Angela, a woman in her early twenties, was having relationship problems with her boyfriend of six months. She was upset because he enjoyed looking at other women. She got her to agree to stop buying pornographic magazines, which she considered demeaning.
“Porn for men is not a big deal. They honestly can’t see how watching a sexy movie can be some kind of reflection of their love for their girlfriend. Most don’t understand why they are offended because as far as they are concerned “. re worried, every man does.
they’re right. Research shows that the infrequent porn user is the average guy: 90 percent of them. He is not a deviant, he just likes to look at sexy photos. He has a lot to do with what turns each sex on.
Usually, men are more turned on by images and visual images, women are more turned on by words. Now, that’s a massive generalization, but true in many cases.” (p235 Hot Relationships 1999)
She believed that if he loved her, he would only want to look at her body. Angela also disliked the idea that men can enjoy eroticism outside of a love relationship. She surprised me by her reaction because it had never occurred to me to put limits on my partner’s enjoyment of eroticism. Likewise, I can’t imagine limiting my own thoughts at his request. Angela, still very much in love with her, was confident that she experienced orgasm with her partner but she told me that she did not use fantasy.
Some women never tune into eroticism
Angela was sure that the arousal she got, though driven by her emotional psychology, resulted in true female orgasms. Even the first time and every time after, her intercourse was orgasmic for her.
Angela thought that her sexual arousal stemmed from the idea that her partner found her sexually attractive. She said that she couldn’t orgasm from the missionary position and that she needed to be ‘on top’. Who knows? Some sources suggest that women who orgasm during intercourse have a more prominent clitoris, or perhaps it’s just that their sexual fantasies (or expectations?) are more easily matched to reality.
I asked Angela how she knew she wasn’t having ’emotional orgasms’ (spikes of sexual arousal). Angela trusted her interpretation of her experiences. Growing up reading Cosmopolitan magazine, she called herself a ‘Cosmo Girl’ who was knowledgeable about masturbation and the female orgasm. Of course, just because a woman has read about other women’s orgasmic experience doesn’t necessarily mean she knows how to achieve the same thing herself.
Angela had disliked eroticism since puberty when her father, brother, and friends made her feel demeaned by their lewd sexual comments. It’s a shame that some women are so sensitive to sexual comments from men, which in most cases are intended as a compliment. The problem arises because many women associate eroticism with being considered ‘dirty’.
A young American woman, who only had twenty-four hours in Rome, felt so threatened by the young men of Rome that she vowed to spend the entire trip in the women’s hostel. It is true that Italian men are the most fickle and persistent of any nation I have ever been to. I have always accepted male jeers with a smile and interpreted any sexual advance as a compliment.
