Program: Horny women

Veronica
The room stopped spinning and everything was sexy. Everything. Chairs, clouds, the kitchen counter, everything.

Jade
Every hair on my body was standing up and I just kind of couldn't quite get enough of it.

Veronica
I just wanted to hump everything. Like everything. It was insane.

Sarah
I have a huge capacity to give pleasure and I have a huge capacity to receive pleasure. I could have like six orgasms in like five minutes flat.

Yumi
What if you had an insatiable appetite? Not for streaming TV or oysters and sweet potato fries, but for pleasure. What if no matter how much you had, you still had room for more? Hmm. When we think of horniness, there's definitely a perception that a fair few men are horny and walking around with this need protruding out of their pants. But horny women? Doesn't horniness wear off immediately after puberty when we get slapped in the face by reality? Even the word horny is traditionally all about men. The theory is the word comes from an 18th century saying, having the horn. Get it? The thing protruding from the pants is a horn. Women's craving for sex was erased in the ye olde days and even though we've come a long way, there's still taboo around us wanting it too much. Too openly. If you do, watch out. You might be labelled a slut or even better, a mad slut. So what if you're someone who is hungry for sex all the time? Is life a never-ending smorgasbord of orgasms? By which I mean, a smorgasbord? Or are there times when the need to binge on sex gets in the way of the rest of your life and it even causes harm? I'm Yumi Steins. Ladies, we need to talk about being horny AF.

Veronica
Every moment of my brain seemed to be taken up with wanting to find somewhere where I could masturbate. And that's where it all started.

Yumi
This is Veronica. Like so many of us, her first forays into sexual exploration were via self-pleasure or solo sex as a young teen. But unlike many of us, she had no off switch. Veronica is now 33 but she still thinks about sex all the time.

Veronica
It's constant, pretty much, especially if I've recently had a very lovely time with somebody. If I've recently had some very good sex, then that will be on my mind for weeks. It is lovely but it is a lot of energy having to put into thinking about other things because my brain will just fall into that constantly, like as a default.

Yumi
How many times a day can you masturbate on average? Do I or can I? Well, I guess, do you?

Veronica
I'd say a minimum of five. And that's slightly dependent on how much freedom I have or whether my kids are around or all that sort of stuff. Yeah, two to five.

Yumi
That sounds like a lot. Like my body would get sore, I think, after that much.

Veronica
It's exhausting. And I've tried not. I've tried to go for a string of days where I haven't. And my brain gets worse. It gets so much harder to control it and so much harder to focus on anything else. And I got to a point once where my hand, I started shaking. Like I couldn't physically, I was having a very physical response to needing to release whatever that is that builds up in my brain.

Yumi
Veronica doesn't just find her constant horniness distracting and physically consuming. It can be awkward.

Veronica
I have to rein it in or I end up just sort of going glassy-eyed in the middle of a conversation with someone else that's about, you know, building materials or something completely separate to sex. Or what's happened before is I've ended up coming out with something in real life that's extremely inappropriate because my brain has gone off on a tangent that is obviously not happening in real life.

Yumi
So you say something out loud.

Veronica
Yeah, so or I'll make an innuendo or a dirty joke or something because that's the mode my brain is in. When obviously that's a very inappropriate thing to be saying to someone that I'm hiring to put gyprock on my walls.

Yumi
When it comes to understanding female desire, there's definitely one expert to have on your speed dial. New York Times bestselling author and expert on women's sexual well-being, Emily Nagoski. Hello. We had a late-night emergency Zoom call with Emily to try to get to the bottom of what's going on in our bodies and our brains when it comes to horniness. First up in our lesson was revision on the dual model of sexual desire to get a grip on where our horniness springs from. As the name suggests, the theory is two-pronged.

Emily
The first part is the sexual excitation system or the gas pedal. It notices all the sex-related information in the environment. That's everything you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. It notices all your internal bodily sensations and it notices everything you think, believe, or imagine. Anything that it codes as being sex-related and it sends that turn-on signal that many of us are familiar with.

Yumi
Right, yes, the spark in the underpants feeling. So, Emily, what's the flip side of this accelerator?

