One of the persistent questions that men and women ask is “How can I get greater sexual satisfaction?

In fact, it turns out that in America, the average couple has sex about 84 times a year. Most men reach orgasm during sex, but only 29% of women do so during sexual activity, and a massive 50% of women admit that they fake orgasm!

Those men who do not reach orgasm may have problems with orgasm and this is called delayed ejaculation. There are ways to end this problem.

So apart from frequency, it turns out that most Americans, or least most American women, don’t seem to actually be having much fun in bed. And part of that has to be down to the men not giving the women what they want! The extraordinary thing, though, is that 70% of men and women say they are satisfied with their sex lives — although the proportion is much higher in newly formed couples than it is in long-term couples.

SEXUAL MYTHS

There are more false notions current about the way we respond sexually than in most other areas of sexuality. These are some of the common ones:

• • mutual orgasm is the ideal for each couple
  • lack of multiple orgasms is a sign of a sexual problem
  • as men and women age they usually lose their desire for sex
  • if a person desires more than one orgasm during a sex act they are probably oversexed
  • a few drinks and a relaxing setting will take care of any problems with sexual desire in both men and women
  • couples should work at getting their sexual response cycles identical
  • orgasm is necessary for sexual satisfaction
  • masturbation does not produce as much excitement and satisfaction as sexual intercourse
  • in general women and men understand their sexual response cycles
  • proper orgasms are explosive feelings
  • during menopause women do not usually reach orgasm
  • it’s best to find a few favorite sex positions and stick to them rather than try different sex positions.

Women’s sexual pleasure – video

AGE and SEX

The ability to respond sexually continues until death. So does the ability to enjoy sex. Those two facts are far more important than the effects that aging has on people’s sexual responses, but there are effects nonetheless.

 They vary enormously from person to person, so the number of years a person has lived is a very poor predictor of their sexual responses and behavior. For many elderly people the death of a spouse, for example, can mean the end of active sexual expression, but this need not be the case.

Health, too, is very important – a number of chronic illnesses are often accompanied by reduced sexual activity, even though the response potential is still there and functioning.

It seems that the most important predictor of how people will behave sexually in their later years is how they behaved when they were younger.

If they had an active, fulfilling sex life through their earlier years they are likely to continue it through middle age and after.

But as you would expect, the physical changes of aging affect sexual responses to some degree in most people. These are the ways in which most people change.

Men and sex – the changes with age

A middle-aged or elderly man takes longer to get an erection, and to attain it he probably needs more direct stimulation of his penis. On the other hand, having got an erection he is likely to be able to sustain it longer.

Once he loses an erection, after ejaculation or otherwise, it will take him longer to get another.

Aging tends to reduce both the force of ejaculation and the intensity of orgasmic sensation. It seems also that the need to ejaculate with each and every erection also diminishes.

The satisfaction and fulfillment that come with orgasm remain just as important however. The volume of semen ejaculated is less, it contains fewer sperm and fewer of those sperm are able to fertilize an ovum.

However, a man will still be ejaculating so many sperm, and so many of them will be healthy, that at any age he will still be entirely capable of causing a pregnancy.

Male hormone (testosterone) levels do not generally reduce significantly until a man is into his 60s and 70s. Even then, they are unlikely to fall so low that he loses either his desire or his potency.

The biggest sexual problem that many men experience with aging is that they don’t accept natural physical changes. Rather than accept slower erection, slower recovery and reduced ejaculation they sometimes avoid sex altogether, denying themselves and their partners fulfillment.

This is pointless and may be psychologically damaging. Sexual satisfaction at any age depends upon your acceptance of your own desires, needs and abilities.

SEXUAL DESIRE AND RESPONSE

Women

As women approach menopause and their later years their ovaries produce gradually less estrogen. After menopause, they produce very small amounts indeed, but some comes from the adrenal glands.

This reduction in hormone output has several physical effects. However, orgasmic fulfillment remains the same, the capacity for multiple orgasm is unchanged, and the clitoris remains as sensitive as ever.

The physical changes are these: when the woman is stimulated, her vagina takes longer to become lubricated than it used to. Orgasmic contractions are fewer in number and so the duration of each orgasm is reduced.

Myotonia, the general muscle tension that goes with being sexually excited, also reduces, and following orgasm the body returns more rapidly to its unstimulated state than formerly.

