I’ve been writing about sex almost as long as I’ve been having it. I’ve interviewed thousands of women and men—and hundreds of experts—about our real-world instincts. As the author of five steamy novels, including Babes in Captivity and Younger, I’ve crafted dozens of hot fictional sex scenes. What I’ve learned about sex over the years can be distilled into a twelve-point platform of things that not everybody knows, but that everybody should understand. Consider this your master class in Sexual Intelligence.
Sex and Love? Not the same.
Sorry, Mom: The person you love and the person whose bones you want to jump are often not the same. We’re hardwired to experience love and sexual desire differently, says Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropology professor at Rutgers who is mapping the brain circuitry of romantic love, sex drive, and companionship.
“They overlap, but they’re different brain systems,” Fisher says. “They affect our brain chemistry in different ways.” Mom will be relieved to know that Fisher and her multidisciplinary team have declared love the winner over sex in terms of its enduring grip on the mind.
Sometimes girls just wanna have fun—and guys just want a hug.
The genders don’t always divide stereotypically. “In my practice I see as many men as women for low desire,” says Dr. Christine Bertrand Hyde, a sex therapist in Chester. “I’m hearing more and more women asking for more.” Women these days are building their self-confidence and what Hyde calls their sex esteem—a phenomenon that may make men shrink, literally and figuratively, from pursuing sex.
“Men do a lot of spectatoring,” she says. “Rather than being in the moment, they ‘watch’ themselves having sex. That can create performance issues, or they fumble or get clumsy. With women initiating sex and asking for what they need, guys sometimes don’t know what to do.”
The people with the best sex lives might be boring, married, and monogamous.
Do married, monogamous couples really have the best sex lives? According to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study, “The happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be one.” And married couples have not only the best sex, they have the most sex, according to Fisher, whose most recent book is Why We Love. Why? “When you’re married, you have sex when you want it instead of when it comes around, and you have a partner who knows what you like. You also learn how to please that person, which is satisfying, too.”
Getting pregnant may be sexy. Even being pregnant may be sexy. But having little kids? Not so much…
The media romanticize and sexualize pregnancy and new motherhood, and we lap it up. Check out Nicole’s beautiful baby bump! Gaze at Heidi’s hot after-baby bod! Sure, getting pregnant may be a turn-on, but it can also create conception anxiety. Being pregnant can enhance your sexuality, but it can also make you tired and uncomfortable. Having rugrats underfoot? Fuhgeddaboutit.
“Little kids interfere with our sexuality,” says Hyde. “They make noise, they make demands, they’re incredibly touchy. As women, our need for touch may be met by our kids, so after we’ve worked all day, held our children all day, we may want to be left alone. Men often feel like widowers at that point.”
Hang in there! “As long as you’re affectionate and maintain some rituals as a couple—greet each other at the door, kiss each other good night—you’ll be able to reconnect sexually after those difficult first three years,” Hyde says.
You’re not the only one embarrassed to talk about sex.
Despite what you see on TV, a lot of people squirm when the subject is sex. “I’ve been studying sexuality for generations now, and I really couldn’t tell you much about what my identical twin sister does in bed,” says Fisher. Keeping mum about your sex life may be the best policy, however. If you say that your partner’s great in bed, the listener may try poaching him or her. If you say you’re great in bed, you’re bragging. If you say you’re bad in bed, people will think less of you. Concludes Fisher, “It’s hard to see what talking about sex gets you, except trouble.”
Women are less likely than men to have affairs, but they’re just as likely to think about it.
One recent study found that 28 percent of men and 18 percent of women have had extramarital affairs—numbers that have stayed surprisingly consistent over time. But based on my interviews over the years, women are as likely as men to think about cheating. “It’s a human phenomenon—not a male or female one— to think the grass is greener,” says Hyde. “When we’re single, we want to be in a relationship; when we’re in a relationship, we want the freedom and pleasures of being single. When we’re in a committed relationship, we need to sustain ourselves with fantasies, which in most cases fuel and enhance our relationships.”
As women get older, they feel hotter.
Young women may look and act hotter, but in my experience the older ones have the most sexual confidence and most enjoy the fruits of their experience. With fear of pregnancy behind them and children growing up, older women feel free to devote their bodies to their own physical pleasure. “Women have to learn about their bodies, which are more complicated than male bodies, and that takes time and experience,” says Fisher. “There’s a really large emotional component in whether women can achieve orgasm, and that may take time to develop.”
Some people are naturally more sexually charged than others.
Before Hyde treats a client (male or female), she orders a hormone analysis to see if low sex drive may be linked to low testosterone levels. “When one wants a lot of sex and the other doesn’t, it can be devastating,” she says. Hormones aside, being in a situation where you don’t feel comfortable or safe can also undermine sexuality.
While more women are taking charge of their sex lives, women in general may have more trouble than men literally getting in touch with themselves. “Men are very aware of their genitals,” says Hyde. “Women don’t see and don’t touch their genitals in the same everyday way as men. It’s a taboo. There’s a disconnection, which means that we as women have to consciously infuse our thoughts and our lives with our sexuality.”
The hottest-looking people don’t necessarily have the hottest sex lives.
You can’t tell what somebody’s going to be like in bed by looking at them. “The most buttoned-up girl and the most patrician-looking boy can be fantastic in bed, and lotharios and girls in slinky dresses can be dreadful,” says Fisher. “You just don’t know about a human being’s sexuality until you try it.”
That meek mom might be a tigress.
For a magazine story on women’s sexual fantasies, I once hosted a dinner for seven women in their 30s and 40s who promised to speak frankly. The women were all educated and sophisticated. But their fantasies diverged widely and unpredictably. The woman with the edgiest personality dreamed of soft kisses, while the meek young mom imagined S&M scenarios she sometimes acted out.
Should you share your fantasies with your partner? It may be wisest to use them just to fuel your own desire. “I tell my clients to never mess with your partner’s fantasies by trying to actualize them,” says Hyde. “It’s always anticlimactic. Fantasies are perfect; life is not.”
What you say (and how you say it) is as important as what you do.
Sex researchers have found that words can have as powerful an influence as actions. Telling your lover a secret right before sex, for instance, creates an intimacy that can enhance the experience. Want your erotic messages to have maximum impact? Whisper them in your partner’s left ear, where emotionally charged words connect better, according to research by Teow-Chong Sim of Sam Houston State University. Don’t talk about sex problems while in bed, experts say. Say even negative things gently.
Sex is a need, not a luxury.
We’re all busy with families, jobs, shoveling the driveway, etc. We tend to push sex to the bottom of the to-do list—above cleaning out the garage but below taking the poodle to the groomer. And that’s a mistake. “People see sex as, Oh, it would be nice, but I don’t have time,” says Hyde. “We don’t think of sex as part of taking care of ourselves, but it’s something we need to pay attention to.”
Hyde’s advice: Think about your sex life as soon as you wake up in the morning, along with all the other things you need and want to do. “Ask yourself, How am I feeling sexually, what am I in the mood for, what’s on the sexual menu today? Just as people make time and energy for friends, kids, extended family, they have to make the time for sexual connection with each other and with themselves.”
Now if you’ll excuse me…