Emily
Fortunately, you also have that second part, which is the brakes. That notices all the good reasons not to be turned on right now, which is all the same senses. Everything you think, believe, or imagine that your brain codes as a potential threat and it sends the turn-off signal. So the process of becoming aroused is this dual process of turning on the ons and turning off the offs.

Yumi
What Emily is saying here is that in order to get the vehicle moving toward pleasure and orgasm, your sexual accelerator has to be on. And things that turn you off have to be quietened or not exist in the room. We all have different things that will turn us on and off, but it's not just what's going on internally that comes into play when it comes to sexual response. It's also about the messages we've been absorbing since birth from our cultures about how we should be responding.

Emily
It is always the interaction of whatever is innate in us and what our culture taught us. So even if a woman has a really sensitive accelerator and a really not sensitive brake, if she has been trained her whole life to feel ashamed of how interested she is in sex, even if her brakes aren't that strong, it's going to keep her brakes on a whole lot and interfere with things. So there's always going to be an interaction between the innate sexual personality and what that person was taught about the meaning of who they are as a sexual person.

Yumi
These messages that we receive are in wild conflict with each other. Be sexy, but don't want sex too much or too overtly. Sure, embrace your agency, but know that it can be taken away at any time.

Emily
There's a very long historical underpinning for these complicated and contradictory messages about women's sexuality, grounded in the historical reality that women's bodies were the properties first of their fathers and then of the men who, you know, purchased them from the father.

Yumi
And even now, let's be honest, we are expected to accept many sexual behaviors without really ever being asked whether we're into them or not. So let's get to what goes on for women who are dead set horndogs. There's got to be a downside, right? I mean, apart from saying weird things and getting glassy eyed while talking jiprock.

Emily
Women with low sensitivity breaks tend to be the ones who engage in higher risk behaviors because they don't have a powerful break preventing them from engaging in behaviors that they know intellectually have a higher risk of unwanted consequences.

Veronica
I have a lot of shame about things I've done in the past.

Yumi
This is Veronica again.

Veronica
I think one of my biggest moments of shame is when I've not been as safe as I could be, either sort of in where I'm having sex and also not properly using contraceptives, which has resulted in me falling pregnant when I was 17, which was really hard. Not that I have any shame about being pregnant at a young age or the decisions I made following that, but I should have made decisions that haven't put me in that position in the first place.

Yumi
In the past, Veronica's voracious need for sex, her horn, dragged her vulva thirst into some very bad choices.

Veronica
I have ended up making some terrible mistakes with other people and hurting people, hurting my friends because of things I've done and also losing friendships because my friends are just sick of hearing about it. I did have one point a friend of mine stopped inviting me to parties because the first thing I do is turn up and scour the room for the person I could most likely sleep with, which is not a good friend.

Yumi
No one wants to be that friend, but Veronica often finds that horniness just overwhelms her.

Veronica
I'm assuming other people can just sort of switch it off or not be bothered by sex sometimes. That's just not in my world. And so I can't comprehend how that feels for other people and I can't expect other people to comprehend how that feels for me either.

Yumi
Veronica, it sounds like you feel very alone in this experience of high sex drive.

Veronica
So the beginning of a relationship, especially with men, they all go, oh yeah, it's fine. I can totally keep up with you. That's cool. I can go like a Duracell bunny or whatever, but then give it two months and they've had enough. I mean, there has been a few cases where I've actually injured people without meaning to. I didn't even know you could break a banjo string until I was in my 20s, but apparently that is a thing. Can you explain what you just said? So the tiny little bit of skin between the head of the penis and the shaft, there's a little tight bit of flesh there and you can snap that. And it's very painful and very messy.

Yumi
Oh no. So was it just too much friction on it?

Veronica
I think so. Maybe overuse. Because I'll just go again and again and again.

Yumi
Oh no. When Veronica became pregnant with her now son, for the first time since puberty, the thought of sex repulsed her. It was like the horny raging in her brain finally went quiet.

Veronica
I could have happily been celibate for the rest of my life and the idea of anyone else touching me felt disgusting. I didn't want to go anywhere near anyone in that context at all. And that didn't stop until about two days after I stopped breastfeeding. And then it all came rushing back with a vengeance.

Yumi
Wow. Okay. So hang on. So you got pregnant and almost immediately your sex drive for the first time in your life, it dropped off to nothing.

