Dr. Nan Wise here, certified sex therapist and neuroscientist. We are about to dive deep into the porn habits of women and the benefits of watching porn for moms.
Because let’s be real, sex and motherhood don’t always go hand in hand so we’ll go over the inevitable challenges we face in our sex lives when we become moms.
In this article:
- Porn Star – For The Brain
- Libido Loss In Women – Is Porn The Answer?
- Parenting Is Hard – Porn As An Outlet
- 5 Benefits Of Porn for Women
- What’s Your Sexual Fantasy?
- What Porn Can I Watch?
Porn Star – For the Brain
If you didn’t know, I am the world’s FIRST Brain Porn Star. Seriously. While conducting my research, “Brain Activity Unique To Orgasm In Women; an fMRI study,” I donated the data from my OWN orgasm, which my lab made into a video. Someone had to “pilot” the study before we asked other people to do it and it had to be me. Working out the details of how to squeeze out an orgasm by masturbation in the context of a claustrophobic scanner while simultaneously trying to keep one’s head still was no easy task.
Libido Loss In Women – Is Porn The Answer??
The libido is our overall sexual desire, and as I report in my book, Why Good Sex Matters, it isn’t unusual for new parents to notice a loss in sexual desire. But did you know we have two types of sexual desire?
Sure, you may not feel that same spontaneous sexual desire and lust like you once had (the type where you are as horny as a teenager or what kicks in when you’re in a brand new relationship). The quest to ignite female sexual desire does not appear to have a simple solution in the way of pills or other medical treatments. As I noted in Medscape, the lack of effectiveness of these female sexual desire drugs, compounded with safety issues, leaves much to be desired and lots to avoid. For this reason, I suggest you just might want to try some good ol’ fashioned porn. And here’s why.
What we don’t often understand is that even when the old, lusty libido seems lost, we have a second type of sexual desire – the receptive sexual desire.
This “receptive” desire needs a trigger. It may be your partner needing to do more initiating & seducing or another “spark” that will get the party started…enter porn.
Parenting Is Hard – Porn As An Outlet
Sexual energy can be depleted by the chemistry of taking care of kids. I mean literally. The hormones that are released with and through caretaking over time tend to cockblock the hormones that drive lust.
So let’s bless any and all mothers (or grandmothers for that matter) who still find the time and energy to trigger their lustful selves. We sometimes just need a push in the right direction and a five to ten-minute porn session can be a great workaround for the dampened libido.
One of the most common reasons couples come in for sex therapy is the loss of spontaneous sexual desire (described above). This can be on the part of the mother (more frequently, and not surprisingly considering that mothers work harder in and outside of the home and therefore often bear the brunt of parenting more acutely), the father (that happens, too) or by both partners (in which case they may be less likely to seek help as neither may be motivated to get the groove back in the bedroom).
5 Benefits of Porn For Women
Porn as an outlet has it’s benefits. Simply because it can be sexy fun that can actually be good for your sex life. I call this healthy hedonism–pleasures that feels good and are good for you.
Don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at the results of some published studies.
*actual studies listed below
- Watching porn, for women (in apparent contrast to men) is actually associated with positive effects on their sexuality. Now here’s a caveat, we can’t say that watching porn causes better sex, definitively. It might be that women who watch porn may just be a bit more sex-positive than those who don’t, so correlations don’t imply causation. The takeaway point here is that women who watch porn don’t report negative results of porn-viewing and it seems that porn-viewing and better sex do come hand-in-hand, for women at least.
- When women watch porn with their husbands, sexual and relational satisfaction increased. And we do know that sexual satisfaction is a big predictor of marital satisfaction. I always say that a good roll in the hay can lubricate the gridlock, loosening and softening the common conflicts that couples experience in everyday living.
- When couples watch porn together, it can improve sexual communication, decrease arousal problems and actually decrease women’s negative views of themselves.
- Watching porn can potentially help women better understand their bodies and also explore their own sexual appetites.
- Contrary to what is usually believed about pornography. a recent study debunked the myths of the “negative” impact of pornography on relationships in that both men and women in heterosexual relationships reported pornography use associated with improved communication, more sexual experimentation, and enhanced sexual comfort.
What’s Your Sexual Fantasy?
We know that moms are watching! Women now make up 29% of the people visiting PornHub and it appears to mesh nicely about what we know about women’s sexual fantasies.
An Internet survey conducted with 1,516 adults reported the following about women’s sexual fantasies:
Homosexual or Bisexual Fantasies
More than a third of women acknowledged fantasies about giving cunnilingus (35.7%), having sex with another woman (36.9%), and making love with (36.9%) or watching (42.4%) two other women having sex, although only 19% considered themselves something other than heterosexual: bisexuals (12.6%) or homosexuals (6%).
Threesomes, MMF, MFF & More
More than half (56.5%) of women reported having fantasized having sex with two men, and 28.9% of the reported having fantasized having sex with more than three men.
What Porn Can I Watch?
Sites like pornhub and Bellesa porn all offer a wide range of porn and based on 2018 Pornhub Stats, these genres are what women are watching from highest to lowest, annotated with my own commentary.
