In Part One, we explored the myriad subtleties of the female body and how, to a man encountering this wonder for the first time it can be a daunting prospect. After all, how many men actually want to be known as a lousy lover? Granted, there are, unfortunately, some un-evolved men out there who actually don’t care and regard sex as a purely selfish means to an end. I believe however, that the vast majority of men do want their partners to feel fulfilled, loved, cherished, and romantically linked to a man who puts her needs, desires, and fantasies first. A woman would prefer to tell her friends that her new beau is dynamite in the bedroom rather than a damp squib.
As a general rule, men should start from this standpoint: sex is a race where the woman always comes first. This simple position of humility means that whatever happens, her needs are taken into consideration. Obviously, there may be exceptions to this, the woman may want solely to pleasure her man on occasion and put her needs to one side. In the world of sexual etiquette, there is always room for exceptions.
Before looking at a few simple guidelines that can help a man to understand a woman’s desires more clearly, it is worth having a look at the primary differences between the male and female sexual response.
The Inner World
It is well known that male libido is driven by testosterone, the hormone that triggers development of the male body in puberty and stays coursing through his body to a greater or lesser degree for the rest of his life. What is not commonly known is that a woman’s sex drive, on a purely physical level, is also driven by testosterone (there are other factors which we will touch on later), albeit in a far lower concentration than in a man.
Testosterone is an incredibly powerful hormone. Not only does it have a direct effect on a man’s need to have sex (which can, at times, be overwhelming), but has other secondary characteristics, such as increasing aggression and increasing pain thresholds. Contrary to common belief, men do generally have a higher pain threshold than women. Many women reading this will immediately protest at this and say, oh yeah, what about giving birth then?
The notion that men couldn’t cope with childbirth is slightly disingenuous. Putting aside the obvious, that a man’s body is not designed to bear children, the fact of the matter is that what helps a woman cope with the pain of childbirth in the first place is that her body is flooded with a surge of testosterone, enabling her to deal with the considerable trauma of what her body is going through.
To ascribe all sexual desire in a woman to testosterone though would be fallacious. It is part of a fluctuating cocktail of hormones in a woman’s body which can have a marked effect on libido. During a woman’s menstrual cycle, levels of estrogen and progesterone vary. Estrogen, often described as a woman’s “happy hormone” rises during the month to trigger ovulation.
For many women, this is where her need to make love may be at its highest, as she subliminally responds to her body saying “now would be a good time to make a baby.” The same woman may then experience a drop in libido as her period approaches. This drop in estrogen can in many cases be causal in PMS. However, this is only a rule of thumb, some women experience no fluctuation in libido through the month at all, with some actually finding it a turn-on to have sex during her period.
To a man, this will add to a general feeling that he will never be able to figure out a woman, since the levels of testosterone in his bloodstream remain relatively constant throughout the same period of time. Where men often fall down in understanding a woman’s need to have sex is that they don’t take into account the emotional substrata of response that the variances of estrogen and progesterone carry with them. Testosterone says “sex sex sex sex sex.” A woman, with at least three different primary sex hormones running through her bloodstream, is listening to voices saying “sex, make me feel safe, sex, will you be able to provide for any children we have, sex, love me and be there for me, sex, support me.”
