Your Sex Cycle

Your Sex Cycle  - Desire in Women

If you are having problems with sex or are not having much of it, it is nearly impossible to jump-start the process by hopping into bed and being a willing partner. 

As you would expect, a women’s sex cycle operates differently from a man’s, given the differences in their biological chemistry. Both sexes share the sex cycle’s five stages: desire, arousal, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.  But for women, the phases of the cycle vary much more dramatically in duration and intensity. And your individual five-phase cycle is unique to you and you alone. Each of these phases needs to be completed before you move onto the next, for you to have satisfying sex.

The sex cycle begins with desire. Desire is one of the most important aspects of successful lovemaking because it gets things moving. Without desire, sex can be unpleasant or may simply not happen at all. In the beginning of the relationship, romantic love triggers the necessary chemistry for desire, so that sex is plentiful and pleasurable. But once the illusion of romantic love wears off and other emotions begin to surface, desire can fade or be increasingly intermittent, with the collateral damage being the diminishing quality of your lovemaking.

Men can jump the desire phase altogether and become physically aroused and primed for the plateau period very quickly. They have a very obvious anatomical barometer right in front of them to signal whether they are ready for sex. They are more easily aroused by visual stimuli (the sight of your body), as well as by sounds, smells, and even memories.

Most women, however, require a more prolonged state of desire for successful sex. But true desire is a fragile commodity. Resentment, fatigue, stress—there are many internal feelings and external circumstances that can have a harmful effect on your sex cycle so that the fuse of desire never gets lit. You need to feel warm, relaxed, playful, a bit vulnerable, trusting, and sensitive—all of the things that you may feel have vanished in the current state of your relationship. So it’s no wonder that sex has been a problem.

It’s a vicious cycle. If you could manage to have sex more regularly, then feelings of intimacy would be more accessible, because your man is getting what he needs to be intimate with you. If the cycle breaks down, it becomes increasingly more difficult to kick-start it again. For example, after a few sessions in which your arousal stage is not achieved, when the next opportunity for sex presents itself, you are less likely to be inclined to start the process. Sex becomes a “no go” zone for couples who let the situation languish. You will want to avoid sex because you know where it is heading: frustration at not feeling aroused, feeling that your needs are being ignored, being left behind and maybe difficulty reaching an orgasm.