Solo sex is good for your relationship

My wife recently admitted to me that she masturbates a few times a week. I was surprised that she does it at all, to be honest. We’re young and we have a healthy sex life — does that mean that I’m not satisfying her?

If your wife preferred masturbation to sex, you might have a problem, but she doesn’t, so you don’t. Far from being an indication of sexual dissatisfaction, in women, regular masturbation indicates a higher than average libido, a healthy appetite for sex and a willingness to experiment. Although it is often mocked as the solace of the sexually deprived, research into the role of masturbation in marital and sexual satisfaction found that married women who masturbated had significantly more orgasms, greater sexual desire, higher self-esteem, greater marital and sexual satisfaction, and required less time to become sexually aroused.

Forty years earlier, Alfred Kinsey published his landmark study of female sexual behaviour in which 62% of women reported having masturbated, 58% of them to orgasm. Kinsey’s 1953 report gave a detailed analysis of the techniques women used: 84% stroked or stimulated their inner lips and/or clitoris and 10% crossed their legs and exerted a steady rhythmic pressure affecting the whole area. Women also used vibrators or rubbed themselves against pillows or beds. Just 20% of women used penetration during masturbation and 2% could orgasm from fantasy alone. In fact, Kinsey found that masturbation was the second most frequently practised sexual behaviour among women, whether they were married or single, and it was the behaviour in which orgasm was most frequently achieved.