Mutual masturbation is key to a happy sex life, experts claim

The secret to a happy sex life? Mutual masturbation.

UK researchers claimed the old-fashioned view that people masturbate due to dissatisfaction with their partners needs a rethink.

The study found mutual masturbation could be the key to high ‘sexual satisfaction’ for both men and women. 

Mutual masturbation is when two people simulate each other’s genitals at the same time for sexual pleasure.

The University of Southampton researchers surveyed 117 women and 151 men – aged 18 to 65 – who all had a sexual partner. 

More than 50 per cent (136) said they had performed mutual masturbation within the previous two weeks.

The percentage of participants when they last engaged in mutual masturbation with their partner

Women who did not engage in the sexual act in those two weeks reported being less satisfied than men in bed (stock image)

They found people who engaged in the raunchy act tended to be more satisfied between the sheets than those who hadn’t masturbated with their partner for more than a fortnight.

Publishing their results in the International Journal of Sexual Health, the researchers also found women who didn’t engage in the sexual act in those two weeks reported being less satisfied in bed than men.

Participants rated how sexually satisfied they were by scoring different questions about their emotions towards the act out of five. 

The highest possible score for positive emotions related to sexual satisfaction was 60 – the average for all participants was 45.45.

Those who mutually masturbated were ‘significantly’ more likely to score higher on this scale.

Psychology expert and lead researcher, Dilan Kılıç, said: ‘The current findings suggest that mutual masturbation is common among couples and many people report positive feelings about the behaviour.

‘Engaging in mutual masturbation might increase couples’ sexual repertoire and enhance sexual satisfaction.’

Researchers say these findings can help debunk myths about self-pleasure in relationships and help people understand their own and their partner’s sexual pleasure. 

However, they added the results could also just indicate that people who are more sexually satisfied in life are more likely to engage in mutual masturbation.

‘The causal direction of the associations cannot be determined and as such, the experience of mutual masturbation may increase sexual satisfaction or people who are sexually satisfied might be more likely to engage in mutual masturbation, or both,’ they wrote. 

Authors also highlighted that  participants were not very diverse, meaning the results may not be the same in other groups.

They explained that the sample consisted mainly of white, highly educated, and predominantly young individuals who reported low attendance at religious services. 

Participants were also asked to rate different 23 emotions rating how they felt about mutual masturbation on a five-point scale from ‘not at all’ (one point) to ‘very strongly’ (five points).

There were a total of eight happy emotions, meaning the positive subscale ranged from 0 to 40.

And there were 15 unhappy emotions, meaning the negative subscale ranged from 0 to 75.

Higher scores indicate greater intensity of feelings.

When asked how they felt about mutual masturbation, an overwhelming number of people said they had positive feelings about the raunchy act.

Positive emotions towards the sex act had a mean score of 29.58 out of 40.

This is very high compared to the negative emotion scale, which scored just 24.41 out of 75 points.

Miss Kilıç said: ‘In general, negative emotions were not endorsed by many people. Only 12 participants reported that they felt ‘very strongly’ that mutual masturbation was ‘strange’ and only nine reported that they felt very ‘tense’ about it. Other negative emotions were even less endorsed.

‘There was no statistically significant difference between men and women in negative feelings about mutual masturbation.’

When participants were asked about solo masturbation, both men and women didn’t have any strong feelings and claimed to be neither overwhelmingly happy or unsatisfied.

The researchers claimed that their findings will have implications for sex and couple therapy research because it will challenge the traditional expectation that ‘masturbation happens alone’.