Japanese Porn
This is news to me. Had to dig deeper but found, upon reflection, this not surprising as apparently Japanese pornography tends to extend into a broad spectrum of heterosexual, homosexual, and transgender sexual acts in addition to unique fetishes. So, just as women’s sexual fantasies are pretty flexible, so are our porn-watching habits. I can’t help but note that although it might appear that women, based on this, might be a bit kinkier than men, men are the ones who actually end up in real life with more fetishes than women. Takeaway–men are more rigid and women more flexible, perhaps literally and figuratively.
Hentai
Refers to a genre of anime and manga pornography. Again, interesting but not surprising as it includes tons of fun for exploration, such as any perverse or bizarre sexual desire or act. See above.
Threesome
Again, in alignment with our reported sexual fantasies–and remember we woman actually can have more fun in threesomes since our sexual natures don’t include having a penis that can only be in one place at a time.
Korean Sex
Is that sex with sweet Asians? Not sure what this one is about.
Massage
Sounds like women, at least vicariously, would enjoy a massage, with a “happy ending, too”.
Gangbang
Who wouldn’t enjoy this one vicariously? And porn, like fantasy can give us an opportunity to experience in our imaginations something we might not actually be willing to do in real life. Again, consistent with women’s fantasies.
Lesbians Scissoring
It appears that we women can empathize and vicariously enjoy witnessing the wonders of women enjoying themselves with each other. You probably won’t find many heterosexual men reporting that viewing man-on- man action is all that arousing (and when they do, which is perfectly okay, they often think something is wrong with them and come talk to me for reassurance). Maybe this has something do with the prevalence of male homophobia, but research supports the finding that male genitals are pickier about what fires them up–and that for men, pornography needs to be specific to their sexual orientation in order to get blood flowing to the genitals. Not the case for ladies, but that’s yet another story. For way more fascinating and helpful information about sex differences in our sexuality I highly recommend my book, and also my video, The Truth About Male vs Female Sex.
Stepmom Sex
Again, we can imagine being naughty in ways that we wouldn’t ever consider doing IRL! Remember everyone, we can fantasize without ever wanting to act things out.
MILF’s
Don’t we want to still be thought of as hot even after we become mothers? And maybe we can also enjoy other mothers being hot, too. Again, women are great at empathy and experiencing vicarious pleasures. Yay! But wait a second, where is the “GLF” genre–grandmother’s I would like to fuck? I am a grandmother and I am still hot!
Anal Sex
Don’t neglect the tush! Here’s a reason why you might just consider trying this out in real life; The sensory nerves that can be stimulated by anal sex can seriously ramp up sexual sensations, especially when combined with stimulation of the clitoris, vagina, cervix, and/or nipples. Sensational!
Lesbian Porn
We can safely say that the majority of women viewing this are not lesbians by orientation. Women simply have more erotic plasticity than men, meaning our sexual orientations are more flexible. This is consistent with the fantasies we woman report.
Pussy Licking
Perhaps self-explanatory. Women can imagine being the recipient of the viewed oral attention. In general, women tend to have better imagery ability than men, which may be a good reason why I was able to publish a study showing that women could activate the brain’s pleasure and sensation places similarly to orgasm, simply by imagining being stimulated by a dildo.
Lesbian Threesome
The more, the merrier.
Double Penetration
For all the same reasons we might fantasize about threesomes, two men with two penises (or alternatively two people with two dildos) could equal tons of sensation, at least in theory, in fantasy, or in viewing porn. You don’t have to do it in real life to enjoy it vicariously. For more details about the additive quality of anal stimulation with the other lady parts, please refer to my comments on anal above.
Conclusion
I am a 62-year-old woman who still loves sex. Actually, I love sex now more than ever. And guess what, sex is good for YOU. Being sex-positive is good for you. Having pleasure, both in and out of the bedroom is not a luxury, it is a necessity–for everyone, especially mommies who spend their lives taking care of others.
In Why Good Sex Matters, I go over the fundamental problem in how we think about sex & pleasure and how absolutely important both are to our experience of living. To not just be alive, but to LIVE and how to reclaim our innate capacity for joy, fun, exuberance, curiosity, and humor.
UP NEXT: How To Handle Mismatched Lover Types
*Studies
Perry, S. L. (2017). Does viewing pornography reduce marital quality over time? Evidence from longitudinal data. Archives of Sexual behavior, 46(2), 549-559.
Campbell, L., & Kohut, T. (2017). The use and effects of pornography in romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 6-10.
Aron, A., & Henkemeyer, L. (1995). Marital satisfaction and passionate love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12(1), 139-146.
Daneback, K., Træen, B., & Månsson, S. A. (2009). Use of pornography in a random sample of Norwegian heterosexual couples, should watch porn. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(5), 746-753.
Weinberg, M. S., Williams, C. J., Kleiner, S., & Irizarry, Y. (2010). Pornography, normalization, and empowerment. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(6), 1389-1401.
Kohut, T., Fisher, W. A., & Campbell, L. (2017). Perceived effects of pornography on the couple relationship: Initial findings of open-ended, participant-informed, “bottom-up” research. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(2), 585-602.
Joyal, C.C., Cossette, A., & Lapierre, V. (2015). What exactly is an unusual sexual fantasy? The journal of sexual medicine, 12 2, 328-40.
