Throughout my life, one of the questions I asked most was how I could make sex better for my partner. Everyone wants to be a good partner. Even bad partners think they’re great partners. They just don’t know how to mesmerize their partners in bed. They think they understand their partner’s specific needs — but they don’t.
It’s like watching someone swimming in propaganda. They think they understand the world around them, the intentions of the people in their orbit, and the mechanisms of how important things function — but they don’t.
Researchers have used fMRI scans to isolate the portion of the brain unique to orgasm in women. We can see it. Far from remaining the elusive myth we once thought the female orgasm was, we can now demonstrate it visually on a screen.
The brain becomes highly active during the entire process of sex.
We used to believe that women couldn’t even have orgasms (it’s sad). This was to justify male selfishness in the bedroom, historically (it’s true). Now we can watch it unfold as it happens from the outside, in the place where the orgasm truly takes place — the brain (it’s awesome).
Neuroscience has a lot to say about women’s sexual pleasure. And as partners, it would behoove us to learn this stuff, so we can knock the socks off of our current or future partners whenever our clothes come off.
Patience is a Virtue
I’m about to flip two myths on their heads, one after the other. The first myth is that men are more quickly aroused than women. This urban legend is common, even though it’s been debunked long ago. Women get turned on just as fast as men do.
A lot of people out there think women need extra time to become aroused.
Men in particular sometimes get frustrated with how long it takes women to become aroused during sexual encounters. There’s this notion that if women could just hurry up and become aroused more quickly, sex would be better.
And therein lies the other myth: that men are quickly aroused.
Researchers at McGill University compared how long it took men vs women to get aroused when they watched sexually arousing content. They used thermal detection to measure the state of arousal of the participants. For a control, they had participants also watch funny, rather than sexually-charged videos.
Men required about 11 minutes to become aroused. Women required about 12.
There’s a 78-second difference between the sexes in terms of how long it takes to get to maximum arousal, on average.
It’s not that women are painfully difficult to turn on, it’s that men who want to rush into sex at a moment’s notice are selling themselves short. They’ve been rushing into sex without allowing themselves sufficient time to get aroused.
And men are likely in a rush because different parts of their brains activate during arousal than the brains of women, as this metanalysis has shown.
Ejaculation is necessary for a baby to be made. The female orgasm is not.
Men evolved to rush sex in a time when lurking predators could jump out from behind a bush at any moment. Men who rushed sex typically had more babies than men who took their sweet old time.
But we no longer live in small bands of hunter-gatherer tribes roaming the dangerous and confusing world of the Paleolithic. We have to resist the urge and learn how to slow ourselves down.
Trust me, you don’t have to worry that a tiger might leap out of your closet and eat you alive mid-coitus (unless you’re Mike Tyson).
Taking your time during sex is important. You have to allow her time to become aroused. But this is no different for you or me. Ten minutes of foreplay, at a minimum, seems to be the sweet spot.
Pay Attention to Her Body
Arousal takes place in the nervous system, not the body. We may perceive sexual stimulation as a feeling we get in our bodies, but, in truth, it all takes place in the mind.
This can be observed through the nervous system.
Researchers used fMRI machines to map the brains of women during arousal and orgasm. And they found something rather intriguing.
A 2012 study discovered the map of the sensory cortex on women for the vagina, clitoris, cervix, and nipples — all significant elements to achieving arousal and orgasm.
In other words, whether you stimulate her nipples or stimulate her clitoris or cervix doesn’t much matter to the brain. It all turns into sensory input data that are encoded and sent to the brain, where they’re processed by the same region.
They’re all tied together in the same networks of nerves and neurons.
Different regions of the brain light up as a response to different types of sexual stimulation, and the entire brain goes haywire to produce an orgasm. But sexual stimulation isn’t limited to the genitalia alone, at least not in women.
It’s essential that we don’t neglect other erogenous zones and focus on just one spot, like the clitoris, as if it were a magic bullet that we can press to give our partners mind-blowing sex.
A brain having an orgasm is a lot like a symphony approaching the crescendo.
In the Hall of the Mountain King comes to mind.
Learn to Master Rhythm
This doesn’t mean that faster is better. We shouldn’t just jackhammer away at our sexual partners and hope for the best.
Like other areas of our lives, rhythm is a crucial component of our sexual worlds. Our need for sleep, our hunger, our thirst, and even our moods are all regulated by bodily rhythms. Bodies in motion create life.
It’s even believed that sexual activity, like taking melatonin, helps set the clock for each of these other things.
When women have complained to me about their partners in the past, one topic that frequently came up was how men and women seemed to understand rhythm differently.
Porn might have you believe that sex involves a little foreplay before penetration and that penetration invariably must be rough with increasingly hard and faster and faster thrusts until bang, orgasm happens.
This trope is also portrayed in a lot of Hollywood movies.
Instead, I’ve found that it’s much better to find a good rhythm that both (or all) partners can groove to and stick with it. If she asks for something else (harder, faster, slower), adjust accordingly. And I’m not alone, here.
Neuroscientists at Northwestern University have described sexual pleasure, and the resulting orgasm, as a kind of trance. And looking at the brain, we see the overlap between music-based trances and sexual trances that people fall into.
Adam Safron, of Northwestern University, reviewed a plethora of studies that show how orgasms work in the brain, and he talks about how synchronization is a pivotal part of the sexual process:
“Synchronization is important for signal propagation in the brain, because neurons are more likely to fire if they are stimulated multiple times within a narrow window of time. Otherwise, the signals decay as part of a general resetting mechanism, rather than sum together. This then caused me to hypothesize that rhythmic entrainment is the primary mechanism by which orgasmic thresholds are surpassed.”
He went on to say:
“The idea that sexual experiences can be like trance states is in some ways ancient. Turns out, this idea is supported by modern understandings of neuroscience. In theory, this could change the way people view their sexuality. Sex is a source of pleasurable sensations and emotional connection, but beyond that, it’s actually an altered state of consciousness.”
And this isn’t restricted to just humans. Throughout the animal world, from spiders to birds, rhythmic dances are almost universal in terms of mating.
It pays dividends to learn to see every sexual encounter as a conversation taking place between two parties. Set up some good music that you both love and listen to the hypnotic beats or flowing melodies and let it be your guide.
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Three books I recommend checking out:
Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships
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