Keeping It Up With the Joneses
Learn how you and your partner can improve your sex life and keep "it" up. Listen to two marriage and family therapists, Dr. Rebecca Lucero Jones and Dr. Adam Jones (who happen to be married to each other), discuss topics related to sexuality and relationships based on current research.
Keeping It Up With the Joneses
Episode 3: Couple Dynamics: What is your couple type?
In this episode of 'Keeping It Up With The Joneses,' hosts Rebecca Lucero Jones and Adam Jones discuss their study on various types of couples and their sexual satisfaction. They explain how they utilized a cluster analysis to identify different groups based on sexual satisfaction, orgasm frequency, and relationship satisfaction. Key findings revealed four distinct couple types, including mutually satisfied couples and those with gender discrepancies in satisfaction levels. The discussion also explores the importance of female orgasm, the pressures on women to satisfy their partners, and the impact of sexual intimacy on overall relationship satisfaction. Additionally, Rebecca and Adam touch on the challenges couples face in prioritizing and achieving mutual sexual fulfillment.
00:00 Introduction and Study Background
09:26 Exploring Couple Types and Sexual Satisfaction
29:58 Orgasm Frequency and Relationship Dynamics
Welcome to Keeping It Up With The Joneses. We're your hosts, Rebecca Lucero Jones and Adam Jones. And we are excited to talk a little bit more about sex with you today. Today, we're going to be talking about another study that we conducted that looked at different couple types. Thanks so Adam, why don't you hop in and tell us why we wanted to look at different types of couples.
Adam:Well, I thought this was really interesting to start with. Really I think the idea came from a stats project that we had to do in a class. Wasn't that where this started?
Rebecca:Well, we learned to do this methodology in a class in terms of how you would run stats on this particular data set. And then I think you had the idea, well, what if we did it with this data set I have?
Adam:Yeah, and I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to see if there are different types of couples to see if we could learn something about different ways that couples interact, and then also to find out how certain couples differ in regards to their sexual relationship in a variety of ways. So we had a group of variables that we wanted to pull together and run what's called a cluster analysis, and to give the simplest explanation, a cluster analysis is you can pull together different variables in a data set. And it looks at those variables to see how people responded, and then it just looks to see if there are groupings. So if you can imagine a graph and different people's responses as little dots all over that graph, what a cluster analysis does is it looks to find groups of these little dots within this graph that are closest together. And then it starts to analyze them and say, well, this is one group that seems pretty cohesive and similar in some way, and this is another group that seems cohesive and similar. And, so it will give you a representation of different clusters that emerge from the data. So this is kind of an interesting way of doing a data analysis, because rather than really starting with a question and saying, I want to know exactly, you know, what the relationship between these variables are, this is more of an exploratory approach, which we can see how people respond, and then from that, pull out information about how they might be related, how they might be grouped.
Rebecca:It almost creates a profile for a type of couple. I wanted to point out that, I think a lot of people are probably familiar with the term variable, but I wanted to explain that a little bit, in case people don't know what that exactly means. So a variable is a particular, factor that we're looking at. So a variable might be someone's orgasm frequency or their partner's orgasm frequency or it could be their age. It just could be some answer to the question where we're trying to see, OK people that orgasm this frequently and are this satisfied in their relationship, right? They are very similar in their group and then maybe there's another grouping. So hopefully that can help you kind of see what we're talking about in terms of, how people are getting grouped together based on essentially like attributes of their relationship.
Adam:Yeah, and speaking of the variables, I should maybe mention some of the ones that we used. So we, we grouped people together based on their sexual satisfaction. We looked at their sexual frequency discrepancy. So essentially what that means is we calculated how often they were having sex. And how often they wanted to be having sex. So what was their ideal sexual frequency? So, that was a really useful measure to get a sense of, are they having more sex than they want? Are they having less sex than they want? So that was something we wanted to group them on. We also looked at their orgasm frequency. None of these are necessarily perfect measures, but I think they each highlight different aspects of some couple sexual dynamics.
Rebecca:Wait a second. Can I ask you, when you say they're not perfect measures, are you saying that because we're relying on people's report or what do you mean by that?
Adam:Yeah, like the next one we had was orgasm frequency. And the way the question is stated is in what percentage of your sexual encounters do you orgasm?
Rebecca:Yeah.
Adam:And, that one's tricky, just because people may interpret it different ways.