Another effect of the reduced hormone supply is that the labia and vagina thin out – they don’t swell up as much as they used to under stimulation – and so intercourse can sometimes be painful. A safe lubricant takes care of this problem though.

The psychological or emotional problems that women may have with sex in their later years tend to concentrate around menopause, when fairly rapid changes occur in sexual responses.

Once that sometimes difficult period is passed the responses of most women remain relatively unchanged and the potential for fulfillment and pleasure is as great as ever.

A couple in their 70s can still get it on like they always did. It is perfectly possible for them to have intercourse as frequently and as pleasurably as they always did.

When a partner is available and interested, and when physical and emotional well being are maintained, age makes very little difference to sexual desire and activity.

Research continually confirms that the best predictor of an active, happy sex life in later years is an active, happy sex life in earlier years.

Sexual Relationships

The majority of couples do not have simultaneous orgasm, nor is it necessary that they should. However, during the sex act each person has the right to be fulfilled and each has the responsibility to help create a climate in which that can occur. Knowing what is happening in your own body and in your partner’s can help you both to express your own feelings and to provide the stimulation your partner requires to ensure a complete response.

Ignorance, fear of inadequacy and selfishness frequently contribute to unsatisfactory sexual experiences. It is not uncommon for men to move rapidly through their excitation phase to orgasm.

After orgasm many men reduce the stimulation they are providing, or they sometimes end the experience altogether, leaving the woman in the excitement or plateau phase and sometimes feeling frustrated and angry about what has happened.

Recently women have begun to express their dissatisfaction with this situation; they too would like to arrive at a point where they are adequately satisfied. 

Some men are upset by such expressions of frustration, but ultimately they get the message and become more sensitive partners. In the past – and for some women even today – sexual acts produce chronic pelvic congestion (analogous to “blue balls” in men).

This is the result of diminished stimulation or no stimulation at all once the woman is highly excited and moving toward orgasm. The actual physical discomfort combined with the feelings of frustration in this situation sometimes lead women consciously or unconsciously to avoid sex. 

Counseling has often been of considerable help in such cases. Alternatively, working on the shadow issues which are unconscious but interfere with sexual responses can be helpful. Such so-called shadow work may or may not be suitable for you; this really is a case of horses for courses. The idea is to dig into the unconscious mind and find out what material has been stored there out of sight or out of mind. These repressed memories can be significan factors in interfering with your sexual pleasure. 

The ultimate objective of all shadow work is to examine the beliefs you hold about yourself at an unconscious level and change them for more productive beliefs.

SEXUAL DESIRE AND RESPONSE

We owe our knowledge of how people respond to sexual stimulation to the courageous pioneering research of Dr William Masters and Virginia Johnson in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, in the 1970s, the work of Dr Helen Singer Kaplan provided some crucial theoretical advances.

Every person responds differently to sexual stimulation, but there is a pattern that applies to most people, most of the time. It probably doesn’t apply to any individual all of the time. It is not a measure of what is “normal” – only a description of what usually occurs.

This pattern has three phases: sexual desire, sexual arousal or excitement, and orgasm; there are real physical responses that distinguish them from each other.

Sexual Desire & Dating

We know more about what happens in the second two phases, excitement and orgasm, than we do about the first.

Desire is still something of a mystery. Sexual desire – also called libido – is what moves us to seek out sexual situations.

It is the magnet that draws us toward other people and draws them toward us too. It is difficult to describe scientifically because it is rooted in a brain center and is therefore subject to hormone levels and the complex circuitry of the brain.

As we come to understand the details of brain functioning better, we will have a better appreciation of how sexual desire arises.

We do know however that if there is a chemical imbalance, nerve circuit or transmitter problem in the appropriate area of the brain, a disorder – a sexual dysfunction – may result.

Sexual Excitement In Relationships

Several bodily changes happen as desire develops into excitement. The most obvious is that extra blood accumulates rapidly in the genital area in both men and women. This is called vasocongestion. Vasocongestion in men shows as erection of the penis.

As blood flows into the spongy tissue of the penis it swells. How quickly it does so and whether the penis reaches its maximum possible size depend on the nature and intensity of the stimulation and on the man’s age (erection usually comes more slowly in older men).

