Do Women Like Sex?
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It’s a question on many minds and something that women are asking themselves these days. That’s especially true for women in a long-term relationship with a man.
Everywhere I give public talks and just I introduce myself as a sex and intimacy coach, I hear women exclaim in no uncertain terms: “Sex is not my thing. I can live the rest of my life without it and not miss it.”
But I don’t stop there. I get curious.
I ask: Can you tell me what exactly would you not miss?
Is it that you would not miss feeling safe to slowly open up emotionally and physically with your partner?
Is it that you would not miss hours of your body being adored through sensual pleasure and feeling drunk on pleasure?
Is it that you would not miss the excitement of exploring different realms through sex, like going on a journey?
Is it that you would not miss your thoughts, worries and self-awareness disappearing altogether and being totally immersed in the experience?
Is it that you would not miss the sense loss of time and space, like being in a bubble of love together?
Is it that you would not miss the feeling of aliveness in your body, every cell of your body tingling with pleasure, for days?
As I ask, I can see the confusion set in their eyes, as if I am speaking a different language.
“That’s not the kind of sex I’ve ever had,” they finally stammer out.
Herein lies the truth.
Most women’s experience of sex with a man is a mediocre one, at best, even with the most loving and caring partner. And just like only knowing the taste of rotten fish all your life will have you swear off fish forever, it is the same with women with sex. The kind of sex that most women have had is not good sex. It’s not even close to being good sex. It’s not worth liking — or wanting.
There is nothing about the women that makes them like it. There is no body type requirement to like sex. There is nothing special about her personality that makes her like sex. It’s all about the quality of sex that they’re having that makes women like it.
Women like sex — when it is good sex.
And good sex is not what we’ve been taught to have. In fact, no education exists aside from online p_ _n that gives any information of what contributes to good sex (not to mention extraordinary one). It’s not up until the last five years that scientists even started to study the female body, specifically the clitoris, and female sexuality to understand what makes it come alive.
What makes for good sex? It is not one specific thing that makes it good. It’s not what you do or don’t do. Good sex for you is sex that works for you — for your body, for that moment, for the mood. It’s sex that is attuned to who you are in that moment and to what you’re wanting. It’s sex that is arrived at through a unique mix of these nutrients that’s fitting the moment. It’s sex that you not only consent to, but that you want to have.
For that, you need to know you and listen to your own body and communicate what works for you. I am not talking about some standard “know what you want” as if you have some script that you want followed. I am talking about sensing what you want in each moment and letting your partner know what you’d prefer in terms of speed of touch, pressure, or position.
Of course, the man has a huge role in this in a heterosexual relationship. Men want sex much earlier than women are ready to open to sex, creating expectations and pressure that make women give up on what’s truly nourishing for them. It’s called “premature penetration” because she sees no opportunity for her needs to be met and resorts to allowing him to “just get it over with”. If you’re a man, learning to slow it down and enjoy the sensuality of the moment will allow you to awaken her sexuality — and then it becomes a gift that keeps on giving.
Ultimately, it is the woman who knows her own body who can guide the man to what works for her. He will only do what he thinks — or assumes — she wants based on what he wants. The woman, however, has an equally important responsibility in this. To have sex that works for you, you have to be proactive in creating it by using your voice, both about what is not working and what you’d rather have instead.
The rest of article will give you a sense of the elements that greatly contribute to women liking sex. Use it to gain a vocabulary about what you are wanting to create with your partner and engage in conversations to create that.
For couples who have developed significant Negative Patterns around sexual desire and differences in libido that now prevent open and productive communication around this, support is available through couples coaching.
Sensuality, sensuality and more sensuality
Sensuality is about stimulating your five senses: smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing and touching. All of them add to physical connection to make it interesting, pleasurable and compelling.
But there is one aspect of sensuality that’s key to enjoying sex: touch.
Skin is our biggest sex organ. Every square inch contains 20 feet of blood vessels and more than 1,000 nerve endings that sense touch, pain, temperature and pressure. That adds up to over five million opportunities spread over your entire body to stimulate and create pleasure. For women, being touched all over the body is first and foremost relaxing. It allows her to find her way to her own body, to de-armor, to put down walls.
Touch that progresses slowly from the periphery to the more internal sensitive parts is tantalizing and seductive. Women’s sexual organs are internal, and the exploration to get there IS the fun part, the journey. Going straight to the genitals is like sitting down at a Michelin restaurant only to get the bill.
