Men and Women’s Expectations of Sex and Intimacy in a Long-Term Relationship

In a recent comment to the article Affairs of the Ego, Rachel of My Soul On Canvas, “Pictorial Prose” said that she felt “nine out of ten men are not satisfied sexually and probably equal as many women do not feel as if they are being heard” Although I can’t validate the statistics she provided, I do understand the point she is making. My thought on this is that many men feel that their sexual needs are not satisfied while many women do not believe that their need for intimacy is being met. There are definite differences built into our culture on what men need versus what women need. These differences are widened and perpetuated by the wizards of marketing and the producers of movies, television shows and publishers of magazine.As a man I am assaulted daily with a barrage of media messages that tell me that I should be getting more sex than I am. If you watch TV on any given evening you see a slew of commercials about erectile dysfunction and how happy you will be when you take their medicine to ensure your equipment is working at optimum performance and your mate will be even happier, because she wants you and wants you all of the time! This type of advertisement has an effect on all men, ones with ED and ones with no problems what so ever. The message is clear, you should be getting sex all of the time and if you are not, then their must be something wrong with your relationship, because all the women in the commercials want sex so much and they are so much happier when their man’s equipment is in working order and they don’t have to wait for sex. Our brain is funny though, while we are processing the information that these types of commercials send us, we are oblivious to the commercials for female products and there are a ton of those. There are commercials for tampons and pads, which should remind us that women, have a monthly cycle. There are also drugs to help combat the effects of mood altering hormones. There are ads for medicine that will relive the symptoms of yeast infections, etc. These ads should serve to remind us men that the female body is complicated and is affected by many things that a man does not have to consider. One would think that with as much awareness that we have about what women go through that we would have a better understanding of why we are not having sex on all of the time. Next--->>