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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Porn, Sex And Marriage: What's OK, And What Isn't? : NPR

5:00 PM Bilal Muazin No comments

Warning: Today's post deals with sexual content and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer "radical empathy" and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety.

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Today they're delving into the adult topics of pornography and masturbation. A man says he masturbates regularly while watching pornography but still maintains a healthy sexual relationship with his wife. But he is still "troubled" by the notion that the porn industry is exploitative of performers, and questions whether it is morally acceptable to fantasize about women other than his wife.

To help in their discussion of these topics, the Sugars are joined by Wendy Maltz, sex therapist and co-author of The Porn Trap.

Dear Sugars,

Is it bad to masturbate to online porn? I am a happily married man in my mid-50s, and have been married for 15 years to a wonderful woman. We have a satisfying sex life, having sex approximately once every week.

However, I go online to masturbate to porn about three times a week. I work from home and find that I become sexually turned on during the working day. I look at masturbation as a healthy release. Viewing online porn allows me to accomplish the "task" more quickly and get back to work.

That other purveyor of personal wisdom, Dr. Phil, advises that watching porn is an immoral betrayal of a marital partner and says the women in porn videos are likely to have been abused as children and are being exploited. I have a teenage daughter and avoid videos of young girls, preferring age-appropriate subjects in the so-called "mature" category. I also avoid watching porn up to 24 hours before I am likely to have a date with my wife in order to be able to enjoy and contribute to our sex together.

Can Men And Women Be Friends Without Benefits?

My wife knows that I look at porn. While we don't discuss it, she doesn't feel that it is a betrayal of her. I look at viewing porn as an extension of masturbation, which I believe is healthy and a necessary release, one that is as private as going to the bathroom. If not for porn, I would still masturbate. I doubt Dr. Phil believes that masturbation is immoral. Is masturbating while fantasizing about someone besides my wife immoral? Assuming that online porn is the problem, is it possible that you can make distinctions?

I know that many of the women on porn sites are probably psychologically damaged in some way, and that the pornography industry may be contributing to that damage. On the other hand, is it possible that accepting money for video sex is not always exploitative? Is it possible that some of the women who perform in online sex videos do it out of a healthy appreciation of sex?

Signed,

Troubled by Porn

Steve Almond: I could have written this letter, and I felt a great sense of sympathy for this guy who's trying to figure out the same questions I struggle with when I bother to even struggle with them: Am I complicit in something that is very clearly against my moral code? In what ways? And what are my other alternatives?

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Follow the Sugars on Twitter @dearsugarradio.

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I think he is in a productive state of bewilderment, and I think most of the men of conscience who consume porn in one way or another are either suppressing this set of questions or are struggling with them. The porn industry is like football or like meat or like fossil fuels â€" it's essentially exploitative. But because I have a libido that operates differently than my wife's, I get horny and I want relief. I lament that I no longer sit there and do the imaginative work of masturbating without porn. There are a lot of people who aren't even grappling with the ways in which pornography is an ethical concern because, frankly, people don't want porn served with a side dish of ethics.

Wendy Maltz: I have a lot of respect for the man who wrote this letter. He's really thinking about his relationship to porn and trying to figure it out. He doesn't have the secrecy and shame element going on that a lot of people have with porn. But there's something happening â€" he's starting to question it. I can't say if his porn use in particular is a good thing or a bad thing. It's so personal. People have ask themselves, "What does porn mean to me? What is it doing to me? Where's it taking me?"

Cheryl Strayed: What do you mean when you say "Where's it taking me?" Do you mean to suggest that, in some ways, his porn use could be robbing his marriage of a sort of intimacy that it might have if he didn't use it?

Wendy: Porn is a very powerful product. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. There's a conditioning process associated with porn. It can become a stronger habit. Our sexual arousal response gets patterned to particular cues, and those cues can be the images in porn or they can be the smell of a lover's neck. Images are very powerful, so porn could be affecting the intimacy he has with his wife in ways he's not even aware of. He says porn is not an issue in his marriage, but he and his wife aren't really talking about its place in their relationship either.

