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The blogs on Sensualfusion.com are written by some of the top sexuality experts around. Their information is based on scientific research and fact. Come learn about the latest news, "trends," and issues related to sex, sexual health, and intimate relationships...

Could you be the problem with porn?

Friday, August 12, 2011

What if porn isn’t the problem and the problem is you? Research out of Utah State University should have anybody asking this question, having found that the impact porn has on a person all boils down to the individual. In asking 299 undergraduates if they consider their pornography consumption problematic, researchers found that the more participants tried to repress their sexual thoughts and desires, the likelier they were to regard porn as a problem.

Such data should seemingly help to settle the long-standing, heated debate on the positive versus negative effects of porn. For decades, proponents and opponents of this form of erotica have fought over whether pornography harms women, makes users more sexually aggressive, hurts relationships, and promotes sexism.

Those for porn use claim that it empowers lovers with ideas, enhances self-pleasuring, and even reduces the desire to sexually assault another in providing a safe escape for deviant fantasies. Those against porn consumption say such visuals create and raise unrealistic sexual expectations, turn lovers off to one another, and incite violence.

Pornography consumption is, by far, one of the most complicated realms of sexual pleasuring and expression, especially when one’s use becomes more than moderate or the imagery involves violence. Yet the answers to questions around porn use, often fielded by sexologists, like “Is it okay to enjoy?” “How often is too often?” “What kind of porn makes me a pervert?” and “Is pornography consumption problem-inducing?” all come down to the person.

The potential problems that can come out of porn use are largely manifested by one’s own personal values and views about different types of erotica, intimacy, and sexual enjoyment. It’s your intrusive thoughts around what’s positive and good versus bad and wrong that influence your pleasuring.

What the Utah State University research indicates is that porn’s probability of becoming problematic is first and foremost directly due to one’s repression reaction. It’s this suppression of the desire to look at porn that boosts one’s longing for it. And this becomes complicated for the individual when processed against one’s personal morals system, including religious influences. It’s the conflicting feelings that arise that often ultimately lead to sexual problems.

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Maybe Men are the More Romantic Gender

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Looking for something hot to do this weekend? Why don’t you get carnal and… cuddle? A recent study conducted at The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, involving more than 1,000 couples from five countries, suggests that it’s quite important for – men.

That’s right, despite rampant stereotypes pegging women as the more romantic gender, research shows that it’s the guys who find kissing, cuddling, and caressing more important than women when it comes to happy relationships.  More men than women also report being happy in their relationship, a finding made even more interesting when you consider that more women reported being sexually satisfied. (This was especially true for those gals who had been in their relationship for at least 15 years.)

All of this challenges traditional gender-role beliefs claiming that men are more sexually-oriented, while women are more love-oriented. Men, supposedly, only provide touch and affection to seduce and have sex. Yet research in various arenas regularly suggests that many men are real romantics:

  • Studies consistently show that men can separate love and sex, but their most erotic experiences take place in the relational context. It is the emotional that makes it special.
  • Men hold more romantic views of male-female relations than do women.
  • Men tend to fall in love earlier in relationships. It has also been found that men tend to show more brain activity than women in regions associated with visual processing, especially the face, perhaps enhancing a male’s ability to fall in love and explaining why men generally fall in love faster than women.
  • Men tend to cling longer to a dying love affair, e.g., three times as many men as women commit suicide after a disastrous love affair.

Even if they don’t always admit it, many guys desire some tender love and care from their partner on a regular basis. Whether a counselor, therapist, educator, or lover, those concerned with cultivating happy relationships need to do more in acknowledging and supporting a male’s touch needs too. 

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Can Language Influence Your Sex Personality?

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Could speaking a foreign language change the way you engage your partner sexually? While recent research out of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University doesn’t answer this question directly, it does highlight the influence one’s linguistic efforts have on a social context.

Researchers found that native Chinese students who were fluent in English took on traits regarded as more ‘typical’ of English versus Cantonese speakers in speaking English. According to both self-reports and behavioral observations, these participants became more extroverted, assertive, and open to new experiences when speaking their second (vs. native) language.

This link became even more marked when participants spoke English to a Chinese versus Caucasian interviewer, with their “English-speaking” personality traits more prominent with the latter. Thus, the article, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, concluded that there appears to be a link between one’s personality traits and language, given “perceived cultural norms, language priming, and interlocutor ethnicity on various personality dimensions.”

While researchers didn’t go anywhere near one’s sex personality specifically, as someone who recently released Sultry Sex Talk to Seduce Any Lover, which offers simple lines of erotic talk in foreign languages, it’s natural for the sexually inclined to wonder if one’s sexy state of mind changes, too, given linguistic efforts. With people often taking on the prototypic traits associated with a language’s culture, how they think the native speakers express themselves activates certain behavioral expressions. Hence, sexual expressiveness stands to be influenced in practicing sexy talk as well.

In the case of English as a second language, a person may become more assertive in his or her amorous efforts. In the bedroom, this could be erotically enticing as a lover changes his or her mannerisms, tones, and overall sex personality. One’s inclination to enhance cultural contexts via language could further change up sexual contexts as lovers reveal a side of themselves never known.

With previous studies showing that language impacts one’s values, self-concept, and how the speaker relates to others, couples can explore the erotic transformation that can only come with a second language. Better yet, their amorous efforts can focus on becoming polyglots. In speaking multiple languages, you could potentially have “multiple personalities” in the sack, exponentially increasing the passion potential in your boudoir as you keep things fresh and exciting in Swedish, German, Spanish, Italian…

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