The Fundamentals of Sex

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Many lovers assume sexual intercourse feels the same for both partners.

The vagina, clitoris, and penis are anatomically wired to detect different sensations.

In a new study, men and women were found to hold markedly different beliefs about sensations in intercourse.

What does a vagina or penis actually ‘feel’ (during penetration)? It's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. We know quite a lot about genital anatomy, but we know much less about how people actually experience the physical sensations of intercourse. We talk about orgasm, sexual desire, and satisfaction. Much less often do we ask about the sensation itself.

I didn't expect that to become such an important question in my career. And I certainly didn't expect one colleague to tell me that answering it changed his sex life.

The Conversation That Stayed With Me

A few years ago, I shared the results of one of my studies with a colleague. We talked about it for a few minutes and then moved on. Then, a few weeks ago, he stopped me for a hallway conversation. "You probably don't remember telling me about that study," he said, "but it completely challenged how I thought about sex."

That surprised me. He wasn't someone who lacked knowledge about sexuality. Although he is not a sex therapist, he's spent his career as a counsellor, deeply committed to helping people build healthy relationships. He understood the importance of the clitoris and had always cared about his partners' pleasure. By most people's standards, he was already a thoughtful lover.

Yet he admitted that he had been unknowingly carrying a problematic assumption for his entire adult life. He assumed his partner experienced intercourse in her vagina much the same way he experienced it in his penis. It was a belief he had never questioned. Why would he? None of us know what someone else is experiencing. Our partner's experience can only ever be imagined—unless we ask.

As a sex therapist myself, I began to suspect that this assumption was not all that rare. Clients in my practice often described intercourse (penis-vagina) as though it should........

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