Decide to Enjoy It More

A study indicates that women can think themselves into having a better sex life. Betty Klinck reports in USA Today.

Researchers at the Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of Texas-Austin found that women experienced improvements in symptoms such as low sex drive just from getting a placebo in a clinical trial.

A placebo is a control for the study. What that means is that a study might separate people into three groups. One will take the real pill being tested. The second group will take a sugar pill or some other substance that shouldn't have a a physical impact on what's being tested – that's a placebo. The third group will get nothing. If the second group shows significant positive changes, then the indication is that at least some of the problem is psychological and can be improved simply by changing one's thinking.

I am reminded of when I'd bought a brand new air filter and the girlfriend I was seeing back then borrowed it new out of the box because a friend of hers who supposedly had severe allergies, including an allery to cats, was going to be visiting my girlfriend, who had a cat. My girlfriend reported back to me that the air filter worked perfectly to keep her cat from triggering her friend's allergic reactions. And then I read the directions and realized there was some plastic I had yet to remove that actually made the filter functional.

So yes, a lot of our problems and pain can be dealt with by changing our thinking. We can remove self-defeating behaviors that way. The problem comes in when someone extrapolates that idea and thinks all problems – such as all diseases – can be cured by changing one's thinking. Every few years, someone repackages that false notion and makes a lot of money selling it to people. (If your religion is based on this notion, I don't mean to insult you. If my beliefs are true, than this notion must necessarily be false - and I do believe my beliefs, after all.)

But I digress.

Women may have experienced increased satisfaction simply because they decided to take action and experienced increased hope, says researcher Andrea Bradford. The study was published in September in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

There's something for your coffee table.

"It's not going to change if you just wait for it to happen," Bradford says. "Changing how you approach the problem might in itself make a big difference."

Ladies, if you decide to enjoy lovemaking more, then you just might.

Measuring female sexual dysfunction and satisfaction can be difficult sometimes, because it is very much based on the woman's own observations of her symptoms, says Meston.

"Sexual dysfunction is, in a way, what a woman says it is."

Yes, dear. Most women know on some level that their attitude can make a difference. Think of the women that claim they need to be romanced with gifts and dinners and all of these other things to get turned on, but if their favorite celebrity crush were to walk around the corner and take her in a closet for five minutes, she'd need almost no foreplay whatsoever, and certainly no romance.

She notes also that decreased sex drive in a long-term relationship is normal for women.

Testosterone levels in men also drop when they marry and have children. So if a higher sex drive is more important to a person than loving one person, this is something that supports their decision to avoid commitment to someone other than themselves.

But for marrieds, it is important to note that we have more reason to believe that attitude matters.