sensual and emotional sensations women feel from lovemaking. Many women expect sex to have an emotional context and so they dismiss masturbation as unrewarding. They evidently have no experience of erotic phenomena. The gay world demonstrates men’s focus on casual sex versus women’s preference for longer (often platonic) relationships. Women, both gay and straight, enjoy the intimacy of lovemaking.

Even researchers ignore the advantage gained by women who profess an enthusiasm for sex as well as the fact that orgasm has become so synonymous with female sexual satisfaction that women are almost obliged to say that they orgasm. A definition of female orgasm that depends on men providing intercourse is a much more effective means of cementing relationships than promoting orgasms that only a few responsive women have.

Women are often unaware of the nature of orgasmic response. So they accept the need for physical stimulation (intercourse or a vibrator) but consider any form of fantasy whether in the mind or in commercial form (erotic books or movies) to be either unnecessary or morally suspect. It seems unfair that Nature has given men and women such wildly different sex drives. But Nature does not need to provide a mechanism to bond women to their lovers (by providing for female orgasm during sex) because women already need men to support them in raising children.

Women can experience an intense desire to be physically intimate with someone they are attracted to. A woman can also enjoy pleasuring a man through sex because of the intense pleasure men obtain from intercourse. But the emotional and sensual sensations that women experience from sexual intimacy are incompatible with orgasm (such feelings cannot be resolved as an orgasmic response). The key issue is that intercourse, as an act of mating, not only provides the wrong kind of physical stimulation but also it does not represent an erotic turn-on from the female perspective.

[i] Whether or not she herself reaches orgasm, many a female finds satisfaction in knowing that her husband or other sexual partner has enjoyed the contact, and in realizing that she has contributed to the male’s pleasure. (Alfred Kinsey)

Excerpt from Women’s Sexual Behaviours & Responses (ISBN 978-0956-894717)