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Excerpts from
Glamour Magazine
I’ve had quite a bit of reading on this topic, and by sheer co-incidence, I happened to stumble onto the October edition of “Glamour”, on a Magazine shelf,saw this topic and decided to have it shared here.(And sorry this is reeallly looong!!!)
Please post your opinion and experiences.
The author takes us thru personal experiences and a survey she conducted recently in North America.
Here we go:
“I've had plenty of love and quite a bit of sex. But I'm still working out where love and sex intersect. In my early 20s, I loved few of the men I had sex with. In my late 20s, my sex-to-love ratio was four to one. I felt deeply for a quarter of the men I had sex with. The older I got, the closer I inched towards one to one, until I made a pledge in front of God, guests and caterers to bestow all my "favours" on one man for life.
The one to one ratio: sex with someone you love, who is having sex with someone he loves - you. A tiny circle of sex and love that is infinite because it's closed. Isn't that what women yearn for?
We wanted to find out, so we turned to a sex survey in which more than 1 500 women answered dozens of questions about how important sex is to love, and love is to great sex.
Have your views changed as your life has evolved? Do your attitudes depend on whether you're in a relationship, how long you've been with your partner and how many times you've been around the block, sexually and emotionally, over the years?
Check out these insights to see how you shape up in terms of love and sex - and get more out of both.
Sex and love make a divine combo platter
When forced to choose, almost everyone (94 percent) opted for an eternity of storybook love with not-so-great sex over smouldering sex with lukewarm love!!!
Love is gratifying on multiple levels and can continue to be so well into old age, when the heart works better than certain other body parts. Meanwhile, sex is much easier to come by than a deep and abiding love.
If you can land both in the same partner, terrific. If not, have a condom in purse and be a pleasure-seeking sexual comparison shopper, while you still can.
More than four out of five women in the survey said that they have sex for how good it makes them feel physically.
Either way, loving the person needn't be a prerequisite: "There are times when love and sex intertwine, but for me it's rare," says Annie, 27. "I care about more people who I haven't had sex with than the majority of people I have had sex with."
Love makes sex better and vice versa
Sex is better when you love your partner, say 67 percent of you. And 72 percent say they're more daring in bed when in love. Why? Many women are more comfortable with their bodies if their partner adores their mind, too.
Other women cite a profundity that emerges during bona fide lovemaking. Noelle, 26, says that she experienced it for the first time a few months into her relationship with her fiance. She says. "I was overwhelmed almost to the point of tears."
Sex can make a relationship more loving. More than 60 percent of women felt that the more they had sex, the more affectionate their daily interactions were. (My husband shows uncharacteristic willingness to sit through a Jane Austen movie after a particularly satisfying intermission.)
"Men are much easier to deal with when you have sex with them at least once a week," says Kate, 39. But the use of sex as a means to an end is limited: sex rarely morphs into love - only 29 percent said sex with someone generated deeper feelings.
Your opinions on sex and love will change
The fluidity of sex and love can make big decisions tricky - like whether to marry the sweet boy next door or that brooding, unbelievably hot drummer in the band with whom you have amazing sex. The youngest women polled, aged 21 to 24, were most likely to choose great sex over love.
Those women were also less apt than older women to say they needed to feel loved before hooking up. "I have people who love me, friends and family, and I don't need one person to reaffirm that I'm loved. Sex is something really special.
I love my friends, but they can't do that for me," says Deb, 21.
Unless, of course, you do have sex with your friends, a common practice among young women. Personally, I found the experiment to be a resounding failure, although I liked the theory enough to test it several times over the years. All we had the next morning was an awkward goodbye and a vow to stick to soda water the next time we hung out.
Notably, 73 percent of you felt it's impossible to keep love and sex separate. Women aged 35 to 44 were more likely to need to feel loved before getting intimate physically (67 percent) and were likelier to agree that love is more important to women, while sex is more important to men (75 percent of those over 35 felt this way, while only 53 percent of the 21 to 24-year-old set agreed).
The wisdom that comes with experience appears to be responsible for the shift in priorities. If you're building a life with another person, he needs to be more than a stud. By your 30s, you've had a fair amount of sex, and you know what it can - and can't - deliver. But mostly you know that sex is easy enough to come by, and if you find yourself without a mate, you could have sex with anyone - most conveniently, yourself. Sex can be important, but after a certain point, to quote Eden's Sheila E, "Without love, it ain't much."
Marriage changes everything
Women have sex for many reasons, including lust, a desire to relieve stress or to patch things up, but the reasons change once you're in a committed relationship. The number one reason women in a steady sexual relationship take to their beds is to convey how much they love their mate, followed by the fact that it keeps the pair close. How good it feels physically trails in third place.
It appears that lovemaking is Mother Nature's way of prolonging commitment: 68 percent of women believe that great sex can blind you to a person's faults, which can be a helpful tool in any long-term relationship.
The importance of sex as a purely recreational activity seems to drop once rings have been swapped: 56 percent of married women said that they'd stay with someone they loved even if the sex was weak.
In a long-term relationship, love isn't always enough to keep a sex life sexy. It's sometimes easier to be attracted to a fantasy than the guy who's still carrying that sympathy baby weight long after you've shed yours. That's where a good fantasy life comes into the picture - it can make married sex fantastic.
The truth is 31 percent of married women say their partner is not the best sex they ever had. Women often opt to commit for other reasons. Comfort, predictability and a hybrid minivan aren't sexy, but they make for excellent partnerships.
Ideally the person you spend your happily-ever-after with is the one you make the best whoopee with, and to the 69 percent of married women who report their husband is that guy, we say: you are either brilliant or lucky.
My (Phad) observations
Those of you who are still looking for:
1- The love of your life,
2- The best sex of your life, or both?
Getting there is just half the fun. You must be ready to assume teaching responsibilities, while submissiveness and humility is a must.
I have 3 Questions to pose though:-
Would you stay with your partner if the sex wasn't good?
Would you stay with your partner if you didn't love them but the sex was great?
Would you stay with a partner who didn't love you though you both had great sex?
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