if men know nothing about the female experience, what makes them good in bed?

the mystery of the miracle men

photo of me, by jacqueline whitty

🎧 Prefer to listen? An audio version of this piece is available below — read by me.

“How you pick me up, pull 'em down, turn me 'round—oh, it just makes sense,” sings Sabrina Carpenter in Bed Chem, her sugar-slick bop on undeniable sexual chemistry with Barry Keoghan, supposedly—though it doesn’t really matter who. The point is, we’ve all met a Barry.

I’ve met a few. The kind you catch eyes with across a crowded room, and something in your stomach shifts. It might be tonight, in a few months, or years down the line—but you know. There will be a moment, a connection, a kiss... it’s less of a decision and more of a chemical inevitability.

It’s hard to capture that moment of knowing, because it feels more like a chemical reaction in your body. It’s something we’ve come to know as ‘chemistry’, a highly sought after chemical response moonlighting as a one-way ticket to true love. A heady cocktail of dopamine and other chemicals—the same exact chemicals responsible for obsession. It’s rare and often fleeting in a way that feels urgent and entirely beyond reason.

So we chase it after, of course. Cry over it. Hang our self-worth on it. Grab hold of it and never let it go.

But while chemistry rarely morphs into lasting love, it’s usually right about one thing: good sex.

Yep. Those “we’re gonna fuck” eyes? They indicate some kind of cosmic physical match. Like when you finally find the right adaptor for a vintage appliance—and it hums to life. That click. Like you’re meant for each other, no doubt about it.

It’s happened to me too many times to pretend otherwise. Men I’d only just met who knew their way around my body as if they had a secret set of coordinates they’d spent years studying in preparation for that very moment. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that perhaps we’d been lovers in a previous life. It’s unnerving. Uncomfortably electric.

I met my first man like that at nineteen. He looked into my eyes and said hello, and I was ruined. I’d never believed in that kind of thing until it happened to me. Not in real life. I thought chemistry was a gimmick invented by writers to make up for the monotony of dating in real life. That it was a literary device designed to keep us hopeful.

But he proved me wrong.

First, he looked into my eyes. Then, he held my hand under the moonlight in secret. And later, he undressed me on my friend’s living room floor. He was the first person I slept with and the first person (except for myself) that made me cum—and it made me feel alive. Where other moments of intimacy had left me hyper-aware of my body and its flaws, with him it just made sense.

He knew his way around my body like he’d done it millions of times before. It felt surreal, like a moment of prolonged déjà vu. It lasted the length of our year-long relationship, right up until the morning he walked out of my house for the last time. I cried for days, mourning the loss of our precious chemistry and wondering if I’d ever find it again.

I did. Many times over. But recently, as I sat at my desk—older, less naive, still susceptible to the sting of a good pop song—I started wondering: where does that physical chemistry actually come from?

How do men, who know nothing of the female experience, know their way around our bodies? Sometimes so successfully, that our bodies submit and vibrate with pleasure?

Because here’s the thing. Most of the men I’ve had undeniable chemistry with didn’t understand me. Not really. Not emotionally. And definitely not physically in any educated sense of the word.

So how do they do it? How can men—who often know so little about female pleasure, who’ve rarely been encouraged to consider the female experience as anything more than an accessory to their own—still manage to light up our nervous systems like switchboards?

Maybe it’s biology. Maybe it’s written in the stars. Maybe it’s just guessing in the dark and getting lucky. But I’ve been thinking about how little men are taught about women. And how loudly that ignorance echoes in their words.

When I write about my pubic hair, they tell me not to “blame the patriarchy”—then demand I get a landing strip. When I write about period sex, they say “no thanks.” When I write about shame, they say “biological determinism.” When I write about male anger, they say “women lie more.” It’s as if the female experience is only valid to them if it fits in with something they understand.

point in case

I’m almost 30 now and I’ve spent most of my twenties writing about sex. Still, their lack of genuine understanding of our desire, shame and experiences surprises me.

But maybe it’s not their fault. They weren’t taught to understand us. There’s no curriculum for female complexity. They don’t learn about the clitoris, let alone that arousal for women is often rooted in emotional intimacy. That foreplay begins with the way you’re spoken to, not the way you’re touched. That sometimes, we’re not fantasising about being owned—we’re fantasising about being understood.

We romance ourselves when you won’t. We imagine a future to feel aroused in the present. Didn’t you know that our minds need a compelling story, to turn us on?

And yet—sometimes, without knowing any of this, a man will find you in the dark corner of a dimly lit bar, martini and sweet-nothings aplenty and light you up like he’s reading from your internal manual. It feels magical. And maybe that’s why we romanticise it—because it means we don’t have to explain ourselves. Because, finally, in a world of romantic chaos and misread signals and let-downs, two unfamiliar bodies can meet and move as though they’re meant to be.

