Forget foreplay, the MIND is the key to female orgasms and women should try to have more erotic thoughts, says research

Forget foreplay, the key to good sex is mainly in a woman’s mind, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the Human Sexuality Research Laboratory at the University of Ottawa interviewed women who reported regularly having trouble reaching climax with their partner and those who didn’t.

Women who struggled to orgasm had less erotic thoughts and were focusing less on their body’s sensations during intercourse than those who regularly orgasmed.

This was despite both groups of women having the same level of erotic thoughts when self-stimulating without their partner.

The level to which this ability to focus the mind affected sexual performance was much higher than expected said study author Pascal De Sutter, a professor at the department of sexology and family science at the University of Louvain in Belgium.

There also seems to be a sort of sexual learning curve when it comes to the ability to reach orgasm, with older women reporting far less difficulty than their younger counterparts.

Unsurprisingly, the 'orgasmic' women reported less sexual distress and more pleasure in relation to their sex life in general. 

The findings, published in the June issue of the journal Sexologies, are particularly interesting because of their implications for treatment for those who suffer with sexual dysfunction problems.

It may be that forms of mental training could be highly effective for some people.

‘There is some evidence in the literature that suggests that mindfulness approaches to the treatment  of sexual dysfunction can be quite successful,’ Elke Reissing, the director of the Human Sexuality Research Laboratory explains.