Reproductively, women are more essential than men. Men go to battle not only because they are more fit for it, but also because they are more reproductively expendable than women. So men don’t have the same emotional security women have from being needed. Once a man chooses a mate, he is emotionally fulfilled because she has accepted him as her lover. He considers that her love for her is special because it is a sexual love.
Women don’t tend to worry about pleasing a man because men’s pleasure is usually so obvious. Men’s satisfaction with ejaculating, as well as their gratitude after intercourse for a woman who provides relief from sexual frustration, provides much evidence of pleasure. Most men need some kind of invitation before they feel confident in engaging in a sexual relationship with a partner. A man can wait for a woman to indicate her availability or he can hint and wait for a reaction. Women offer sex because they know it is expected.
A man commits himself to a relationship with a woman who offers him more regular sex than he can get elsewhere. If women quickly and easily offered sex to any passing man, then men would have no reason to settle for a woman. Sex is the bonding mechanism that makes relationships possible. But it’s male promiscuity that means men should be encouraged, not women.
For men, sex (defined by intercourse) is orgasm. If a man has penetrative sex, it is almost certain that he will have an orgasm. So he assumes the same is true for a woman. Men assume that women have sex because of this imagined pleasure. A man gets an emotional reward when a woman responds with love. He assumes that she is satisfied and that she appreciates her performance. Men’s enjoyment of sexual pleasure is enhanced by the idea that they have pleasured a lover.
For a woman, sex is a social activity. But for a man, intercourse represents the culmination of his arousal cycle that begins many times over days or weeks and ends only when he has intercourse. Intercourse is a masculine activity that men orchestrate. A man’s performance is vitally important to him and he doesn’t want to be judged by a woman. Men persist in the fantasy that women are turned on by a large penis or prolonged intercourse because it increases the importance of their own role in the act.
Men have not joyfully heralded the invention of vibrators. Men don’t care if a woman is capable of having an orgasm per se. Men specifically want a woman to respond to what men do to them. The main focus for men is, naturally, intercourse. But men who are interested in erotic arousals besides intercourse also expect a woman to be turned on by breast and clitoral stimulation with a lover, regardless of scientific fact or logic.
Their physical strength and emotional robustness make men assume their superiority over women in all things. This makes it difficult for men to admit that they expect approval from a woman. They want a woman who confirms her progress as her lover. They want to feel that her desire to penetrate her is reciprocated, that she derives a similar pleasure from sex.
The mating position used by other mammals is rear entry (the male enters the female from behind). Western society favors the missionary position (the man on top of the woman but facing her). One advantage of the position is that intercourse can be incorporated into an act of lovemaking. But it also makes a woman’s mental commitment (or lack thereof) visible to her partner. A woman’s need to appear more involved in lovemaking contributes to the emotional bonding process.
Men often compliment women on their appearance. Women do not usually give equivalent compliments to men. So men don’t get the same feedback or emotional security. Men suspect that the sexual pleasure is all theirs because of the obvious signs. Women rarely initiate sex or behave proactively during sex. Women are not euphoric after intercourse, nor do they show signs of sexual lease or postcoital gratitude like men.
Unless a woman puts on an over the top performance, a man has no way of knowing that she has been pleased with his lovemaking. So men always ask how they can please a woman. The female orgasm is a topic of discussion because it is a male arousal. Men equate sex with orgasm, so the female orgasm is used as a token of women’s supposed sexual enjoyment.
For a husband, sex is right up the list with eating and breathing. Will she be able to survive without him? Yes, but it’s not fun at all. Sex is for the man, what to speak/communicate is for the woman. (Gerad Harris 2012)