Steve: There's a kind of "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy when it comes to porn in relationships. Pornography, predominantly for men, is a little secret cavern â€" it's a place we go, even if we're in happy, deeply communicative relationships, as it seems this guy is.

Cheryl: Part of my response to this letter is that there's nothing wrong. This guy wants to have an orgasm about four times a week. Presumably, if his wife wanted to have sex more, she would be making advances towards him. And he has a different sex drive than she does, and so he just takes care of himself. He doesn't need to tell his wife. There is such thing as privacy, even when you're married to somebody. Wendy, is this inherently a bad setup, or are you thinking, well clearly, because he's asking these questions, he's not entirely comfortable with it?

Wendy: From a clinical perspective, we're not talking about someone who is disassociated or who uses porn in lieu of sex, but there's something going on for him â€" he signed his letter "Troubled by Porn." One of the things that I wonder about is, why does he use porn a lot while he's working? Is sexual release a way of dealing with stress for him? Maybe he's not feeling as productive or as recognized in his field as he'd like to be? Has porn become a way that he self-soothes? And if so, is that at the expense of learning other ways to take care of himself â€" reaching out to a real person or going for a run?

The other thing is his age. Being a man in his mid-50s, it can take a little longer to get sexually aroused. The erections aren't as firm. Sex can become a little bit more laborious in terms of functioning, but under usual circumstances, that's offset by really good communication with a partner you've been with for years.

Cheryl: Or by a sense of humor â€" that sex doesn't have to be a performance. It doesn't always have to equal orgasm. It's a sensual exchange of pleasure and communication.

Wendy: And there's this wonderful growth that a couple can have. I've been married for nearly 40 years now, but I had a rough beginning as a sexual person. I've now experienced what it's like to be in a long-term relationship where you don't have a heavy influence of porn and where you can really work with your partner and learn with your partner and grow with your partner sexually. I think a lot of couples are missing out on that growth.

Steve: Troubled by Porn, you've reached a moment where you have to ask yourself, "What is the meaning of porn for me? And if I'm unsettled, do I need to start having the difficult, but necessary, discussion with my wife to say, 'I feel greater desire and I want it to be toward you. I want to find a better balance between my porn use and our sex life together.' "

You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on >Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more about how porn can affect relationships.

Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail.com and it may be answered on a future episode.

You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on >iTunes, >Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.

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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Female Orgasm To Oral Sex; 9 Surprising Things Science Taught Us About Our Sex Lives In 2016

10:00 AM Bilal Muazin No comments

We're constantly reminded of sex, whether by a sultry magazine cover atÂ the newsstand, a steamy scene at the movies, or a night atÂ the bar. Science gotÂ its hands dirty this past year trying toÂ unravel the latest patterns and trends in the field of sex research, aÂ popular and often controversial area of interest. Here's what we learned. Â

Sex: Why It Feels So Good

Many people will admit they love sex because it feels so good. Itâ€™s a source of pleasurable sensations that facilitate an emotional connection between two people, but science has found itâ€™s also an altered state of consciousness. A study in Socioaffective Neuroscience & PsychologyÂ found sexual pleasureÂ floods the brain with a surge of neurochemicals â€" chemical messengers that forge emotions, feelings of attachment, and even love. The level of pleasure thatâ€™s felt is linked to the release of chemicals, which can be used to measure the intensity of an orgasm.

We discovered that if sexual stimulation is intense enough, and goes on long enough, synchronized activity could spread throughout the brain. This intense focused attention outcompetes usual self-awareness for access to consciousness, and so produces a state of sensory absorption and trance.

>Read More: How The Brain Functions During An Orgasm

So, how long should this euphoric-like state last?

In an article for The Conversationalist, Dr. Brendan Zietsch, a psychologist from the University of Queensland, focused on how long heterosexual couples report penetrative sex actually lasts. The findings revealed the average time for each couple, across all the times they had sex, ranged from 33 seconds to 44 minutes. Meanwhile, the average across all couples was 5.4 minutes. This means a couple will typically go for an average of 5.4 minutes every time they have sex. Zietsch suspects penis shape could influence how long men last in bed.

