Men in Boston may be climaxing more frequently than their female counterparts, according to a health study by RealAge that ranked Boston the sixth best city for sexual satisfaction for males but the seventh worst for females.
This disparity between genders is common to many U.S. cities, said Keith Roach, the chief medical officer at RealAge. Usually if one gender is pleased, the other is not, he said.
“The way that we define healthy sex is different for men than it is for women,” Roach said. “So for men it means lots and lots of sex and for women it means good quality sex with lots of orgasms – and those two are not necessarily the same thing.”
Roach said healthy sex comes down to quantity, quality and the amount of orgasms.
“For a woman, [optimal sexual health] comes down to how often she reaches orgasm during sex,” according to RealAge, while men depend more on the frequency of orgasms in general to be sexually healthy.
But RealAge’s findings should not define a person’s relationship with sex, said Nancy Levin-Mcgrath, a sex therapist certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists.
“Having an orgasm is only one criteria of feeling satisfied,” she said. “If you are only using orgasm as the only criteria for satisfying, you’re limiting what can be sexually satisfying.”
There are many ways to make sex more enjoyable – feeling a connection with a partner or simply seeing his or her fulfillment can be satisfying enough, she said.
The importance of connecting to sexual partners may be responsible for the city’s low rankings for women, said Georgia Institute of Technology graduate student Alexis Zyski, while standing outside of Condom World on Newbury Street.
“College-aged men are less likely to be in a monogamous relationship or settled down and I think that has a lot to do with their sexual behaviors,” she said, referring to Boston’s large student population.
Boston has the highest proportion of college-aged students among major U.S. cities, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority – about 35 percent of the city’s entire population.
“There are a lot of [colleges] here, and I think that college-aged men probably don’t necessarily realize the whole satisfying-a-woman-sexually thing,” said Tom Ciovacco, a graduate student at Northeastern University. “Being the younger age, people don’t realize that both people have to be satisfied at the end of the day.”
However, age might not be the only factor, said Sara Zuckerman, a sales clerk at Condom World.
“I really believe that as soon as you know how to pleasure yourself it makes the whole thing with a partner or not a lot easier to deal with.” she said. “Have fun with it – don’t get caught up in the semantics.”
Zuckerman said men and women do not need artificial enhancers for sexual satisfaction.
“Guys, you don’t need a pill or a cream so you can last longer,” she said, “and girls, you don’t need something to rub on you to feel more feelings.”
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