Rebecca:Okay.
Adam:For example what counts as a sexual encounter? So we don't necessarily define that very thoroughly, so it might be, you know, if, we're not doing anything sexually for me and I'm just giving my partner a handjob, or any sort of manual stimulation, till they orgasm, does that count as a sexual encounter? So, some people may have interpreted some of those things differently, right? Okay,
Rebecca:gotcha.
Adam:So, not a perfect measure, but I think it was reliable as a pretty interesting indicator of some of these sexual difficulties and we'll get into its usefulness as a variable. We also wanted to capture some of the attitudes towards sex and particularly orgasm. So we looked at how important It was to each person to orgasm, and then we looked at how important it was for their partner to orgasm. So, let me rephrase that. In your best guess, how important do you think it is to your partner to orgasm during a sexual encounter? So, I think both of those were really interesting indicators. And we wanted to explore those. Then lastly, we pulled in relationship satisfaction as well, because we wanted to ground some of this in this broader idea of who this couple is and how much they get along as well. So we pulled in these different variables, and we essentially, kind of throw them into the computer, and then the computer tries to pull out the patterns and the groupings, based on how they respond. So that's a little bit of a broad overview. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I want to mention about that. Oh, this is it. The ability to study couple dynamics and pull out clusters of couples was really important to us because there's a lot of research on individuals, and individual sexual identities, and individual typologies of how people go about their sex life and how they identify, but really to look at the identities of couples or the dynamics of couples, the patterns that emerged when we looked at both partners in a couple together. And we mentioned this in another episode too. These were all straight couples. And we didn't ask about sexual identity, so we're assuming cis, straight couples that were all men and women. And, so the diversity aspects of this might be a little disappointing, but we were able to look at male and female dynamics together. So what's happening, at the couple level in this analysis. So when we're talking about types here, it's really types of couples. What are the different groupings that emerged at the couple level, rather than looking at just the attitudes and beliefs or the self report of one individual who's in a relationship. Yeah. We really got both sides of the story with this study and I think that's something that was really unique about it.
Rebecca:Yeah. I wanted to back up a minute though because it wasn't clear to me when you collected the data. Obviously you had solicited heterosexual relationships, but did you actually ask whether or not people were heterosexual? Because sometimes people can be in a heterosexual relationship doesn't mean that they actually Identify as heterosexual.
Adam:Yeah, we did ask about sexual orientation.
Rebecca:Okay, so they all did identify as heterosexual. Okay, I just wanted to be clear on that, because there's a lot of bisexual people or pansexual people that might be in a hetero relationship, but don't necessarily identify that way. Okay.
Adam:Right, and at the time we were planning on conducting a study specifically that looked at the dynamics between Male and female partnerships. So that was in our design and it wasn't until afterward that we realized we need to expand this and look at this in different ways. So, that's some of our future research. But for this study yeah, it's limited in its scope.
Rebecca:Okay.
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Rebecca:Well, let's talk a little bit about the four different types of couples that were presented. So the first couple type that emerged from the data was where both partners were satisfied. And that may not be surprising, right, that a group emerged where both people were highly satisfied. But what was interesting to me was the next two groups, that there was another group where the male was satisfied and the female was dissatisfied. And then there was a separate group where that was opposite, where the male was dissatisfied and the female was satisfied. And then the last group, the fourth group, was where both partners were dissatisfied. And so I think that's important to realize that when we're looking at how people responded to these surveys, when one partner was dissatisfied, the gender influenced how they answered those questions. There was something similar in those couples about what happens to those couples when one particular gender is dissatisfied and that that looks unique from the other gender being dissatisfied with a satisfied partner. So that's. Yeah,
Adam:I think that's something we'll get into in just a minute. Something that was really interesting was when you do this type of analysis and you try to pull out patterns in the data, you really don't know exactly how they'll be grouped. And that's part of the process is it pulls out the groupings based on, the different data points distance from one another. And then it identifies some of the groups and the clusters that seem to be forming, but you don't know exactly what they're going to look like. So it'll say, hey, here's a cluster, here's a cluster, here's a cluster. And then you have to explore what's different about these clusters. And so we were actually quite surprised to find that the thing that distinguished where they were different was their sexual satisfaction. So when you say satisfied it's really just how sexually satisfied they were. That was the main distinction. Now, there are several other distinctions between these groups, but that seemed to be the one element that we could distinguish that we could give a label to the different groups to help identify which group was which and how they were different from one another.
