There has been a lot of hoopla lately over the connection between orgasm and the feeling of loving connection among women, mostly due to an increase in scientific research on the matter. Over the last 10 years multiple scientists have been conducting studies trying to figure out the function and practical psychological effect of the female orgasm. It’s no real wonder why, if I was a scientist I couldn’t imagine anything more fun to study than watching women orgasm and taking vigorous notes.
The question is: Why do women orgasm? It’s not like men where sperm comes out so they can get women pregnant and reproduce the species. Women can get pregnant whether they orgasm or not (though there is some evidence to suggest that the contractions of the uterus that occur during orgasm may facilitate bringing sperm closer to the eggs).
What studies have shown is that during orgasm women release increased amounts of oxytocin into our blood, which may be associated with positive bonding feelings because that is the effect that oxytocin has on our brains. The media has taken this information and ran with it to say that women’s minds get flooded with oxytocin during sex and that causes them to instantly fall in love with their partner. Conservative politicians who want to discourage promiscuity have even gone so far as to say that women who have too much sex deplete their mind’s oxytocin stash and ultimately become bitches who are unable to bond with anyone.
All of this is nonsense. Like so much of the frantic media’s interpretations of scientific findings, it is an exaggerated extrapolation of some inclusive evidence pointing towards one possible result. Oxytocin in the blood is not the same thing as oxytocin in the brain so for starters it is unknown if there is any psychological effect at all linking the two. Blood oxytocin increases when people hug in the same way that it increases during sex or with orgasm. None of these things mean that we lose our mind and instinctively soul bond with whoever touches.
The truth is that if you can make anybody feel good they are going to like you. If you make them feel good by being funny, friendly, trustworthy, exciting, whatever it is you’re doing if it’s working then keep it up. The better you make someone feel the more they will like you, and if you know what you’re doing then the best you can make somebody feel is when you’re satisfying their urges and screwing their brains out.
It’s not some animalistic or magical task. It works the same across all genders or social divides, if you make someone feel good and they like you then there is a good chance they’ll fall in love with you. Good sex goes a long way to making people like you and feel good so that’s a pretty great shortcut that can get you over some hurdles even if your personality leaves something to be desired.
There is however, a bit of psycho-semantic mumbo jumbo at play to help explain why women are typically more commitment oriented and guarded towards sex. It has to do with the difference in the way men and women view sex as an idea. It’s partially due to our difference in anatomy. Men typically see sex as something external that they do to someone else, while women view sex as being internal and something that’s done to them.
This distinction may seem subtle but it actually really matters. When a guy has sex, he walks away feeling proud about how good he fucked somebody… which leaves the sex outside of himself as a gift he just gave to the person he was with. Meanwhile women get fucked and receive the experience in a way that often makes us feel like we’re giving up control and having sex as something that is happening to us.
Seeing sex as something you receive makes you want to look at it as something meaningful… since it’s sort of a gift and something that’s thought of as now a part of you. On the flip side if you’re the one giving away sex (you’re the one who is doing sex to someone else) then it’s less important to you what it means to the person who receives it… as far as you’re concerned they can take it for what it essentially is, just sex for fun and nothing else.
This is why it’s very important for sexual partners to communicate exactly how they feel and what they expect from their relationship, especially if it’s between people you care about and see often. It’s easy to misread other people’s intentions and take more away from intimacy than others may have intended, and this absolutely goes both ways. Sex is physical communication and not everybody is intuitively able to pick up what you’re throwing down when you’re getting down.