Veronica
Just plummeted. Yeah, absolutely nothing. It was quite a relief. My brain was a lot calmer. And aside from the normal pregnancy stuff, there was a clarity there of focus that I could tap into that wasn't there before. And that was quite nice.

Yumi
So you give birth to your son, you breastfeed and then days, like literally two days after you stopped breastfeeding, your sex drive returns.

Veronica
Yeah. I remember the moment.

Yumi
Talk us through the moment. What happened?

Veronica
I was in the kitchen of a friend's house and my son was with his dad. So I was on my own and suddenly the room started spinning. Like everything just started blurring in front of my eyes. It was so bizarre. And I was holding onto the kitchen counter. And it was like all of the horny hormones from the last however many years had been built up in a water balloon in my brain. And that popped. And I could, it's like I could physically feel a warm sensation go from my head all the way down my body. The room stopped spinning and everything was sexy. Everything. Chairs, clouds, the kitchen counter, everything. I couldn't eat for about two days and my hands were like, I couldn't hold my hands still. I was shaking, like my bones were shaking. And I just wanted to hump everything. Like everything. It was insane.

Yumi
Unlike Veronica, Jade didn't realise that she was a total hornbag until later in life. Jade had been married to a man for 17 years and for a lot of that time their sex life was routine. It was routine rooting.

Jade
I wouldn't say that I had the greatest time, but you know, it was okay. I don't think I didn't ever cum until I was maybe 24 and I'd met my husband when I was 19.

Yumi
So wait a sec, so you'd never had an orgasm even through masturbation until you were 24? I had never masturbated. The thought of bringing herself to orgasm hadn't even occurred to Jade until her then husband, trying to piss her off, put on some lesbian porn.

Jade
And it really turned me on. And that was when I started masturbating. And then I started masturbating pretty much every day. So then I discovered I absolutely had a sex drive, but I wasn't turned on by him.

Yumi
So what was it like to finally feel that spark of horniness?

Jade
I definitely started then kind of questioning my sexuality, but I still stayed. And I wouldn't have left to pursue dating a woman. I left for other reasons. But it definitely, that was when I started questioning it. You know, I even Googled, am I a lesbian?

Yumi
Did it just say, yeah? Yeah, pretty much. Am I a lesbian? Yeah. I'm just getting this picture of somebody who kind of, it's almost like you cracked something open and suddenly you see there's this whole world out there. Did it feel like something was coming alive in you?

Jade
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you know, it felt amazing. And I discovered that I could come really quite easily.

Yumi
Eventually, Jade left her marriage and started to explore her sexuality on her own terms. She went on a dating site, met someone and soon after had sex with a woman for the first time.

Jade
And I called my friend the next day and I was like, oh my God, why didn't you tell me it was this good? Wow. Wow. It was just like every hair on my body was standing up and I just kind of couldn't quite get enough of it. And I then said to my friend, I reckon every woman needs to try this. Every woman would like it. She's like, no, I think it's because you're gay. I'm like, no, I reckon every woman...

Yumi
Lol. Jade hooked up with another woman who would eventually become her wife. This new partner was experienced and up for a challenge.

Jade
That first night she asked me how many orgasms I could have. And I was like, oh, I don't know, three, four. But it was a lot more than that.

Yumi
Was it?

Jade
Yes.

Yumi
So what was it like going from having a ho-hum sex life to having this really full on sex in overdrive?

Jade
It was all consuming to begin with. Like, just I couldn't really think of anything else. It was probably quite lucky that it was, you know, COVID and lockdown and I didn't really have to do much else. Yeah, it was, it was very intense.

Yumi
What was supposed to be a one night stand in typical U-Haul lesbian cliche style, of course, turned into a full blown committed and sexy relationship. In that first year of romance, Jade and her partner were at it constantly.

Jade
At night, we'd go for a few hours and then we'd maybe have an hour sleep and then I'd wake her up again and then we'd go again. If we were home during the day together, we'd like every spare second that we'd get where we could have a little kind of 20 minute gap in there, we would have sex. So sometimes six, seven times a day.

Yumi
What?

Yumi
That epic sex fest lasted for a good 12 months.

Sarah
If I'm by myself, I could have like six orgasms in like five minutes flat.

Yumi
I want you to meet Sarah.