Vasocongestion in women shows as vaginal lubrication: the vagina becomes moist. What happens is that blood flows into the vaginal area and the pressure of it forces natural tissue fluid through the walls of the vagina.

Moisture is also secreted from the cervical area. The vagina is then ready to accommodate a penis if intercourse is to follow. Lubrication can take 20 to 30 seconds, but the time depends very much on the nature and intensity of the stimulation.

A perennial question is whether or not love affects the pleasure of sex. I think most adults would agree that it does, and say that sex is better within a loving relationship.

There’s an extra dimension, a nuance which is missing from casual sex. Of course, the nature of love itself is always debatable. And event the ability of a woman to get into a relationship depends on her ability to make a man love her. Discover how a woman can make a man into her lover, or fall in love with her. And, as to the nature of staying together in a long tern relationship, well, click here for that…..

Another general response that applies to women and men both is an involuntary tensing of the muscles throughout the body (called “myotonia”). It diminishes after orgasm, which is why people feel relaxed after they have come, and then disappears.

There are several other important bodily changes in this phase, affecting women more than men. Both sexes experience nipple erection, in which the nipples become firmer and stand out more, but it is more common and more obvious in women.

The dark area surrounding women’s nipples (the areola) becomes darker and their breasts, especially if they have not breastfed a child, increase in size.

As sexual tension mounts, the pulse rate and blood pressure go up in both women and men. At this stage the sex flush is likely to appear in many women.

This looks like a rash, and usually appears first on the upper portion of the stomach and then spreads to the breast area.

It is liable to be patchy and may spread to the back as well. Some men show a sex flush too, though it is likely to be less marked.

A reaction that is wholly female is color change of the labia as they swell from vasocongestion.

The inner labia of women who have had children change from red to deep wine, and those of women who have not go from pink to bright red. Once the labia have changed color the woman will have an orgasm if stimulation continues.

Two other important changes happen to women in these last stages of the excitement phase: the vagina lengthens and widens, and the clitoris retracts under its hood.

People sometimes get anxious that the clitoris should disappear at this critical moment but they shouldn’t. It is natural that it should and it is a good sign, for orgasm is very close.

By the end of the excitement phase both men and women are full of sexual tension and feel that just a very little more stimulation will tip them over the top and they will have an orgasm. Masters and Johnson called this part of the excitement phase the plateau.

Orgasm and the sexual response cycle

Just before orgasm, the pulse rate, blood pressure and breathing rate are at their peaks; many muscles are tensed. What then triggers orgasm is not quite certain.

It appears to be a complex interaction of physical, emotional, social and hormonal factors, and there may be others as yet undetermined.When a woman has an orgasm, her uterus and the outer third of her vagina both go into a series of rapid contractions. There may be just a few or as many as 15, and they occur at intervals of less than a second.

The male orgasm divides into two stages. The first is a feeling of ejaculatory inevitability, caused by the semen pooled at the entrance to the urethra.

At this point the man knows he cannot help coming. Very quickly thereafter he has a series of contractions of the ejaculatory ducts and the muscles around the penis which causes the semen to be ejaculated.

The process takes only a few seconds and the intensity of the contractions decreases after the first few spurts of semen have left the body.

No-one has yet succeeded in describing properly the sensations of orgasm. The pleasure is so intense that it seems there are no words subtle or strong enough to describe it. The last part of the orgasm phase is called resolution.

In women it means a gradual return to normal of pulse, blood pressure and breathing rate; the labia return to their normal color, the sex flush fades away and the nipples lose their erection. The vagina also returns to its normal size.

In men, resolution means loss of erection and a gradual return of the penis to its normal flaccid state.

Any skin flush and nipple erection will also disappear, whereas a woman who is in the early part of the resolution stage can have orgasm again if she wants it, a man can not. He has to go through a “refractory period,” during which he is unlikely to be able to get an erection.

 

The sexual response and orgasm cycle of men. A man rises to the plateau phase and then to orgasm, but cannot proceed to a second orgasm until he has gone through the necessary refractory period.

The duration of the refractory period depends particularly upon the man’s age. erection, let alone maintain it.

The refractory period may be a matter of minutes or of hours, with the general rule that the older a man is, the longer it will take.

Women, however, can carry on and with the right stimulation achieve repeated orgasms. enjoyment.