Last week, I answered the most burning questions men have about women and sex.

This week, we get to be the inquisitors.

Here, straight from the horse’s mouth (and the latest, most reputable research) are the things women want honest answers to.

Let’s start with the most requested answer of all…

One study has suggested that men actually enjoy foreplay more than women. British relationship expert Tracey Cox , reveals how men really feel about sex (stock image) 

1. Do you enjoy foreplay?

Hmmm – this one’s a little hazy. It’s one of those questions where the research and reality seem worlds apart.

Lots of women continually complain that they don’t enjoy sex fully because their male partners rush through foreplay (the bit they enjoy) to get to intercourse (the bit men enjoy).

Research tells a different story.

One study suggested men enjoy foreplay more than women with one third of the male participants wanting it to last longer than 30 minutes. A tenth of the men surveyed said they’d happily linger there for an hour or more.

A Canadian study found women would like an average of 19 minutes of foreplay while men wanted 18. Another found men who engaged in extended foreplay experienced fewer sex problems.

Some of the men I spoke to claimed women think men hate foreplay but that’s not actually the case. The issue is that it tends to be all one-sided. 

'What foreplay usually means is us doing stuff to her,' one man said. 'If both of you make an effort and it switches back and forth, foreplay is just as enjoyable as intercourse.'

2. Is it true that you’re so obsessed with sex, you think about it every seven seconds?

It’s an amusing sex myth but no. Seriously, how would men get anything done if they were having 57,000 sex thoughts a day.

There has never been any research to back this up.

Some think it stems from an often-cited Kinsey Institute study which asked men and women how often they thought about sex a day. 

Fifty four per cent of men said every day or several times a day, 43 per cent said a few times per week or just a few times a month and four per cent said less than once a month. (Nineteen per cent of women ticked the every day or several times a day box, 67 percent a few times per week or month and 14 percent said less than once a month.)

How this got exaggerated into every seven seconds is anyone’s guess.

A more recent (and more accurate) statistic on this comes from Ohio University. Researchers gave a group of 18-25 year old students counters and asked them to click every time they had a sexual thought.

Tracey Cox has asked men to answer the 9 questions all women want to know about 

The average man clicked 19 times a day – around once every hour and a half. To put that into perspective, they also recorded how often they thought about food and that got 18 clicks a day.

Also bear in mind these were young college students with raging libidos and time on their hands. How much a married man with two kids and a demanding job thinks about sex is quite another story.

3. What’s the biggest sexual turn-off for men?

As with women, who answered the same question for last week’s column, there are plenty of contenders for this list.

The most popular answers include:

Going down on her and finding she smells. (Poor personal hygiene is always near the top of the list.)

Being lazy/expecting me to do all the work/acting like I should be so grateful to be allowed to sleep with her, that’s enough.

Acting like my penis is fragile – just grab it!

Being squeamish about semen.

Expecting me to be satisfied with the same old boring sex for years on end.

Getting upset if I dare to ask for something new.

Hiding her body.

Not reciprocating oral sex.

Making nasty comments about penis size.

Refusing to take her T-shirt off in bed.

Women who were body confident, playful, experimental and non-judgemental topped the biggest turn-ons list.

4. Must we ‘deep-throat’ for it to be good oral sex?

Absolutely not. But he’ll get a nice psychological kick if you try.

Almost all the nerve endings for the penis are in the glans (the head) and the frenulum (the stringy piece of skin on the underside of the penis where the shaft meets the head).

5. How do you really feel about the way a vagina looks? 

A lot of women feel pressure to look a certain way – the way vaginas look in porn since it’s often our only reference.

We want to look pink rather than purplish and have ‘lips’ that match, with the inner lips neatly tucked inside the outer.

But vaginas come in all shapes, sizes and colour variations and – having seen a few up close and personal during oral sex – men can vouch for that.

After researching and polling men of all ages and walks of life, I can report the following.

Do men judge your vagina like it’s in a beauty contest?

No.

Do they care if the lips of your vagina protrude or are crinkly rather than neat and uniform.

No.

A Reddit thread asking men if they cared what a women’s vagina looked like, echoed this man’s sentiment, over and over.

'Never once have I been less attracted to a woman because of the sight of her vagina.'

<!- - ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/us/femail/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 - ->Advertisement

The shaft is the least sensitive of all. So, deep-throating - taking his penis deep into your mouth – feels less intense than focusing on the head, not more.

There is no physiological reason why it feels good, it’s a gimmick.

Some men love it because it’s very common in porn (so men are used to seeing it) and it makes you appear utterly uninhibited and very experienced if you do it. It also appeals to men who are turned on by making women submissive: if she’s prepared to do something that makes her gag, she must really be into me. (Yep, let’s not think too much about this one. Or this comment, ‘Seeing her willing to take it all the way in to please a man is a powerful feeling’.) 

There’s also the perception, of course, that if she gags, he must have a really big penis.

