Sexual Pleasure

A woman doesn't have to experience orgasm or without pleasure to become pregnant, and many women have become pregnant under cruel circumstances when sex was a painful and unpleasant act. Even so, lack of sexual pleasure can affect fertility, particularly when a couple has a borderline fertility problem that is, if the husband has a slightly reduced sperm count and the wife has some ovulatory difficulty. If sex is not pleasurable, there is less chance of having intercourse at the fertile time.

One woman who had been trying to get pregnant for ten years had never reached orgasm or sexual pleasure. When asked how often she and her husband had sex, she replied, "Whenever he wants it." Clearly even if the physical problem were solved, the woman would have trouble getting pregnant. Joyous, spontaneous sex is a hallmark of successful treatment.

With the retelling of past events, the pattern of the infertility problem begins to emerge. A history of irregular menstrual periods points to a hormonal problem. A suspected pelvic infection or any surgery in the pelvic cavity suggests a mechanical obstruction of the reproductive organs. If a woman's history points to neither of these problems, the physician will suspect an infertility problem in the male partner.

The history is not proof, but it is an early indicator of possible problems. The specialist's mind approaches each investigation like a sophisticated computer, taking in a thousand different variables, sorting them, and matching them up until a distinct pattern is perceived. The specialist draws no specific conclusions from the history, but lays the groundwork for the remainder of the workup.

What then are the questions people are asking today? First of all perhaps comes, 'How important is sex anyway?' To that it must be answered that people can certainly do without it. Plenty of men and women do just that. Either they do not choose to have sex, or they lack the confidence to enter a sexual relationship for one reason or another. Or, they are crippled, or ugly, or for some other explanation there simply is no partner available to them. They cope or sublimate in many ways, but they do manage without sex. The cost may be undetectable, but it is paid for in terms of inner frustration and it may make the per son bitter and unful filled, unhappy and unloved in personal relationships of all kinds.

For sex is very important indeed. This is particularly true for women. In nature males compete for females. It is usual for one to gather around him a group of females and to deter other males. Though we have imposed a more socially fair distribution, it is likely that human males can do without sex, much as do their animal counterparts. Females on the other hand are intended by nature to be continuously involved in producing new members of the race. They are seldom without a male sex partner. Consequently they are less well equipped by natural methods to tolerate lack of sex. It has been fairly accurately estimated that the average male thinks about sex once every ten minutes. Yet, even with some, where there is a normal amount of sex and that in itself is a phrase to which we shall subsequently return the actual time spent in sexual activities may be as little as perhaps one hour a week. In that time over fifty hours are spent sleeping, and some five or six hours eating. Yet people think of eating and sleeping far less. There is thus a clear discrepancy between the mental importance of sex and the amount of it that is done. Potential strains can be spotted in this disproportion very obviously indeed. Small wonder therefore that sex Is all set to cause us the trouble it does. If any support of this theory is needed it is only necessary to calculate the amount of literature, advertising and the film industry, that is devoted to, and runs on, sex. it has even violence, horror, and Star Wars outclassed.