Sarah
And with a partner. Also, I could have like, you know, I could have like three or four orgasms in only a couple of minutes. I could count to 10 from ending one orgasm and another one would start on and that would go up to like the fourth orgasm and then I'd be like, and then after that, they take a little bit longer.

Yumi
If you could, how often would you be having sex with your boyfriend? Once or twice a day. How often do you have sex now?

Sarah
Once a week or twice a week if I'm lucky.

Yumi
So what kind of impact does it have on you that your boyfriend doesn't want to have sex as often as you do?

Sarah
Um, it's really shitty on my self-esteem. That is mainly due to a couple of ideas, stories going around in my head. The kind of the stereotype that all men want it all the time. And so then I look at my boyfriend and I think, well, why doesn't he want it all the time? Is there something wrong with him or is there something wrong with me?

Yumi
Sure. Do you sort of top it up with masturbation?

Sarah
Yes, absolutely. I, when I can and when I'm in the mood, I'll masturbate every day just to get stress out, um, to go to sleep. Sometimes to wake up if I'm extremely stressed out about a big day ahead of me.

Yumi
Are you able to talk to your partner about this stuff?

Sarah
I tend to be the one that needs to walk on eggshells or initiate any of these conversations. And they're really difficult for him to talk to me about. And I can only assume that that's because it makes him feel like he's not man enough or he's not able to satisfy me. As much as he should be able to or as much as other men might be able to.

Yumi
So how do the conversations go? What kinds of things do you try?

Sarah
I've actually tried everything. Literally tried everything. I've tried the, you know, I was listening to this podcast, Ladies, We Need to Talk. And they were talking about some things that sounded really exciting that I'd want to try. Do you have a little bit to talk about it later? And he would almost always show little to no interest, even in the conversation. Like he'd want to put the conversation off.

Emily
It's often easier for people to have sex with someone than it is to talk about sex with that same someone.

Yumi
This is our resident sex educator Emily Nagoski again. While Sarah struggles to engage her partner in conversations about sex, Emily comes back to that absolute truth nugget, which is that communication is always key.

Emily
But wow, would it be great if they could have a conversation about like, if she can say what I want when I want sex with you is shared erotic pleasure, which is this really powerful way for me to feel connected with you in a way that nothing else can provide. And he can say when I want sex with you, I want something similar. And when I don't want sex with you, it's because I feel pressured to perform. I feel obligated. I feel like there's a demand for me to be a man. And then I feel judgmental of myself because you wanting sex more than I do activates all kinds of masculinity nonsense in my brain.

Yumi
Oh, it's so hard for people to be so frank. Emily comes back to this idea that she's written about so beautifully, that with sex, it's not actually about quantity so much as it's about quality.

Emily
Reframe the whole process from being, I want you to want me more and I want us to have more sex to being, what kind of sex is worth the time and energy that it takes? What kind of sex is really pleasurable that we can share a joyful, erotic, sexy, pleasurable experience together?

Yumi
Sarah has really tried to get to a point with her partner where their sexual needs are aligned. But after years of frustration, she's starting to look for the exit.

Sarah
It is a thing I'm thinking about of one day having a new partner or perhaps one day ending this relationship if I'm not able to get the pleasure that I want. And to be able to also respect his capacity for pleasure too, because neither of us are getting what we want.

Yumi
What is your dream sex life? What would that look like for you if you could completely write the script of what your sex life was like?

Sarah
My dream sex life would be in a monogamous relationship with intimacy and emotional connection first. And I would really enjoy to have sex every day or to at least be doing sexual, physical activities together every day.

Yumi
Even though she's not feasting from the smorgasbord as often as she'd like, Sarah still sees the upside of her horniness.

Sarah
My capacity for pleasure, it kind of makes me feel starved sometimes. Like I just want to be touched so badly or I just want to be romanced or fucked or whatever. And that can make me sad because I'm like, I want this more than someone wants to give it to me, which makes me sad. But at the same time, I have to zero in on the superpower. At the same time, on the other side, I realise that I really love my capacity for pleasure. Like I have a huge capacity to give pleasure and I have a huge capacity to receive pleasure and I actually wouldn't trade that for the world.

