By Jane Seymour, Worldwide Media 
WE'RE EXPECTED to be lovers, wives and mothers, to be good at our jobs, active in our communities, knowledgeable, great cooks.
We're expected to go after sexual fulfilment, just as men do; to have satisfying orgasms, be loving and tender. We're expected to be businesslike in the office, sweet, and sympathetic at home, and tigresses in bed.
This is a pretty tall order and one of the largest problem areas is sex. Despite the sexual revolution and women's liberation, society still associates a great many negative ideas with sex ideas that we learn as we are growing up. The sexy messages of television, advertising and popular literature conflict with these ingrained ideas that sex is still, somehow dirty; that women should be sexually passive; that masturbation and premarital sex are wrong, and so on. We feel uncomfortable talking about sex, expressing our feelings, showing our interest. Our bodies don't always do what our minds think they should and we wind up confused and unhappy, feeling that sex isn't all it has cracked up to be or else there's something wrong with us.
Actually, most of our problems with sex are experienced by many women and all of them have
solutions.
1. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
ABOUT OUR BODIES
Almost every woman even those who, by most people's standards have perfectly proportioned, beautiful bodies thinks that some part of her is too big, too small, badly shaped or otherwise
unattractive.
There are as many body image worries as there are women. While men generally focus on one item the size of the penis (surveys have shown that 95 out of a hundred men think their penis is too small) women have a much broader range of complaints about
themselves.
For many women, it's their breasts too small, too fat, too droopy, one is larger than the other or they're too large (yes, there are women who have this problem). We also often have issues about our stomach, or hips, and some of us think our legs are too short or too fat.
When you focus on one part of your body you lose sight of the whole experience of love-making. You rob yourself of enjoyment because of an entirely unfounded belief that you're "ugly", turning off your partner. Ask yourself this: has anybody other than you ever complained about your breasts, hips, legs or whatever?
Be assured, the man you're making love with isn't a bit concerned about your too-wide hips, too-thick ankles, droopy breasts or freckled arms. He's making love to you, not to a disembodied part of your anatomy. Unless he's a talent scout for the Playboy centrefold, he's not evaluating your proportions: he's enjoying your body. "I wish women would stop worrying about their bodies", says one man I know who knows a lot of women. "Within reasonable limits, all kinds of female bodies are great in bed. It's the sexual response that counts."
2. ANXIETY ABOUT OUR
SEXUAL PERFORMANCE
That leads us into the second major problem area. Today, many women are as hung up about their "performance" as men have traditionally been. Now that we've been told by the sex therapists that women are at least as capable of orgasm as men are and may well have more orgasmic capacity we feel that there's something wrong with us if we aren't having orgasms, or if we aren't having them as often, or as satisfactorily as we think we should.
First of all, orgasm is a physical reflex produced by the reflect contractions of certain muscles in the genitals. We cannot directly control this physical reflex, but we can control the psychological conditions that affect the physical response. As long as there is no actual physical dysfunction, the underlying cause of problems with orgasm is anxiety or fear. Women who have never had an orgasm come to believe that they are incapable of it (actual incapacity is extremely rare). They may associate orgasm with a loss of control, which they find frightening, or they may have absorbed the notion that orgasm is dirty or shameful or something nice women don't experience.
For women who do have orgasms but who sometimes have difficulty, the simple fear that they won't "perform" well on a particular occasion can make that performance more difficult. "He won't love me anymore," they think. "He won't find me desirable." "He'd think I'm frigid." It's the women who are able to relax and enjoy the sexual experience as a whole, without worrying about whether or not they are "performing" satisfactorily, who have the most satisfying sex.
Sex therapists often prescribe certain exercises to be done alone or with one's lover or spouse, in order to relieve the tensions that inhibit sexual response. But in many cases, problems can be solved without resorting to expensive therapy. Anything which helps you to relax, a warm bath, a drink, meditation or deep muscle relaxation exercises will help rid you of pleasure-inhibiting tension.
