How Frequency Affects Women

Most people know what happens to a man when sex is infrequent, but many don’t understand how a woman’s body responds to varying levels of sexual frequency.

Every woman is unique, and some will not find the following true, but for the majority this is the norm.

The table below compares the effects of sexual frequency in men and women. Note that a woman’s changing hormones affect her sex drive too and this may mask the effects at some times of the cycle, and multiply the effects at other times.

As sexual frequency declines, this is what happens.

	men	women
strength and awareness of desire	increases	decreases
ease of arousal	more easily aroused	less easily aroused
amount of stimulation needed to orgasm	less than normal	more than normal
ease if orgasm	very easy (may climax too soon)	increasingly difficult
intensity of orgasm	orgasm is stronger	orgasm is shorter & feels less pleasurable

Men and women respond differently to sexual frequency.¹ As can be seen from the information, the less often a woman has sex, the less she will want sex, the less she will enjoy sex, and the more difficult it will be for her to become aroused and climax. This has been born out repeatedly in studies of the sexual frequency of woman who go from partner to partner: these women tend to masturbate more while in a relationship than while being celibate. Apparently God designed women to become more and more interested in sex as they become more active.

Even more startling evidence of a woman’s need for regular sex can be found in Winnifred B. Cutler’s book, Love Cycles. Dr. Cutler did a number of studies comparing the menstrual regularity of different women. Her data showed a strong cause and effect between the frequency of intercourse and the length and regularity of the menstrual cycle. Women who had sex two or more times a week had the most regular cycles, women who had sex once a week were slightly less regular, celibate women were still less regular, and women who had sporadic sex, or sex less than once a week, had the most irregular cycles. A variety of hormonal differences were seen, including higher estrogen levels in the women who had regular sex. Interestingly, it was heterosexual intercourse, with or without female orgasm, that caused the changes; neither homosexual acts nor masturbation had any effect. The regulating agent seems to be a pheromone, a sort of “airborne hormone,” released by the man’s body during arousal and/or climax. Dr. Cutler’s conclusion was “How often a woman engages in sexual behavior with a man strongly affects her endocrine system.”²

While this is interesting, it has little relevance in and of itself. Other studies and data complete the picture. Fertility is very much linked to menstrual regularity. There is also a clear correlation between menstrual regularity and overall health: the more regular the woman’s cycle, the better her overall health. The benefits of the hormonal changes in those having intercourse at least twice a week include: better fertility, stronger bones, better cardiovascular health, less depression, lower incidence of fibrocystic breast disease and uterine cancer, and a decrease in menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes and depression.³ Furthermore, regular intercourse after menopause has ongoing benefits to both the sexual and general health of the woman.

Clearly, the Lord created women to have frequent heterosexual relations. Sporadic or irregular sex is actually detrimental to a woman’s health, while regular intercourse has great benefits. God’s “rules” for sex create the perfect situation for keeping a woman’s body strong and healthy.

¹ Note: A very few men and women report different experiences than what is shown in the chart, but the data is what most men and women experience.
² Winnifred B. Cutler, Ph. D. (1991) LOVE CYCLES, pp 22, New York: Random House
³ IBID pp 22

 

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woman counting on her fingers © Andrei Korzhyts / Adobe Stock