Most men don’t expect it or ask for it. But if you wanted to give it a try, they certainly aren’t going to say no.

The most common position, if you did want to try, is to lie with your head hanging off the edge of the bed, with him either standing or kneeling by the side of it. Use your hands against his hips to control the depth.

I reiterate again, though: it really isn’t necessary, very few women do it and you can easily give an outstanding, knee-trembling BJ without it.

6. How much control do you have over your erections?

In some instances, not much.

A lot can depend on how closely packed his nerve endings are. Men with smaller penises are highly sensitive because the nerve endings are more concentrated - the slightest stimulation might cause him to become erect.

Nearly all men, particularly young men, experience nocturnal penile tumescence (you’ll know it as ‘morning wood’). Waking up with an erection is usual and a sign of a healthy blood and nerve supply to the penis rather than the result of an erotic dream about your best friend. 

(It also means, if he’s experiencing any problems getting an erection with a partner, the issue is almost certainly psychological not physical).

There is evidence that erections can also be a case of mind over matter. One influential study suggests men who can control their erections are also able to control other emotions.

7. Do different vaginas feel drastically different? 

A unanimous yes to this one!

Here’s a sample of the most universal comments:

Some vaginas feel wetter, others warmer.

Some women feel deeper, some tighter. Every girl I’ve slept with feels different.

Some are impossible to penetrate, others you slip in easily.

Lots of men said they’re able to feel more difference using their fingers than with a penis. Any woman who’s had a man think they’ve penetrated when his penis is nestled between their thighs knows this is the case.

Body type did appear to play a role in how her vagina feels – thinner women reportedly had less fleshy vaginas, for instance. (Anecdotal evidence: there’s no research to back this up.)

Despite most men saying some vaginas did feel very different than others, most also agreed their partner’s lubrication and grip could alter dramatically in the same sex session.

Asked if they’d know if it was their partner’s vagina when blindfolded, most admitted the answer is no.

<!- - ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/us/femail/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_2 - ->Advertisement

There are things men can do to stop an erection happening: distraction, changing position (the way he’s sitting could be stimulating his penis) and taking a cold shower.

Though the sensible solution is probably to accept it is what it is, conceal it as best as possible and wait for it to disappear.

The average man has eleven erections a day and between three and five during the night. 

Many are the result of friction – things inadvertently rubbing against it - and unrelated to sex or arousal.

8. Pubic hair: all off or ungroomed?

Preference for styling of pubic hair is highly personal and very much depends on age. 

About half of all young women in the US and UK remove all their pubic hair; about half of all young men shave their testicles and trim their pubes.

Younger men mainly expect women to be hair-free and it’s what they’re used to seeing on porn.

Older men are more divided in their views. Lots don’t like all the hair removed because it reminds them of a prepubescent girl. 

While letting it all go wild and  completely untouched does appeal to a certain type of man ('Hair traps the smell and I love the way she smells'), the over-whelming consensus was this...

So long as it’s trimmed and tidy, most men don’t really care.

9. Can you tell if we’re faking it?

Men consistently overestimate how much they can tell if a woman is faking – nearly always thinking we’ve had a real orgasm when we haven’t.

Interesting when only 25 per cent of women say they’ve never faked one!

Are we such great actors he really can’t tell? I’m sure it’s a factor. But the reality is there is no physical way to tell if a woman has had an orgasm.

Nearly all men ejaculate semen while having an orgasm. (I say ‘nearly’ because the process of ejaculation and orgasm are separate and it is possible to experience one without the other, so even that’s not definitive proof.)

There’s no female equivalent of this. Some women get a red rash on their chest when they orgasm and experience clitoral sensitivity but not all. 

Some men say they can feel the vaginal contractions that accompany orgasm if they are inside them, but that’s only if they’re strong and noticeable (they often aren’t). 

A lot of women go very still when they’re just about to orgasm, but others

The men who adamantly claimed they could spot the lie, did agree they needed to know their partner well in order to know ‘for sure’.

'When she pushes me away from her, I know it’s real. She’s over sensitive afterwards.

'She over-acts and it all happens a little too fast when she’s faking. It’s usually also when she’s tired and stressed and says yes to sex just to please me.'

When I suggested to the men I spoke to that they might be over-estimating their ability to know for sure, the answer was universally, ‘Oh but I do know. Even if you don’t believe me.'

• Check out Tracey’s product ranges – Tracey Cox Supersex and Edge – at lovehoney.co.uk. You’ll find details of her weekly podcast, SexTok with Tracey and Kelsey, her blog and books at traceycox.com. 

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3IpbCmmZmhe6S7ja6iaJ6Voq6quI6aqa2hk6Gybn2QcWdsamNmfJW%2BwJycsmVzpMVurdKkqmallaN6tbHNZqqesF2mwqa%2F06Kmp6tdrLyusc1mrpqmpGKVkJqkjItmmZ6oxKa%2B0marqGaYqbqt