Rebecca:Yeah, and I appreciate you clarifying that it was sexual satisfaction because it is interesting to look at the relationship satisfaction numbers with these groups because sometimes the partners actually aren't that different in terms of how they're rating their satisfaction. It may be lower than the satisfied couples, but it's interesting that some of them can be similar in terms of their relationship satisfaction, but still be pretty different in terms of sexual dissatisfaction.
Adam:Yeah. As you go through that process of figuring out, well, how are these groups different from one another and what are these clusters that are emerging? One of the things we looked at was first looking at the demographic variables to see, is one group a group of really old couples? And maybe old couples have their own real interesting sexual dynamics. Or maybe a group is higher in income. Or maybe they're more educated. Or maybe they have children, right? So we want to look at those things, you know, sometimes if these groups are going to differ, we try to look at any of the variables to see, well, where might these couples be different? And what was really interesting is when we first started looking at the demographic variables, we found that these groups really weren't different in any of the demographic variables that we explored. So we looked at their age we looked at how long they had been together in the relationship we looked at how many children they had, we looked at their income, and The groups did not differ on any of these factors. So that's really interesting. So there's really something that tells us that these groups could be any of us, right? There's not any sort of distinction just based on those factors that would determine whether you're more likely to fall in one of these groups. And so that made it really exciting to dive in and find out what makes each of these groups distinct? And really it came down to a lot of what they do in their relationship, what their attitudes are. And then later we'll talk about the communication within these groups and how that differs.
Rebecca:Yeah well, I mentioned that there was a group where the male is satisfied, and then a different group where the female is satisfied, and then their partner is dissatisfied. Why don't you tell us a little bit about why that seems to be different for those groups, or how it's different for those groups?
Adam:Well, there was something that emerged that was consistent with some of the other studies that we found which really was that there were two pairings. And when we looked at couples there was one partner who was dissatisfied in each of these two groups but they really just differed in terms of gender identity. For one group, the men were unhappy and the women were happy. And then the other group, it was the opposite. When we were comparing those two groups, we found out there were some distinctions between the patterns that emerged When the men are the ones who are dissatisfied in their relationship versus those couples where the women was the one who was dissatisfied. So something that was interesting is, when women are dissatisfied sexually, there was less of a connection with their relationship satisfaction. And that holds true in several other areas of research, where, of course, there's a relationship between a woman's sexual satisfaction and her relationship satisfaction, but that relationship doesn't seem to be as strong. Or, in other words, how satisfying the sex in the relationship is, isn't as strong of a determining factor as to how a woman views her overall relationship.
Rebecca:Yeah. I mean, and it's interesting when we look at the numbers, because in these groups where one person's dissatisfied, the women's. So the numbers on the relationship satisfaction are actually pretty similar. Their sexual satisfaction numbers are pretty different, but the relationship, they're rating it the same. So whether they were sexually satisfied or not, really didn't change the relationship satisfaction. But what's interesting is when we look at the dissatisfied couples, the woman's satisfaction takes a huge drop, like almost half, right? So that was interesting to me that in these groups in the middle, the women are fairly satisfied and that it's really the sexual satisfaction, that's the only difference that she's experiencing in the relationship.
Adam:Yeah, we discussed my thesis article, where we looked at some of these couple factors and it was really interesting to see that how satisfied the man was sexually with the relationship, that predicted how satisfied the woman was in the relationship. Not sexually, but the woman's view overall of the relationship. So if the man was having good sex, then the woman's view of the relationship tended to be better.
Rebecca:Okay.
Adam:That didn't hold up the other way around. We didn't see the same thing where if the women were sexually satisfied, that didn't impact whether the man was more satisfied in the relationship overall. It didn't improve the man's view of the relationship, generally.
Rebecca:Yeah, so it's his own sexual satisfaction that is related to basically how he views the relationship.
Adam:Yeah, mm hmm. And that was something that we really tended to see that for men the relationship between how satisfied they are sexually seems to be a much stronger indicator of their overall relationship satisfaction. So essentially, I remember running this analysis and thinking, we're hopeless.
Rebecca:What do you mean? Like men? Or?