Yumi
I want to introduce you to Jade's partner, Sian. You know, the one who asked Jade on the first night they slept together how many orgasms she could have and then had to try and top it? Yeah, that one. So Sian has always had a really healthy sexual appetite and had never met anyone who could keep up with her until Jade.

Sian
And I remember the next morning, I think we've probably had sex for about seven or eight hours by this point and thinking, maybe I've met my match.

Yumi
So Jade and Sian, welcome to being here together. So how long have you two been together now? Four years. Four years. Congratulations. Thank you. Now, I did really enjoy hearing about how hot your sex was in the first year. It really made me happy, made me a little bit envious, also made my pussy sore.

Jade
Look, there definitely were moments where we were a bit sore.

Sian
No, I think we have to have a night off tonight.

Yumi
I can't believe I just said that. I'm so sorry. That was definitely overstepping.

Sian
It's definitely a problem.

Yumi
But tell me, how often are you having sex these days?

Sian
Still most days, I would say.

Jade
Yeah, and some nights multiple times.

Yumi
Jade, is there a feeling for you that you're making up for lost time?

Jade
Yeah, absolutely.

Sian
We have a bit of a joke about in the last four years, Jade's probably had more orgasms than in the 20 years before that. Definitely.

Yumi
It's really wonderful that two people with high sex drives have found each other. It really is. Sian, you mentioned in your email that for a time you and Jade were having sex seven times a day. Now, just spell it out for us, because how is that logistically possible to do sex seven times a day whilst also having kids and jobs?

Sian
Sometimes that would be in the period from getting home from work. So before dinner, there's a gap, we can set a timer. We've got it down to 20 minutes if we need to. And that's like nobody has any orgasms left in 20 minutes, like everyone's done, which is a pretty good effort, I reckon. Do you really set a timer? If we have to do school pick up or something.

Yumi
Yep. I'm just picturing someone eating spaghetti with their hands really quickly, like just sort of voracious and messy.

Sian
Yep. Well, yeah, if you know, you know. You can have an orgasm in the first couple of minutes if you kind of time it right.

Yumi
And can I just ask, you've set your timer and it's 20 minutes and then you've got to hop in the car and do school pick up. Wash your hands. How many orgasms are you squeezing into this 20 minutes?

Sian
Six or seven. That's a lot. That's each, I mean.

Yumi
Your poor neighbours. They're not that close. Question for both of you. What do you love about your sex life together?

Sian
I feel a little bit like it's a gift from God. Not that I'm religious, but finding someone who is equally matched. I guess I had settled on the idea that that was not likely to happen. So this feels like a bit of a revelation really.

Jade
I think for me it's nice that it's something that we just quite comfortably can talk about together. So if there's any moments where either one of us is a bit unsure, we just talk about it. It's something that Sian has been really comfortable doing, so it's made me comfortable to do. I clearly have a very high sex drive. I don't think it's a typical sex drive. I think we're just both quite evenly matched, which is fortunate. I would be really disappointed if I was with someone who didn't have a sex drive like mine.

Yumi
Like Jade and Sian, Veronica, the lady who got horny over clouds and the kitchen bench, she has met her match too. She and her partner are a few years in and are having a great time exploring their sexual boundaries with not a single broken banjo string. And while it all sounds very tiring to me and their piles of laundry must be genuinely nightmarish, I'm happy for them recording this alone in my immaculate cotton sheets lined sound booth. Solo. I guess no matter how much or how little sex you want, the thing to keep at the top of mind is communication. Because the smorgasbord may be loaded with options, but you should only be picking up the bits that you really, really want and not just any old crap. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gundungurra and Gadigal peoples. Ladies We Need To Talk is mixed by Anne-Marie de Bettencourt. It's produced by Hannah Achilles. Supervising producer is Tamar Cranswick and our executive producer is Alex Lollback. This series was created by Claudine Ryan. If you want to hear more stories of ladies winning at their sex lives, check out our episode called Next Level Sex.

Mel
I couldn't get my clothes off fast enough. I was like, I am down for this. This is not what I thought sex was. And all of a sudden I'm on the phone to my girlfriends being like, I get it now. This is what you've been doing for all these years. I thought we were all doing the other thing and I thought you were all silly. Just had no idea.

Yumi
Next Level Sex. Scroll back in your feed and you'll see it there.