For a surprising number of women, sex is anything but healing.
A little more than half of the young women surveyed in a new Australian study experienced sex-related personal distress of some kind, according to the findings published Monday in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Distress for the women could mean any kind of emotional displeasure, from unhappiness to stress to embarrassment, according to a press release for the soon-to-be published study.
Professor Susan Davis of Australia’s Monash University and her team of researchers studied the sexual well-being of 7,000 women between the ages of 18 and 39, and discovered that one in five has at least one female sexual dysfunction — a finding that left her “very concerned.”
Although Davis anticipated finding that a number of young women had sexual issues, she was shocked to learn that so many women reported displeasure.
“There’s an assumption that sexual well-being only becomes a problem when a woman is older,” she said. “Sex is everywhere — we assume everyone under 40 understands sex, and is comfortable with sex and doesn’t have a problem.”
Davis added that if there is a problem, “there’s an assumption it will be a visible problem, like a sexually transmitted infection or an abusive relationship.”
In reality, the issues are often far more internalized, although they don’t always manifest as dysfunction. While nearly 30% of study participants reported experiencing sexual distress, only 20% reported having a kind of sexual dysfunction.
The most common female sexual dysfunction, Davis found, was low sexual self-image, with arousal-related dysfunctions, desire, orgasm and responsiveness also quite frequent. Weight, relationship status and breastfeeding were often associated factors, but far more serious circumstances were those of antidepressant use. Birth control, on the other hand, was found to have no impact.
Women whose confidence was more dependent on their looks also were more likely to have worse sex, Davis found.
“Women who more habitually monitor their appearance, and for whom their appearance is a more substantial determinant of their physical self-worth, are less sexually assertive and more self-conscious during intimacy … and experience lower sexual satisfaction,” she said.