Adam:Just a lot of men thinking, you know, just this idea. I would love to see in the data some sort of idea that men could rise above this, this sort of you know chimpanzee banging on her chest, I want sex, give me sex sort of view of nature, but watching the data and seeing how much this pattern really tends to come across in these research studies over and over. It really does seem to say that for men, the sexual aspects of the relationship have a major impact in evaluating the relationship as a whole. And that holds up for varying levels of sex. You know, there's actually just a recent article that came out that they looked at this idea of, this adage that if the relationship is bad, then all of a sudden, it kind of shines a spotlight on the sexual relationship. And so all of a sudden the fact that the sex is bad is this major problem. But if the relationship is good overall, and the sex is struggling, then the sex doesn't seem to be as much of a factor.
Rebecca:I thought the adage was, if the sex is good in the relationship, it actually seems to be a smaller part of the relationship, but if the sex is bad, it's takes up more space in terms of how people view the relationship.
Adam:Yeah.
Rebecca:You kind of said it differently, but I don't
Adam:know. Whatever the adage is.
Rebecca:But that's what I heard.
Adam:Yeah, this article looked at it multiple ways and found that that wasn't true. It wasn't consistent. So that varying levels of how relationally, the sexual satisfaction wasn't changing based on people's view of the relationship or vice versa. Yeah.
Rebecca:Well, let's talk about that for a second. The finding that you had in the thesis, right? That men, their sex life impacts how they feel overall in the relationship. I don't know that we're definitely sure that it's like, Oh, I don't get enough sex and I'm not happy in the relationship or I'm not happy in the relationship, and that also impacts the sex, right? Like, I don't know that it's always unidirectional.
Adam:Right. I think it would be a little misleading to say that, too.
Rebecca:Yeah. But I am thinking this can put women in a precarious position, right, to hear this and say like, Oh, well, now I feel a lot of pressure to please him, because he's not going to be happy in the relationship unless he has enough sex. And so I think this is the squeeze that a lot of women feel. I'm not happy with the sex. I don't want to just be somebody that has to satisfy him. I want to feel like a whole person, right? Not that I'm just here for his beck and call. So I think this is where maybe it gets a little tricky for people who are listening to this and feeling like. Well, I guess now I need to say, yes I don't think that that's necessarily the implication, but I think it is important to recognize how much men are socialized to get validation or to feel closeness through sex, that sex really, for a lot of men, does become the only avenue in which they can be intimate, right? Like emotionally. And so we're not really examining the causes or anything, but I think sometimes when women say, I'm not having sex with you. I think they may not be aware of how little access men have to intimacy, or maybe even the skills to connect outside of sex. That's something I really notice with a lot of couples is that a lot of men are really relying on sex to meet a lot of their, not just physical, but emotional needs. Whether it's touch, right? They're not hugging a lot of people, so they need that touch at night. So I just think a lot of men are kind of pushed into this corner where they're getting so many of their needs met through sex. So then when sex doesn't happen, they really might not know how to meet their needs. I don't know. I mean, you're a man. You tell me what you think as you see your clients and maybe, I don't know, your own experience. But how do you view that? That's what I'm thinking. I
Adam:think both of those elements are very true at all times within relationships. So to one extent, women can feel a lot of pressure be cause of how much the sexual relationship can impact a man's overall view of the relationship, right? And maybe women see that, well, if I have sex with him more often, then he's less irritable, he's less grumpy, he treats me nicer, he takes me on dates, he does, you know, he does this, or whatever it is. But that can create an environment as well that is just as unhealthy. If both partners aren't interested, and what I often find when I work with couples is there are a lot of couples where women will feel that pressure and want to have sex more often, but what I tend to find is that men, Even if they're having sex more often, they're very upset and frustrated, and they can't express why, right? They think that the sex should be better, but they don't know how to ask because they're not getting connective sex, right? Because I think a lot of times, men will look at sex as a means for generating connection. So, I want to have sex so that I can feel close to you. Whereas for women, it may be the opposite motivation. Right?
Rebecca:It absolutely is.
