So what do women really want in bed? Rescu. might have just uncovered the answer…
image via pinterest
So, what do women really want in the bedroom? It’s the million-dollar question, and it’s had everybody puzzled for about, oh, several thousand years.
However, there’s some new research which reveals we might be hiding our deepest desires – even from ourselves.
University researchers wanted to find out what turned men and women on, so they set up an experiment. They showed both men and women slides of multiple scenarios – man/woman, woman/woman, man/man, multiple partners, bondage, even monkeys mating. You name it, it was in there.
Then the volunteers were asked to rate their arousal on a scale for each image. Sexy, huh?
The trick? They hooked everybody up to a kind of desire lie-detector, which measured blood flow to, ahem, sensitive areas. That sort of science doesn’t lie.
The men’s results? Pretty predictable. If they were straight, they really liked the women-oriented images and were left cold by the male ones.
The women’s results, though, were amazing – and shed a lot of light on how we think about desire. Women, it turned out, were – according to the desire lie-detector – aroused by basically every scenario shown. Yes, even the monkeys.
Their bodies responded on a basic level to all kinds of stimulus, even stuff unrelated to their sexuality.
The kicker here is that most women lied about it. They said that they weren’t aroused by less ‘normal’ images when they were – and overstated how turned on they were by the ‘normal’ images themselves. (Yep, the lie detectors could measure degree of arousal, too.)
This is a hell of an indictment of how we think about our libidos and what our turn-ons are.
Do you have a list of turn-ons? If you make one, what do you think it will say? Will it be what you regard as ‘normal’ – man-woman intimacy, for instance, or lingerie, or a certain type of music – or are you also turned on by other, more obscure things?
And if you are turned on by something less-than-typical, are you ignoring it in favour of stimulus you deem to be more acceptable?
Often women’s sexuality is contextual and sensual. One acquaintance reports becoming incredibly stimulated by the scent of a particular plant, which triggers steamy memories. Another has a weakness for terrible teen slash fiction.
A lot of theorising is going on about why women have this apparent disconnect between what really arouses them and what they say does. Are we just not reading our own bodies correctly? Are we repressed?
Academics aside, perhaps we need to start opening our perspectives to the sheer range of things which stimulate us – and stop judging what does.
As an exercise this week, begin that list of turn-ons, just for yourself. Think of:
-Memories specifically related to the bedroom.
-Smells, tastes, sounds- particular songs, for instance. Don’t restrict yourself to the typical ‘his cologne/the taste of champagne’ elements – think back to every moment you had an unexpected surge of lust, and what might have triggered it.
-Images which start your engine. Flip through a few tumblrs and monitor your reactions – and don’t just go for filthy art, either.
-Specific words or sentences. Everybody has at least one word they think is unbearably sexy. (If you’re undecided, imagine it being uttered by Alan Rickman or another person with an appealing voice.)
A collection of these stimuli – even if they seem esoteric, weird or just plain jumbled – may just add up to a better understanding of your deepest desires and needs in the bedroom.
If you’re unexpectedly driven insane by patchouli, introducing that into your next romp or foreplay might just make a spine-trembling difference…
Lady Friday xx
Taking the pillow talk out of the bedroom, every Friday…