Sensual touch is also arousing. It stimulates the nerve endings, making them more sensitive to pleasure (and less to pain) and rushes blood to various sexual organs, from nipples to the genitalia, both external and internal. It literally floods the body with arousal — and arousal is key to having pleasurable sex (as a side note: you can have sex with no arousal, which is what most women have on a regular basis, but it will not be pleasurable, or enjoyable, or worth wanting again).
Most women respond to sensual touch sexually when and only it is done for what it is — exquisite sensual attention — without having to lead to sex. Throw in a hint of expectations of sex, and it’ll be over. Sensual touch as foreplay is still foreplay — something you treat like a means to an end when you have committed to sex. Foreplay ruins the ability of sensual touch to actually fill up the woman because it puts pressure to “have to be ready” for sex.
TRY IT OUT: Have sensual touch be the whole purpose of your physical experience, the main course, the delicious meal you’re there to have. Forget sex and enjoy the moment.
As a woman, ask for a massage (just a massage) that you like and allow yourself to drop into it, to enjoy the touch, to feel the pleasure. Be with the sensations and notice what happens inside.
As the man, offer a massage, no strings attached. Shower her with your exquisite attention and touch. Don’t do it to expect something in return. Enjoy the touch and her body and let her receive — and see what happens.
Incorporate goal-less Tantric practices such as a Pussy Massage or Orgasmic Meditation into your touch to explore the power of sensuality.
Connection
Connection is that moment that you feel your partner with you, not just next to you. They don’t want anything from you, but to be with you. They’re present. They’re attuned to your pace and they adjust theirs to yours. They’re open and vulnerable, not performing. And vice versa. You’re present to the moment. You’re open and vulnerable. You’re attuning to them. You let each other be naked with your hearts and your truth.
Connection is special. We feel safe. It makes us drop our defenses and open up emotionally, which is the gateway to enjoying the physical connection and wanting sex.
It is also arousing. Connection floods the woman’s body with oxytocin which allows further de-armoring of her body, letting muscles unclench and relax, leading to greater blood flow to the blood vessels all around the body, including the genitals. On the other hand, lack of connection creates tension and contraction. It inhibits a sexual response, which makes wanting sex harder and harder.
TRY IT OUT:
Use these daily check-ins with each other that get to the heart of things and create deeper emotional connection.
Time
Time is the rarest of commodities these days, and it is crucial for liking sex. There is nothing sexy or interesting about sex that is rushed — but that is how most couples in the world have it. According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, the duration of a typical intercourse session lasts three to 13 minutes on average, with only a few minutes of “foreplay” ahead of it.
What can happen in those mere 15 minutes? Now, sex if defined as intercourse can surely happen; orgasm too.
What cannot happen is: sensuality, connection, adoration, arousal to make sex pleasurable for the woman, play, an ability to truly land in the body and open up to her partner, and on and on.
Women need spaciousness and lack of pressure to truly become present to themselves and their partner and get the most out of sex.
TRY IT OUT:
While I am not a fan of scheduling sex, I am all for creating a four-hour sex date. What it provides is a sense of spaciousness where there is no rush to have sex. Instead it’s a time to indulge in sensual exploration, play, communication, and adoration (and even a nap) to create ample time for the woman’s body to open up and get to a place of really wanting sex. Set aside un-interrupted four hours to linger with each other and explore sensual touch and play together.
Play
Humans and animals play because play feels good. Yes, it’s fun but it’s also the only space in our lives where we can let go of the need to produce results or perform and just allow ourselves to engage freely. We shed expectations and instead delight in the unexpected unexpected laugh, tumble or poke.
Play is fun, and it’s also arousing. It adds to the shedding of the barriers and the de-armoring that’s so important for women to be able to enjoy the sexual journey and want sex. The female body must relax first before arousal can take place.
Play during sex can look like slowing down and speeding up, teasing each other or playing with distance, or doing something completely unpredictable and spontaneous. Creativity is not the goal; nor is doing something new for the sake of doing something new. It’s about playing with the moment and seeing what organically arises from the connection. What is her body asking for? What is being created in the connection? Where is the energy wanting you to go together? Connection Sex, as I call this phenomenon, is the antithesis of going through the predictable motions to get to the orgasm.