Adam:When I feel close to you, then I want to have sex. And that sometimes is its own real sticking point for couples to navigate because for men, they just think, well, if we could just have sex, then I would feel so much closer to you. But the woman is saying, well, I don't want to have sex and I can't get invested in sex and give you satisfying sex unless I feel that you care about me somehow. And so it ends up just being this real sticking point. And, that's, I think one of the really interesting pieces that highlights the opportunity that sex gives to couples, is it really brings both partners to the table in that regard, right? It really pushes both partners to look at what both partners need and to help them grow, right? Because you're seeking your partner's validation, but you're also seeking to satisfy yourself in some regard and so, it pushes you to have to be considerate of somebody else while also expressing what your desires are and it is a unique kind of negotiating table that couples are always having to come to, which I think is different than almost any other aspect of couples relationships, right? Just talking about managing the kids schedules or getting them to sports, that can be very easy in terms of a scheduling issue, but there's not something that requires so much personal involvement or investment, in those sorts of general conflict discussions. And so I think that's one way that couples might differ. So I see a lot of couples struggle with this where men might feel that they want to have sex more often and the women might feel pressured. But the other side of that too is that men need to have other avenues to feel connection. Yeah. Right? And so that demand of connection only coming through sex cannot be met adequately by their partner if the man doesn't have another way to find something that is connecting.
Rebecca:Yeah, I think for women, especially if they have a lot of responsibilities in their life, it can come off as needy? Like that may be the way they experience their husband is somebody who's taking from me, and then sex-- It's not in a frame of it being pleasurable, it being fun. Now it's about somebody like taking from me. And people are always going to want to say no to that, right? Like that is going to be really hard to say yes to. And so a lot of men. I think because sex can feel so giving to them, they may assume like, why does she not feel that, but they're not aware of how as your partner, who's intimately involved in your life, they're very aware that you are looking to them to regulate them emotionally to make them feel worthy, right. To make them feel good about themselves, right. And I think a lot of couples, at least the women in the couples, it's going to feel so overwhelming and unappealing. It's just, there's not really that tension, there's not a lot of room for desire. It can almost feel like they know that the person is always begging for it, right? Which isn't the same as a sexy invitation. I think people want to feel invited to sex, but they don't want to feel like the other person is needy for it. And so that's hard to be vulnerable and let someone know you need it in a way that gives space. I think that's actually pretty nuanced. And a lot of people don't know how to do it. Especially the longer they've been entrenched in this kind of conflict around when and how much should we be having sex.
Adam:Yeah, every couple has to find their own way to navigate these differences. And one of the things that popped up in this cluster analysis this variable that I mentioned earlier of, sexual frequency discrepancy. This is actually something that's some other researchers have studied: what impact it has when somebody is having more sex than they want or less sex than they want, right? And within these couples, we would see that most times people are having less sex than they want, which I think is just pretty common. Usually the men indicated that they wanted more sex and they were having less than they wanted, but also most of the time women were indicating that They wanted to have sex more often, but they just don't, and I think that's something healthy to acknowledge that within any couple it's pretty common for people to have less sex than they want to be having. People are busy.
Rebecca:Yeah. That's what I was going to say. I think that's just life. Right? Like we all wish we could be having pleasure more often, but yeah, there's a lot of things that can get in the way of sex. So yeah, I think that makes sense.
Adam:Yeah. Something that was interesting though is in these couples where both partners were dissatisfied sexually the men really seemed to indicate that they were having much less sex than they wanted, right?
Rebecca:Mm
Adam:But for women, this was the group where that discrepancy was closest to zero. Which means it seemed most balanced, but mathematically, I don't want to get too much into the statistics here, but this is where standard deviation comes into play. So this group had the largest standard deviation in their sexual frequency discrepancy. So, what was interesting about that is, in this group where both partners are dissatisfied, the men seemed to be having much less sex than they wanted to be having. But the women were either having way more sex than they wanted, or much less sex than they wanted. And there was a much bigger spread so either having much more or much less seemed to be a pretty big indicator that the women were dissatisfied in this group. And that didn't show up in the other groups.
Rebecca:Yeah, and I want to point out, and we'll talk about this later, because we are gonna go more thoroughly over each of these groups and kind of what kind of behaviors and attitudes were present for these different groups so that you can kind of know what works and what doesn't work in sexual relationships as far as leading to satisfaction. But we did notice that there were some people in our study who basically described a lot of coercion, right? So to me, it's not surprising that we find this in the numbers for the dissatisfied groups, that when women were in these mutually dissatisfied groups that we saw some coercion and even rape, to be honest, in terms of their description of what was going on in the relationship. So that can be the case, right? It was actually pretty interesting to read some responses where it almost sounded like a woman was asking in a very nice way, like, If he could just not rape me, that would be great. I would be really a lot happier if that didn't happen. It was interesting that that was someone's attitude and that they were willing to write about it. And I think it's really telling, right, I don't know that she was asking too much, right? Like, I think that was a very reasonable ask. But I thought that was interesting for these mutually dissatisfied couples, Yeah. Yeah.
