As an executive director with Passion Parties – a company that gives in-home events showcasing toys, edibles and intimacy enablers that help spice things up in the bedroom – Dana Froneberger knows a lot about sexual health and wellbeing. With that in mind, we spoke to Froneberger about her 11 years of experience of talking to thousands and thousands of women about sex.
1. Which Sexual Wellness Questions Do Women Tend to Ask Most? According to Froneberger, ‘It really boils down to the basics. Women want to know how they can improve their intimate relationships. They want to know how to spice things up and create renewed interest or a renewed spark in their bedroom—that elusive, “how to have better sex or how to have great sex.” Everyone wants to know how to have better sex and how they can enjoy it more.’
2. Ok, How Do You Have Great Sex? ‘Truthfully, it starts with communication,’ says Froneberger. ‘Foreplay starts way before the bedroom. And, if you know what feels good, you can comfortably share that with your partner. You learn by doing, so sometimes if women don’t do, they don’t know. It’s not like they’re educated. You have to really figure that out. No one’s telling you or talking about that. Your doctor’s barely talking about it. No one’s talking about it. You’re not learning it in school, you’re not learning it from your parents.’
3. What’s One Thing More Women Need to Realise About Sex? Froneberger comments, ‘I think women don’t realize how important their clitoris is, and how many nerve endings it has. They think penis plus vagina penetration equals orgasm. But 75-80% of women cannot orgasm without clitoral stimulation, so there’s a real small segment of the population that can.’
4. What Challenges Do Women Experience with Sex? Froneberger details, ‘I think women get stuck in their head a little too much during sex, and they’re concerned with whether they’re taking too long, or what they should be doing, or the faces they’re making. But your brain is a really important sexual organ too. So many women are juggling so many things in their lives, they just need to shut that off, enjoy the moment, be present, right there, breathing, and feeling the sensations and enjoying the connection with their partner. Sometimes they don’t realise it until you say it to them, that this is normal. They want to know that they’re not the only one out there experiencing that.’
5. How Can Women Become More Empowered in the Bedroom? ‘I feel like, as women, we’re kind of responsible for our own orgasms,’ Froneberger notes. ‘And we have to know what feels good in order to communicate with our partner, so that starts with us. It’s not someone else’s job to give us an orgasm, we need to make sure that we get one. And in my opinion, one of the worst things that a woman can do is fake an orgasm, because it reinforces the action to their partner that whatever they’re doing worked. It cheats you out of the great feeling of a real orgasm and might leave you feeling resentful or unsatisfied in your sex life. Because you’re not getting the release of what you really need.’
6. What Should More People Know about Women? ‘People don’t realise that women are complex sexual creatures,’ Froneberger asserts. ‘I’ve heard it noted before that men have three buttons on their dashboard and they all work in any order. Whereas women, our dashboard is like the cockpit of a 747. We have 1,000 buttons, every woman is different and likes different things, and the same woman may not like the same thing the very next day. Men, they want to please you. They want to feel good, they want to feel like they give you pleasure, so if you do share with them what does feel good and reinforce that, you’ll have better sex.’