Naked Truth: Why Women Shrug Off Lousy Sex
Your girlfriend isn't satisfied in bed. Does it matter?
For some couples, the answer might be a resounding yes. But for many women, a lack of sexual desire or pleasure isn't worth getting worked up about. Studies find that while one-third to nearly one-half of women report sexual function problems, only about 10 percent are worried about those troubles.
Unsurprisingly, the 10 percent of women who experience both problems with desire and stress about sexual function have received the bulk of the research attention - they're the ones with real problems, after all. But studies on the happily dysfunctional might provide hints into the factors that influence sexual distress. (The results could also give these women a hint of what they were missing.)
"We've assumed for so long that for both men and women, these problems were always depressing," Kyle Stephenson, a University of Texas at Austin doctoral candidate in psychology who recently published a paper on the topic, told LiveScience.
When survey data proved that notion wrong, Stephenson said, the question became, "What happens within the confines of a sexual relationship that makes these problems so distressing you want to seek treatment?" [Related: 5 Myths About Women's Bodies] [...]