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Rebecca:Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the other findings. I want to talk a little bit about what orgasm looks like for these couples. One of the things that was interesting was across types, men orgasm more frequently during sexual encounters than women in all of the different groups. So that was pretty consistent across the groups. Now, what did vary was the orgasm frequency of women. Where the groups were two sexually satisfied people, women orgasmed the most, where the woman was satisfied and the man was dissatisfied. She was orgasming more than in the couple where the man is satisfied and the woman is dissatisfied, and then obviously, and the mutually dissatisfied group, the women were orgasming the least. So I think that's important because sometimes I feel like in conversation we talk about how people can feel like women's orgasm is elusive or women are okay with not orgasming or that it doesn't always necessarily need to be part of the sexual experience. I hear, you know, discussions of that and while we don't want to put too much pressure on orgasm, the truth is it does influence women's satisfaction. So it's going to be a problem for her sexual satisfaction if they just decide, well, we can't figure it out and we're just gonna let that go, right? It does have real implications to not be actively working on that. Do you have any other thoughts about that?
Adam:Yeah, I think you know, we can kind of fall into a trap when we talk about some of this literature about orgasm and sexual satisfaction that orgasm is the absolute goal. Right. And I think that alone, the way we talk about that and discuss that can be really intimidating for some women.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Adam:So I want to be very careful and I think you bring up a really good point. We need to be really careful about how we talk about it and if that is something that's difficult to talk about begin talking about it with your partner. Start exploring what is causing that difficulty because there are a lot of women who, have a lot of difficulty orgasming. There are a lot of women who indicate that they never are able to reach orgasm despite treatment, despite other medical interventions or medications and so that ends up being a really complicated, elusive goal that some women feel like they can never attain. Now that being said, a lot of time women who struggle with orgasm may find that there are far more options than they might believe. And there might be much more possible than they imagine. In sex therapy, we are often able to find a lot of solutions that can be useful in helping women orgasm during sex.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Adam:And that's something that can be really misleading as people tend to have this idea that sex is just one thing.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Adam:That it's just a penis inside of a vagina and they're thinking that sex, that they'll be able to, or they should be able to orgasm during that sort of interaction. But only a small percentage of women can even orgasm with vaginal penetration alone. And that can be really disheartening for women who've struggled with that for a long time.
Rebecca:Yeah. There's a lot of really good research out there that has identified that. Oral sex for women is one of the most surefire ways that women can orgasm. So I think that's important for people to know, sometimes I've heard of women not being really open to oral sex. Maybe sometimes their partners aren't, but a lot of times that stimulation of the clitoris is really key to female orgasm, not vaginal stimulation. So I think that's important to recognize. Just as you were talking, I was thinking about how I've had some clients that whether the person that wasn't able to orgasm was the person that came in or their partner came in. I have had a few cases where the woman had never orgasmed in the relationship. And one thing that I noticed is that when that goes on for a significant period of time, it can be really hard and feel vulnerable to even try to orgasm. And so the relationship can kind of take on a life of its own like, there's a sense of failure, that I haven't been able to figure this out, that my body is broken. It's not doing what I need it to do. And it kind of reminds me of how clients can feel if they're having infertility, it almost becomes so vulnerable, to try for another pregnancy that it's difficult to do that. And I've noticed that it's important that if you're really struggling with orgasm to get help early, so that you don't get stuck in these communication patterns where it becomes really difficult to even try. There's just so many failures there that it becomes so vulnerable and almost like grief laden. So if you are struggling with orgasm, I really encourage you to seek out pelvic floor therapy or help from a sex therapist to diagnose and see what's going on. Because while there are women that can't orgasm, that's actually pretty rare in terms of women that really physically can't orgasm. So there's probably more relational or internal blocks that are happening, or maybe even trauma that is really contributing to that. So probably more psychological factors than physiological factors. So there is a lot of help. Yeah, so the last thing that I'll just say about the orgasm frequency for women is just to also give you some numbers, right? So you can kind of be aware of what that actually looks like for these groups. So in the mutually satisfied cluster, women orgasmed between 80 and 100 percent of the sexual encounters, right? So it isn't even always 100%, but it's 80%. So you can see the majority of the time they're orgasming. Now, for the groups where one person was satisfied, it was 40 to 60 percent of encounters. So, still, again, maybe about half the time or a little bit more or less, but then when they were mutually dissatisfied, it was 20 to 40 percent. So, that's important to be aware of that. It really is a factor in satisfaction for women. Do you want to talk about the next one, the prioritization of orgasm? Yeah.
