Men want Sex and Women want Love? Not exactly.

Men seek sex, while women seek love. Is that correct? Or, to put it another way, men barter love for sex, and women barter sex for love... anything along those lines?

It's not only more complex than that; it's also conceivable that the opposite is more true.

Here are some things to think about.

Pay attention to the money.

Something intriguing is exposed by the ways we complement or substitute for a lover. Similar techniques are used by men and women. A vibrator is the most common tool used by women. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to use pornography. Dolls are another choice. (Women buy toys that stimulate, while men buy toys that simulate in the sex toy industry.) Alternatively, a sex worker.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, so who cares? Given the billions of dollars spent on vibrators per year, there's no doubt that sexual gratification is a top priority for women.

What about men? What do porn, dolls, and sex workers have in common? It appears that men are searching for actual or virtual other human beings with whom to share their experience...? We'll return to this topic later.

The orgasmic chasm

The "orgasm void" is a term you've already heard of. It refers to the fact that women orgasm in sexual encounters less often than men. This has been known for decades, but a new study adds a crucial distinction on where the difference lies. It turns out that the dilemma is more of a man/woman relationship than an anatomical one. This is a topic deserving of its own post, but it appears that women who have sex with men experience an orgasm difference. Women who have sex with other women, on the other hand, are a different matter. They orgasm at a pace that is similar to that of men. The equipment is completely capable in and of itself.

“Female copulatory vocalisations” were the topic of another study (women moaning during sex). They discovered that women were moaning less during their own orgasm and more when their partner was on the verge of going over the edge, either to increase his pleasure or to speed up the process.

The argument isn't that women pretend to have orgasms; rather, it's to highlight the simple but often ignored reality that men get off on their partners' get-off. Another research used eye-tracking to monitor people watching porn to see which parts of the scene attracted their attention. Guess what the study's men were most interested in? Faces of the female performers. Are you surprised? My curiosity was piqued, but I wasn't surprised.

So, what exactly is going on here?

Empathetic vs. Somatic Gratification

Men's equipment isn't difficult to handle. If the target is climax, most healthy adult males will get as much of it as they want. They don't even need a friend. However, there might be something missing from the experience, a missing part.

Men crave an empathetic dimension — mutual experience or sharing in someone else's experience — while immediate, somatic, bodily pleasure comes easily to them.

In a nutshell, men are searching for a sense of belonging. It's what makes sex a total experience in terms of physical stimulation.

We used to think of women's machinery as complex or enigmatic. We now realise it isn't. It is, however, distinct from that of men.

Women usually have no lack of available and willing partners — if having a partner was all that was needed — but there is always something missing from the experience. Women often find that they produce more pleasurable sensations in their partners' bodies than they do in their own.

So they have easy access to as much empathetic pleasure as they want, and they can easily fall back on it, often through vicarious pleasure in sex, while missing out on the essential nutrient of actual, somatic, bodily pleasure.

A modern perspective on sex

It's not that the studies above are what led me to this conclusion; they're just further evidence of what I've seen and understood for years: sex is healthier when men and women have a pleasurable mutual experience and their bodies are well-handled.

Looking at sex through this prism — that men usually pursue physical pleasure while women seek empathetic pleasure — has become a central keystone in my perception of how sex works, what could be going on when it doesn't, and what to do about it.

It's why, when I have a couple devote 100 percent of their attention to learning how her body reacts, what she loves, and what feels good, and then doing those things... When they all find and dismantle all the places where she's exaggerating or putting on a display for his sake, and instead concentrate on making her feel so much for real... Then all of a sudden, he's having something he didn't even realise he wanted. And she's about to get something she may have given up hope of ever having.

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