Who's Getting It On Vs. Whoâ€™s Not

Sexless Millennials

Dating apps like Tinder, frequently used by Millennials, haveÂ led casual sex to become more common. Naturally, we would assume Millennials are having more sex, but a study in Archives of Sexual Behavior found more young people are living sexless lives than their counterparts born in the 1960s did at the same age. However, this does not mean a vast majority of young Millennials are having less sex than previous generations. It just means that the amount of people born in the early 1990s who are not having sex is larger than a similar cohort from previous years.

Sex In The â€œGoldenâ€ Years

Many believe once you get older, the sex becomes less and less frequentÂ until it comes to a halt. This year, researchers have noted older adults are having more sex, and they agree it does get better with age. A survey conducted by the University of Guelph and the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN) found older couples are starting to be active and get creative by adopting new positions and activities. Â People over 40 are still having sex, and becoming more adventurous in bed with more than half admitting they were more interested in trying new things to boost pleasure than they were a decade ago.

The elderly also continue to be sexually active, and consider sex essential to their well-being, happiness, and overall quality of life, especially after retirement. Some older adults abstain from sex due to health conditions, or loss of interest, but others refused to renounce it.

The concept of sex is pretty straight forward, but when it comes to the female orgasm, science is still figuring out one of the greatest mysteries.

This is what science has taught us about our sex lives in 2016. Photo courtesy of Everton Vila, Public Domain

Women And Sex

The Female Orgasm: Hot Spots Of Pleasure

New research pinpoints there's a new understanding of the female orgasm: It incorporates the external clitoral glands, the internal region around the G-spot that corresponds to the internal clitoral bulbs, the cervix, and the sensory stimulation of non-genital areas, such as the nipples. In other words, itâ€™s the stimulation of one or various erogenous zones that induces pleasure and orgasm during masturbation and sexual intercourse.

>Read More: Erotic Hypnosis For Sexual Climax With Mind Control

Researchers believe orgasms don't have to come from one site, nor from all sites, and most importantly, they don't have to be the same for every woman, nor for every sexual experience the woman has to be considered whole and valid. Orgasms are a very individual and subjective experience.

Female Orgasm Can Boost Fertility

Evolutionary biologists have debated the purpose of the female orgasm beyond just sexual pleasure. A study found orgasms could potentially boost fertility by as much as 15 percent. It performs some sort of â€œsperm-retention function,â€ meaning it could act as a suction to â€œsuck upâ€ semen into the vaginal canal. However, there are conflicting studies that debate whether the female orgasm has a biological purpose.

Women Receive Less Oral Sex

Not all is fair in love and oral sex. A study in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality found women are more than twice as likely to go down on their partners than men, but they are less likely to enjoy performing the act. The biggest gender difference in oral sex was the enjoyment of giving oral. More than half of men who had given cunnilingus reported enjoying it a lot, while an additional 41 percent enjoyed it somewhat, and 7 percent didn't enjoy it much or at all. Contrastingly, only 28 percent of the women who gave fellatio found it very pleasurable; for 55 it was somewhat pleasurable; and 17 percent didn't enjoy doing it. The findings suggest equal reciprocation could satisfy both partners.

>Read More: Does 'Going Down' On Your Partner Have Biological Roots?

Sex In Relationships

Good Sex In Long-Term Relationships

Couples often get into a rut about sex being boring and predictable, but great sex is possible in long-term relationships. A recent study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found long-term couples can reignite the spark, and have better sex, by being responsive to each other. Partners who are responsive to each other outside the bedroom are able to maintain their sexual desire.

More Sex Leads To Positive Feelings About Partners

Unsurprisingly, the more sex we have with our partners, the more likely weâ€™ll begin to have more positive feelings towards them. A study from Florida State University found the frequency with which couples have sex has no influence on whether or not they report being happy with their relationship, but their sexual frequency does influence their more spontaneous, automatic, gut-level feelings about their partners. Whether sex is happening once a month or once every few hours, itâ€™s really about quality over quantity.

In 2016, science has taught us there are shades of grey when it comes to sex â€" itâ€™s not as concrete or simple as we believe.

See Also:

>Sex Once A Week Makes For A Happy Life (Unless You're Single)

Straight Women Turned On By Attractive Women Are Either 'Bisexual Or Gay', Says Study

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