Adam:Yeah, I think orgasm can be such an important and challenging topic for a lot of people, and finding what works within a relationship can be really confusing. I've seen several couples Where a woman has had previous sexual partners and has been able to orgasm with those sexual partners. And now they're in a long term relationship. Maybe they got married to somebody and they feel like their sexual relationship should be much easier. But they haven't been able to orgasm with this partner. And so that can be really confusing. There can be some ways To work through that, something that we've sometimes recommended is if a woman is having difficulty orgasming, something we might check to see is if they can masturbate individually and orgasm. Either with a vibrator, without a vibrator we try to explore the different options there if a woman can masturbate without a vibrator and orgasm, then, Sometimes the process is integrating the partner into the room.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Adam:And even just having them in the room present while the woman masturbates to orgasm, that can alone be a pretty helpful process to just feel comfortable with having somebody else there. And so once they can do that, then we can gradually move toward, can the partner be in the bed? Can they be touching you or adding some other sort of stimulation when it's happening?
Rebecca:Yeah.
Adam:And it all depends on what the couple is comfortable with And what they might be navigating with each other, but finding some time to talk about that and prioritize that is a big element. And I think that was kind of the last point that we thought was interesting in here was, the differences in how orgasm is prioritized. So what was interesting is in every one of the groups of couples that we had, men prioritized their orgasm most during sex. And women prioritized the men's orgasm most during sex.
Rebecca:Mm hmm.
Adam:And that's what we found. So, we asked those two questions, How important do you think it is to your partner? And the women all rated their partner very high. And the women rated for themselves that orgasm was less important. And I think that says a lot about the ways that people are socialized to have sex. And This isn't just how often they're orgasming, but this is when there's a joint sexual encounter, how much of a priority is it for you to orgasm? And, this isn't a perfect question because there may be a lot of couples where maybe they're having some sort of quickie, and in that situation, I don't really care about orgasming, but we're doing this just so my partner might orgasm. Right. So there may be some confusion with this item as to whether this is something that I sometimes just do for my partner, but the way we've worded the question is when you intend orgasm, how important is it to you?
Rebecca:Yeah.
Adam:And I think something we'll probably speak more to in different episodes is how to accommodate female sexuality into sexual routine a little bit more so that women can feel just as invested in, having a satisfying sexual outcome as men.
Rebecca:Yeah, I want to say maybe two things. One, I think it's interesting that you used the word accommodate, because female sexuality. Because I do think so much of the sexual scripts we have in America, are based on male sexuality, right? Like, if you watch a pornographic film, a lot of times it isn't really attending to female fantasy. This is why a lot of women are reading books instead of watching porn, although there are a lot of women who are watching porn and there is more porn that is maybe geared towards women than there used to be, right? Like in the 80s. But I think it is important to recognize that if you are in a relationship that only Pulls from male fantasy, you're missing a big piece of the puzzle. That you aren't really co creating something together. It's not a joint endeavor and really a sexual relationship should be the meeting of two minds and two bodies. Right? But if we're carrying out my partner's fantasies. Then, yeah, over time I might get bored. I might not like those things. I'm not sharing really of myself. I'm not thinking about what I like. And so I think a lot of people are pretty unaware of how natural it is to do that, to just prioritize male fantasy, male interests. But I think they pay a price for it, and that's how they end up in our offices is they don't even realize how much they've limited their sexuality because women often haven't taken the time or haven't been willing to share what's interesting to them. And so I think a lot of women almost shut that down. And so I think that's a big part of what can be happening for men and women in these relationships is they're really not even aware of maybe how bored they are, if that makes sense. And so sometimes people are not interested in sex because they haven't really been able to quite identify what good sex is, but they know the sex they're having isn't sex worth having. Right? That's why they're not having it. So if you're not having sex, you need to figure out a sex that's worth having, and then you'll probably start having it more often and start prioritizing it. That was kind of long, but the second thing I wanted to say that's kind of interesting is it's interesting that people prioritize male orgasm. Male orgasm is so much easier in a way to happen. Right? So it's interesting. And that we're prioritizing it, but it's also a little less tricky, sometimes it takes some time for women to figure out what feels good, what actually works for them in terms of orgasm. So it's interesting how deprioritized it gets, but I think it's part of that, if I can't always guarantee, or I don't always know what's going to work for me, It's harder for me to say, let's prioritize that because I'm not even sure if it's going to happen if all the conditions are met. So I think that's why women kind of say, it's fine, I'll ride in the back seat. But then over time, that becomes the dynamic. And then all of a sudden, well, when is it going to change? When all of a sudden is my orgasm going to be important? And I think sometimes it doesn't change.
