It’s so sad that masturbation still gets a bad rap. There is so much anxiety surrounding masturbation, both for the individual and for the couple, with so many negative ideas and meanings attached to it. But time and time again, it’s been shown that masturbation improves one’s sex life and sexual functioning. For women, this is especially true on all levels – for physical health, for emotional health, and for the health of your sexual relationship.
Masturbation is especially important for women.
Since most of a woman’s erectile tissue and sexual organs are internal, it’s not as immediately obvious to a woman when her body is responding with sexual arousal. It is more common for women to be unaware of their genital sensations unless they have direct contact with them. With masturbation, a woman learns to feel what her body likes and how her body responds to stimulation at her own pace. She is in control of the exploration and the activity, free to indulge her curiosities and discover what brings her the maximum pleasure. When a woman becomes familiar with all the structures of her vulva – the mons and bush, the clitoris, the labia, the opening of the vagina, the perineum and anus – then she can have much more success in teaching a partner how to pleasure her rather than leaving it up to trial and error.
Masturbation increases blood flow to the genitals.
Many women engage in sexual activity without having a full response of their genitals and erectile tissue. Whether it’s anxiety interfering with arousal or a lack of time to get aroused, women don’t always get all the blood flow to the clitoris and vagina that help with sexual pleasure and orgasm. When this happens, it’s like a guy stimulating his penis without a full hard-on. Masturbation encourages those blood vessels to open up and get complete engorgement of all of the erectile tissue she has surrounding the vaginal opening. The body supports whatever activity it receives, so masturbation helps maintain all of the arteries, nerves, and tissues in that area. The pelvic floor will also enjoy strengthening with each orgasm.
How do you have an orgasm with a partner?
The fact is most women need stimulation of the clitoris to achieve orgasm. This is true whether she is masturbating or whether she is having intercourse. When a woman learns how to give herself an orgasm on her own, she is much more likely to be able to find ways to get the same stimulation when she is with a partner – either by positioning herself against her partner’s body to get clitoral stimulation or by finding an angle to use some fingers or a vibrator on the clitoris during penetration. Since the clitoris is a very large structure that is mostly internal, orgasms that come from G-spot stimulation are technically clitoral orgasms too, just a different branch of the same nerve.
Masturbation is efficient and powerful.
When you are stimulating yourself, you know exactly where you want to be touched because you are receiving all of that information to your brain in real time. One of the most beautiful facts about masturbation is that it allows for very high levels of psychological arousal because there isn’t the distraction of a partner’s wants or opinions, and you are free to fantasize about whatever you like. Most women find that they can get their most powerful orgasms by masturbating themselves as they let their mind relax deep into their arousal. Only when a woman has an orgasm does her brain really goes into a trance and find true escape from the world around her. But it only last 8 seconds – so try to get a little of it every day!
