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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Please be advised that the following program contains audio content that may be graphic and potentially triggering for some listeners. This content may include descriptions or sounds that some may find disturbing. Listener discretion is strongly advised. This is The Last Show with David Cooper. Pain in the bedroom happening during what should be otherwise a pleasurable experience.
Turns out it's pretty common and men are less likely to speak up about it and say something than women. I'm here with two researchers who are in psychology who have done a study on this. They are both Terry Fisher and Mary Bullard from the University of the South in Tennessee. Terry, welcome to the program.
Thank you.
And Mary, welcome to you as well.
Thank you.
So when we think about pain during sex, I tend to imagine something pretty clinical, something pretty rare, something most people don't talk about. Your study suggests that it's almost normal. Where did we go wrong when it comes to educating people about this phenomenon?
Yeah. So I think that that's part of what our study aimed to kind of contribute to science is the fact that pain during sex and sort of like a non-medical setting is more common than a lot of people think, but it's not necessarily normal. And so that's what we were hoping to start a conversation about.
So let's dive in. Let's start the conversation. In what ways does pain show up? Is it just like hurting in my private region? What are some of the pains that people might describe who actually experience this?
We didn't get real specific in asking people about the nature of the pain, but rather had it ever happened or not. This was more of an exploratory study. There's been a lot of research on pain during sexuality, but typically with clinical samples,
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Chapter 2: What are the common experiences of pain during sex?
What might be the reason for this kind of like silent suffering?
Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons that we found and we broke them down into several different themes. And it was everything from, you know, like maybe desire to please a partner. They don't want to speak up and like ruin the moment by saying that they're in pain. Maybe they feel some sort of like pressure, obligation to finish the sexual activity.
Chapter 3: Why are men less likely to speak up about sexual pain?
Or maybe the pain is normalized for them and they don't think that it's something that needs to be brought up.
Latching up to this whole idea of ruining the moment, there's something theatrical about that for me. Like, I wouldn't want to speak up about my discomfort to ruin the scene or ruin the pleasure for somebody. It sounds almost performative or something like that, doesn't it?
Oh, yeah, it definitely does a little bit, which is interesting.
Did you want to follow up, Terri?
There are quite a few participants who were concerned about their partner's reaction, but they were also concerned about how it might make them feel that they were not good sexual partners or they were not real women or that sort of concern. And with regard to the men feeling the pain and not speaking up, a lot of them were concerned it would make them seem like less of a man.
So gender roles were definitely playing a role.
That's such an interesting one, like traditional gender roles, someone feeling like they just need to power through or something like that. I'm a bit disappointed to hear that, but it totally makes sense. Are women more likely to speak up during moments of discomfort when things should otherwise be going well?
Definitely. Yeah. So women are twice as likely to tell their partners about pain as men are. And they're four times as likely during penile vaginal intercourse to stop the proceedings and try to change something.
We could learn something from that. I feel like you should be communicating with your partners about what is pleasurable and what's painful. It's kind of disappointing that people aren't, at least to me. Are there those that feel like this is just a part of sex, something they should just have to endure? And if so, that seems like a pretty, I don't know, dangerous belief to me.
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Chapter 4: What did the study reveal about pain during sex?
And she broke it down and she did this Twitter poll where she asked women about their bad sexual experiences and then asked men about their bad experiences. And for the most part, for women, it was considered bad if they were in pain, whereas for the men, it was bad if maybe they didn't have an orgasm from the sex. And so very different feedback.
Hearing all this and the reasons people give for why they endure it, it sounds to me less like sexual pain is about our bodies, although it is. And it's kind of like a psychology thing. It's the reasons why people don't speak up. I guess it would follow you're both psychology researchers. But yeah, is this more in like the psychological realm than it is in, let's say, the anatomy realm?
No, I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think there are lots of physical reasons that somebody might experience pain, but the not speaking up is psychological for sure.
Got it. And in your study, did you focus on mostly college students? Do you think all age groups would experience this as well?
So, yes, our study focused on a sample of about 263 college students. They're all undergraduate level and they're taking the study as part of their research credit. But it definitely would be interesting to expand it to a wider population to see what the differences might be across different age groups.
We recognize the limitations of our sample. But we knew that we weren't going to be getting bots in our sample. We also knew that our students were more likely to take the study seriously and give us complete answers because a lot of our questions were open-ended where they had to write. But we intend in the future to expand it to a larger population.
Well, knowing what you know now about pain and people not speaking up, would you design sex education for younger folks differently, for college age students differently? What would you want people to know who don't necessarily have an amazing sexual education background? What would you want them to know? Maybe one brutally honest thing or something?
I think it would be important for people to know that pain can happen during sex, that it's almost to be expected from time to time, and that communication is the very best way of dealing with that because there are lots of adjustments that can be made. But if your partner doesn't know that you're in pain, then nothing's going to change.
Absolutely. I second that.
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Chapter 5: What are the different types of pain experienced during sex?
And I also think it's important to highlight that talking about sex doesn't have to be sexual necessarily. And it's not some taboo thing. And, you know, communication is important.
Yeah. And it's not going to ruin the moment. And if it does ruin the moment, maybe talk about it afterwards so it doesn't happen again next time. Right. Absolutely. Well, Terry Fisher and Mary Bullard are both psychology researchers at the University of the South in Tennessee. Terry, Mary, I've enjoyed this chat. Thanks for sharing your research with me.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
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