Women's sexual desire

Women who live alone or do not have an active sex life with their partner sometimes perceive themselves to be sexually needy because they start to doubt their ability to attract men.
Margaret (early fifties, children, relationship 30 years) was confident that she was highly sexual and interested in sex. However, her sexual relationship with her partner had broken down and she admitted that she did not consider female masturbation remotely interesting.
Given that she made no mention of a lover, I found it difficult to see that she had any outlet for her sexuality. When Margaret described herself as sexy, it was in terms of looking attractive, being young-at-heart and being physically active at her local tennis club with like-minded women.
A man’s sexual arousal can be very flattering and women often enjoy the compliment. Women tend to define their sexuality in terms of their emotional sense of well-being and their attractiveness rather than by the existence of any kind of sex life. As they grow older men worry about impotence; women worry about losing their ability to attract men.
“Married women are facing more sexual problems than single girls, with problems ranging from a lack of interest in sex to failure to reach orgasm. What a surprise!”admits Linda Kelsey in her article ‘The truth about Married Sex.’ Linda acknowledges that “For married women today it’s difficult to square our expectations of sexual fulfilment with the realities of long-term relationships.”
She suggests that the influence of the modern youth culture means that middle-aged women today “still feel like a woman with sexual needs, or at least a woman who wants to feel she’s still sexually attractive.” (pages 48/49 Daily Mail UK newspaper Thursday, October 6th 2005)
Some people even define female sexuality in terms of women’s ability to arouse a man sexually. Long-term sexual relationships involve making effort from time to time and a man needs to ensure that he is not the only person enjoying sexual pleasure from the couple’s sexual relationship.
Men hope for sex for life
Older women often imply that marriage involves both sides ‘putting up’ with a non-ideal compromise. Life in the past was about survival but expectations have increased. Men in the past were grateful just to have sex of any description but now they hope that their woman will engage on a variety of sexual activities and that she will be enthusiastically orgasmic.
One summer’s evening at a barbeque, a man in his fifties commented that he had almost forgotten what sex was because it was so long since he had had any. Understandably everyone was embarrassed, including his wife, and a few years later I heard that they had divorced. I assume this stand-off explains why so many married women prefer to say nothing about sex.
The sexual revolution claimed that men and women should be equally capable of enjoying a sexual relationship. So we tend to blame the wife for being ‘unloving’ even though we all know that he probably has an orgasm every time they have sex and she quite possibly has never had an orgasm in her life. Men enjoy sex fairly spontaneously but it is much more difficult for a couple to find ways of including some pleasure for the woman. Men cannot always expect to receive without giving anything back.
In the marriage scenario, all pretence of romance or companionship/affection leading to ‘making love’ can be lost. Everyday pressures and routine reduce sex to the minimum required to keep a man’s sex drive at bay, satisfying neither party. WWO would like to hear success stories from couples who have overcome these pitfalls in longer-term relationships.