Holistic healing

Relationships: advice from the experts

Our monthly look at the world of love, friendship, sex and relationships

Hold it

It’s not only men that suffer from premature orgasms, according to scientists.

A study in Portugal found a surprising percentage of women also peak too early during sex.

The survey of 510 women found 40 per cent reported that they suffered from the sexual dysfunction while three per cent described the problem as chronic.

Did you know?

Research shows that omega oils may help boost intimate lubrication for women who suffer from dryness issues. The essential fatty acids are an important component of the mucous membranes in our bodies. Try Pharmanord’s Omega 7 Sea Buckthorn Oil (£18.95 from omega7.co.uk)

Rural bliss?

A move to the country could be on the cards with the news that young women growing up in cities are five times more likely to suffer from the eating disorder bulimia, according to a ten-year study in the British Journal of Psychiatry. People in cities also have a 39 per cent higher risk of mood problems such as depression and bipolar disorder, and a 21 per cent increased risk of anxiety disorders such as panic attacks, extreme phobias and obsessive-compulsiveness.

Text pests

The increased stress of modern day life has sparked a new phenomenon – sleep texting. People with the rare condition send incoherent text messages while asleep to their friends and family – but are completely unaware that they are doing it.

Sleep specialist Dr David Cunnington, of Melbourne Sleep Disorder Centre in Australia, said patients had reported incidents of sleep texting and advised people to leave their mobile phones outside the bedroom.

The love clinic

Better communication always means better sex

Ever find yourself in the situation where you’re having sex with someone and it’s really not doing it for you? Ladies – ever find that your man is ignoring the rest of your body and diving straight for your genitals? The chances are that if this is happening, you’re not communicating well with your partner. Here’s how to change things:

Ask for what you want As children, most of us learned that ‘I want doesn’t get’ or were told ‘don’t be so selfish’. So, we learn that it’s not okay to ask for our needs to be met, and we stay silent about them. But when we don’t express our needs, they are unlikely to be met. This is bad news for relationships and bad news for sex.
Be brave By expressing our needs, we risk rejection, having our needs neglected or misunderstood. It’s much easier to stay silent, allowing our feelings of neglect and resentment to build up until it’s all too easy to blame the other for not meeting our unspoken needs. But if we don’t speak our needs, how can the other know what we want?
Be specific The more you can be specific about what you want, the more you’re likely to get it. Ladies – we men aren’t the subtle creatures that you are. We need to hear explicit instructions. Furthermore, even if we’re experienced lovers, every woman is different and you can’t assume that a man knows how you like to be touched. Men often feel they are under enormous pressure to ‘get it right’ in sex (it’s our own egos often applying the pressure!). It can be a relief for a man to be told how a woman wants to be touched. The more specific and explicit you can be about your needs, the more likely you are to have them met.
Gentle communication If your lover is touching you in a way which doesn’t work for you, try not to disparage them by telling them you really don’t like what they’re doing. Support them to give you what you want by saying something like: ‘What I like even more than that is when you do…’ or ‘that’s nice, but I prefer it when your touch me a bit slower’. Such gentle directions won’t bruise a sexually-sensitive ego and can help you get what you’re after.
Yes and no It’s important to learn to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’, both with equal confidence and ease. It can be a challenge for some people to say no to something, but too many people, usually women, find themselves in situations they don’t want because they lack the confidence to say no. Our innate fear of not being a good child can stop us from speaking our truth. You have the right to say no, and you have the right to ask to receive pleasure with a ‘yes’.

As a man, I love to hear a woman say ‘no’, if it is said with conviction, because I know that, if I can trust her ‘no’, then when she says ‘yes’, she really means it.

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