TRY IT OUT:
Whether it’s dancing to your favorite music in the kitchen when making dinner to playing ball outside, dedicate time to play in an unstructured way with each other. Avoid competitive games, and see if you can allow your guard down to just play.
Voice
Women who like sex have one (learned) skill in common. They feel empowered to shape the experience of sex to work for them, while receiving pleasure.
From asking for what you want, to adjusting the pace, direction or pressure of touch to work for you, to opening up about your experience with your partner, having a voice means that you’re as much as of agent in the experience as your partner. Your perspective matters.
The empowerment feels good. You show up taking space in the dynamic. You show up to engage rather have something be taken from you. Sex where you betray yourself, where you have to rush your pace, where you have to trade self respect for love and do it to please the partner and not for yourself is never going to be sex that you like or ever want again.
More than that, being open about what is true for you is a turn on. Your voice frees you from having to hold in a truth — and that holding in something cannot happen at the same time as trying to open up and let go of something.
TRY IT OUT:
Learn about giving feedback during physical connection and sex in this mini training. Learn about what you want and practice asking for it — at least once a day. No need to wait to have sex to practice this as it applies to asking for what you need in all aspects of life.
All in all, these elements create arousal — a crucial . Without arousal, sex is just the physical act of penetration or rubbing of genitals to orgasm.
This arousal is not merely a physical reaction to pleasure. It is an opening of the heart, a feeding of the soul, a building of safety, and an expression of trust and connection with her partner. It is earned — not manufactured by rubbing genitals. As several scientific studies show, arousal transform the physical into the fulfilling. It’s what makes sex worth wanting for women.
Women and Sex in a Long-term Relationship
There is something that predictable that happens in committed long-term relationships. All of these go out the window, including arousal. Couples have little time to spend with each other and their “connection” is reduced to planning out kids’ activities or household chores. Negative cycles of fights and pushing each other away leave them hurt and lonely. Exhaustion leaves them unable to feed their relationship as they struggle to feed themselves.
In the background of exciting career transitions, raising a family, and other interests, this drift happens so slowly that it’s easy to miss it. But one day you couples wake up and do not recognize themselves. They’ve become roommates and sex has changed (or sometimes gone away completely).
The drift sometimes affects men’s sexual desire. It really affects women’s.
Even when sex was compelling in the beginning, it gets reduced to going through the motions to get it over with. Play and exploration is reduced to perfunctory “foreplay” that is meant to “get” her ready, to produce arousal in anticipation of sex, in the process ignoring the very reasons why she’s not ready.
This is the sex that women learn to hate. This is the sex that women would rather avoid. And this is the sex that sadly most women in relationships end up having.
Monogamy or long-term relationships are not to blame. Neither are the people. Most couples truly have have no idea how to feed their sex life or their relationship, how to stay lovers as life drags you down into the weeds of daily life, or how to communicate what they really crave or need. I see this in all the couples that I work with, and I see what’s on the other side too. These are learned skills and the world is only now being exposed to them.
So, if the question is do women like sex, we are asking the wrong question. Women like sex, just not sex that’s on the menu.
A better question would be:
What needs to happen — to be learned, explored, and practiced — for women to like sex (and even love it)?
If you’re a man:
If you have a partner who does not like sex, she probably has good reason for it. Too often, low desire for sex is simply common sense. Find out what her reasons are without blame, shame or criticism. Find out what is not working — and most importantly, what is missing that your partner is craving to have. And learn your part in that too.
Your partner needs your masculine energy to hold the space for her to open up. Learn how to do it: how to engage in sensual touch, how to be present, how to take time. Learn about yourself and what you can do to relieve the pressure from her. It may not be all about sex but also addressing her “pre-sex” needs, that as the name implies, happen before you even get to sex.
If you’re a woman:
First and foremost, check in with yourself to see if you believe that you can have an experience of sex that works for you. Can you feel that you deserve it? Then give yourself permission to want it and ask for it. Allow yourself to dream it. Learn about what your body wants and craves — and use your voice to advocate for it.
Dare to follow your heart. Dare intimacy.
Looking for customized support?
FOR COUPLES: If you’re ready to invest in building a sex life that works for both people and that reflects the deep love for each other with the support of a skilled guide, schedule a consultation for you and your partner to explore individualized support.
FOR SINGLE WOMEN: If you want to create this in your next relationship, schedule an individual consultation to explore what we can create together to realize your dream.