In a British reproductive health survey 42% of women aren’t satisfied with their sex lives. Author Rebecca Reid sees this as subjugation.

Yes, really.

Unsatisfactory sex is a type of subjugation. By allowing yourself to lie back and think of England, you’re adding sex to the litany of things women do as emotional labour; not because they want to but because they have to.

Ms. Reid alternately wrings her hands over the sad state of female orgasm in England and bullys women to demand their partner satisfy them. Yet, at a time when sexual activity is uncoupled from any expectation of commitment or adverse consequence in Western Civ, how could so many women be so unhappy?

The answer is not in Ms. Reid’s gynecological explanation of the physical differences between men and women but in a short, throw-away phrase way down in paragraph ten.

It’s not easy to tell someone you’re sleeping with, especially if you’re fond of them, that they’re not getting it right.

Especially if you’re fond of them?

Oh hon, if you’re having sex with people you’re not fond of, you’re doing it wrong.

The secret to great sex

I don’t know about all women, but getting naked with someone I don’t know or like just doesn’t make it to my list of top ten ways to have great sex. Which is why, I suspect, the hook-up culture on college isn’t all fireworks and warm fuzzy glows that Sex Week acolytes would have you believe.

Want good-to-great sex regularly? Get married.

Americans give higher satisfaction ratings to their family lives (68 percent “very” satisfied), but the highest of all to their marriages or committed relationships. Indeed nearly everyone in a married or committed relationship is satisfied with it — 97 percent — including eight in 10 who are “very satisfied,” men and women alike.

Sex is intimacy not a pastrami sandwich. Yelp reviews can get you to a new restaurant with managed expectations, but it’s not going to help with your yaa-yaas.

Women are having more sex and enjoying it less because intimacy — real, trusting, communicative intimacy — has been tossed aside in the attempt to make sex a casual activity one pencils into a weekly schedule between staff meetings and spin class.

What a committed, monogamous relationship does is give you the space to establish and grow intimacy. It allows the trust necessary to be as naked in spirit as you are in flesh with the person you love.

Women needn’t hand a printout of their preferred sexual manipulations to the-not-especially-fond-of person they are having sex with. Sister, start taking emotional responsibility for yourself. First and foremost, STOP, and don’t have sex with any person you wouldn’t want to spend the next 5 to 50 years with.

When sex has a connection with the future, a future you are both invested in, you will be relaxed enough to have the best sex ever.