Adam:Yeah, I think that's one of the big challenges that couples, have to navigate with each other is figuring out what is good sex for us and sometimes it's what's good enough sex for us there are some researchers that I think have really talked about this good enough sex model that I think is really helpful and common sense tool for couples because couples tend to think That sex needs to be perfect, that it needs to look like it does in porn or that it needs to look like it does in the movies and whatever they might see there are so many different varieties of challenges and circumstances that might make a couple's sex unique, But also more challenging or more special and can really create an opportunity to be valued much more if they have some sort of difficulty that they work together to overcome and find some sort of enjoyment with each other. So I think that's something where sex can really build a sense of closeness within a relationship and create an environment where. They can understand each other in new ways. And so we'll be talking, I think, a little bit more over the next couple of weeks about how to build good sex and relationships and how these different types of couples might communicate and what they could try to do differently to have more fulfilling and more satisfying relationships.
Rebecca:Yeah. I think that will be helpful to our listeners hearing what makes good sex and Also, attempts people make to improve their sex that work, and ones that don't. Because you may find that as you listen, you're like, oh, that's, that's me. And maybe that's why it hasn't worked. So, we hope we can be helpful. Yeah.
Adam:Well, on that note, I think let's go ahead and wrap up and we'll, close up this episode and tease everybody with that delightful introduction for some upcoming episodes there.
Rebecca:Yes. All right. Well, thank you for listening to Keeping It Up With The Joneses. We will see, well, I guess we will speak with you next time?
Adam:Oh, we'll be watching them.
Rebecca:We'll see them soon. We're a little voyeuristic. They won't
Adam:see us, but we will. We'll see them. Okay.
Rebecca:All right. All right. Until next time. Thank you for listening to Keeping it Up with the Joneses. For more content, follow us on Instagram or Facebook. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please do these three things. First, subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. Second, rate and review the podcast, and third, share your favorite episode with a partner, friend, or family member. We are grateful for your support and look forward to joining you next week. Until then, keep it up. And I remember there was a lot about their love and doves. Anyway.
Adam:Hmm. You sang that song to your class?
Rebecca:No, I, I showed them, no, I showed them the YouTube video, but when I showed them the YouTube video, I was like nervous that it was like only one mention of technology, but he did come back around to the technology again, there's just like a lot more lyrics in the song forever. Yeah.
Adam:The best part is his voice kind of wavering at the end, like he's getting emotional.
Rebecca:Yes. He's so like. Subdued about it. Yeah. Yes.
Adam:It's a great performance.
Rebecca:It is. Alright. Are we ready?
Adam:Alright, well, we're going. I'm getting my pipers.
Rebecca:Okay, well.
Adam:Why don't you do the intro this time? Let's hear your intro.
Rebecca:My intro will not be as sexy. Come on. And I'll be like, welcome.
Adam:Very
Rebecca:sexy. Welcome to Hello. Navi the Joneses. Hello. Just kidding. Okay.
Adam:Assert yourself. It's a male dominated world.
Rebecca:Shut up. Why you gotta bring that up right now? Okay. Are you ready?
Adam:Great. Well, we'll see you all next time. We've got to wrap it up.
Rebecca:Yeah, let's figure out how to wrap it up. How do we want to wrap it up?
Adam:Because the battery's actually going to die. Okay. Let me just actually plug it in. Plug
Rebecca:it in. what do you, yeah, how do you wanna wrap it up? I mean, we need to say something before we just say. Thank you for listening to Keeping It Up With The Joneses. What do we want to say? Have a nice orgasm this week? No.
Adam:Great. Well, until then, everybody go fuck yourselves. No, I'm just kidding. And your partner.
