If you want a hot and healthy sex life, don’t demand perfection from your partner.
When women feel a sexual partner is imposing impossible standards and expectations of perfection on them, it can lead to anxiety and sexual dysfunction, new research out of the U.K. shows.
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The study’s findings are based on data from two groups of women: the first survey was conducted on 230 university students with an average age of 19.7, and the second of 136 internet users with a mean age of 30.
Months later, 164 of the women took part in the same survey again.
The survey explored perfectionist standards people apply to themselves as well as to their partners, the pressure felt from their partner and social pressures.
To measure the women’s sexual satisfaction, researchers used the Female Sexual Function Index, covering desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction and pain.
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The results showed that increased pressure from partners can very much affect not just the women’s emotional well-being, but also their physical reaction in sexual situations.
“Partner-prescribed sexual perfectionism showed positive relationships with sexual anxiety, sexual problem self-blame, and intercourse pain, and negative relationships with sexual esteem, desire, arousal, lubrication, and orgasmic function,” the study states.
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The findings could help clinicians, counsellors and therapists working with women dealing with sexual function issues, the study’s authors note.
The study, Multidimensional Sexual Perfectionism and Female Sexual Function: A Longitudinal Investigation, was recently published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
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