Woman have been telling their partners lies for generations. Photo / 123RF
COMMENT:
Warning: Explicit content
I've never met a woman who isn't a liar.
That's not to say women are innately incapable of truth-telling; we're just discouraged from doing so.
Find me a woman who hasn't told her mother-in-law she's "welcome to drop by any time", insisted it was "really no big deal" after a friend returned something broken, or told her boss she was fine to work, while doubled over in menstrual agony.
You might be looking a while.
From the time we're young enough to speak, women are conditioned to put our needs aside to accommodate others.
Whether visually ("Body hair on girls is gross. Shave your legs", "Smile when I talk to you, baby!", "Wear something less revealing, you're distracting the men") or practically ("You have to take his last name when you get married", "Be nice to him, he was trying to give you a compliment", "Don't eat so much, it's not ladylike") the message is clear – our comfort is inconsequential.
Is it any wonder then, the place we fake it most is in the bedroom, where pleasure is unattainable in the absence of comfort?
A 2018 study published in the Journal Of Sexual Medicine found personal comfort rates so low for women when it comes to sex, just half of us tell our partners when we're in pain during intercourse.
And that's not the only thing we aren't upfront about. Here are just a few of the furphies women tell men in bed…
It should be stated, while I've never met a woman who hasn't sheepishly admitted to faking an orgasm, I'm yet to encounter a man who isn't convinced every woman he's ever bedded has enjoyed a screaming climax.
There are "certain ways" of being able to tell, he'll declare (there aren't), and anyway, he'd "definitely know" if it wasn't genuine, because he's so clued in to women's bodies. (A 2019 study found almost 60 per cent of men can't even locate the vagina on an anatomical diagram.)
If the protesting men in the comments sections of just about every story ever written on "faking it" are anything to go by, Oscars should be awarded for all the believable performances we've delivered.
But a word of warning to the female readers on this one: Though it's an effective tactic for bringing bad sex to an end, this lie spreads the virus known as Men Who Think They're God's Gift To Women In The Sack But Actually Suck At Sex.
Ah, the classic phallic exaggeration; a con surely as old as time itself.
No doubt there were women in caves telling their Neanderthal lovers they were the largest they had ever accommodated.
This lie is most commonly used on men with SPS (Small Penis Syndrome). Easy to spot, they typically drive V8s, wear way too much Lynx deodorant, and require constant validation.
One can only assume these men are operating under the hypothesis being large is the fast track to the female orgasm, which is clear, because they don't appear to possess a working knowledge of the actual path to our sexual satisfaction.
This fib is most commonly used on the guy whose masculinity hinges on the idea the woman he's doing the deed with has unshackled her chastity belt for the night.
Equally effective versions include, "You're the only guy I've let do that to me", "This is my first one-night-stand" and "I don't normally do this".
It's not that this man is insecure. His brain just can't withstand the knowledge a woman has interacted with other male humanoids before him. He's also sexually disappointing, so would prefer it if we didn't have anything to compare him to.
And though he thinks women who have lots of sex are "used up" (also his favourite response to women who reject him on Tinder), he expects us to be dirty, and know what we're doing in bed.
Yeaaaaaahhh ... that buzzing sound coming from the bathroom isn't an electric toothbrush.
But when we don't have the heart to tell a guy he was closer to lulling us off to sleep than delivering an orgasm, a quick rendezvous with a toy never disappoints.
It's kind of ironic, really – given so many men are perplexed about why women own vibrators when we have access to "the real thing". (Spoiler: The real thing usually finishes in the first five minutes then never calls you again.)
There are few women who haven't at some point used this line to get out of sex. And it makes perfect sense why.
When we're taught women who enjoy sex are "sl*ts" and "not wife material", and our sexual experiences are overwhelmingly disappointing and painful, it's unsurprising so many of us come to the conclusion we're "not really into sex".
Of course, that's almost certainly incorrect. What's more likely is, she's not really into bad sex. And telling her husband her libido has died is a great way to never have to endure it again.
Women don't tell these lies out of greed or selfishness. (Indeed, these falsehoods only serve to further deprioritise our own needs.) We tell them for the same reason we force a smile for the stranger on the street, leave half our food behind on the plate when we're still hungry, and apologise for taking up space.
Denying the existence of our sexual desire is one of the many ways we're conditioned to ignore our comfort and question our own instincts.
And that's not just a lie we tell men. It's a lie we tell ourselves.
Times: Mia, Colin and Laurent's parents wanted them to see the world. They had a deadline.