I’d like to believe that the men who really know our bodies are the ones who’ve built that knowledge from a genuine curiosity about our experience—a desire that extends into our pleasure. They might not always say it out loud, but they want to know how to reach up inside of us and make us feel something meaningful. They’ve noticed that for a woman to let go in sex—to feel free, open, vulnerable, ripe for orgasm—she has to feel safe. Surely, that knowledge only comes with curiosity?

My boyfriend often reminds me that men are mystified by women. To them we’re magical, unknowable creatures—soft, sexual, powerful—and they’re both in awe of us and a little bit afraid. They want to understand. But the problem is, most of them never ask.

One of the biggest gendered issues in sex is the orgasm gap. Men orgasm far more often than women during heterosexual sex and the research backs it up. It’s 95% of men versus just 65% of women.

And it’s not this dire because women are harder to please. It’s because sex is still scripted around male pleasure. Hetero sex still centres penetration (boring)—even though most women need clitoral stimulation to actually cum. And the clit? It wasn’t even fully mapped until 2005. Add to that a lifetime of conditioning where women are taught to prioritise keeping a man over exploring and expressing their own desire. It’s not that we’re too complex—it’s that no one ever taught men how, or what, to pay attention to. And no one taught women how to talk about it without shame.

But I think the men who do want to understand, they’re probably the ones who are good in bed. Maybe that curiosity is what emotional maturity looks like. Men who know themselves. Men who can navigate their inner world without letting it spill out in ways that hurt others (rare, but not extinct). Maybe they’re the ones who make us cum.

There’s maturity in the way they touch—not with the urgency of a porn script, but like they’re fingertips are listening. And maybe they are. Research shows that touch activates the brain’s insular cortex—the area involved in empathy and emotional regulation—which suggests that the most intuitive lovers may literally be wired for attunement. It’s not about skill; it’s about an eagerness to be present.

A 2022 study found that those with higher emotional intelligence report more satisfying sexual experiences—not because they’re more experienced, but because they’re better at reading cues. Maybe, on some level, there’s a kind of bodily empathy at play here. A biological knowing that goes beyond learned behaviour. Maybe we’re capable of understanding each other in ways that bypass language altogether.

That said, I don’t think you have to be an emotionally mature empath to know how to touch someone. If that was the case, it wouldn’t explain all the times I’ve orgasmed at the hands of men who weren’t good for me.

There was the man who was my boss—who lured me into toxic, crushing love-bombing territory with eyes that said he knew me, and hands that proved it.
The man who played with my emotions for his own sexual gratification but unfortunately gave the best oral sex of my life.
The man who wrote poetry for me on Monday, ignored me by Wednesday, made pasta almost as good as my nonna’s on Friday, and made my body tingle like it knew something I didn’t for dessert.

These men didn’t care about my experience. But we did have chemistry.

And maybe, after all this, chemistry isn’t just about wanting to fuck someone. Maybe it’s something deeper. Something overtly human. Something we can’t control and may never fully understand.

Because sometimes, it feels like our bodies just know. Like there’s something underneath experience or technique—a biological pull that transcends social scripts. Evolutionarily, we’re wired for connection. Our survival once depended on it. Long before gender roles or dating apps, we read each other through scent, breath, eye contact, proximity. Micro-signals that alerted us to safety and danger.

I think we spend a lot of time looking for someone—and some-thing—perfect. For flying sparks, immediate chemistry. For someone who sees us, hears us, makes us feel understood and wanted, who can empathise with our experience but still be their own whole person. I think I’ve spent a lot of time trying to build a mutual understanding in a world that’s raised us on such different versions of reality, depending on who we are.

But maybe chemistry doesn’t come from understanding. Maybe we don’t need to get each other’s inner worlds, to get each other off. Maybe it’s about someone showing you something new—touching you in a way you’ve never been touched before, saying something that shifts something inside you, and suddenly you can’t believe you’ve gone your whole life without knowing it. Like when you hear a song with lyrics that speak to a feeling you’ve never been able to put words to, or when a piece of writing says something so true it feels like it was written by a version of you in another life.

Maybe chemistry isn’t about finally finding someone who knows your experience. Because who really knows that, but you? Maybe it’s about finding parts of yourself in someone wildly different. Maybe it’s not this mystical, elusive thing—maybe it’s just humanity. Maybe it’s two people recognising something familiar in each other and, for a moment, not feeling so alone.

I think what I’m trying to say is… our lovers don’t need to fully understand our story. They don’t need to know what it’s like to live inside the body of a woman who has weaponised her sexuality to keep her safe. They don’t need to feel the sexual shame of womanhood to love us in a way that makes us feel seen.

They don’t need to know the context or to understand every wound. Sometimes, they just need to be there, present and attentive. You don’t need to question why a man you never imagined yourself with is suddenly breathing new life into your body with the simple drag of his fingertip along your side. If your body is telling you to open up—to trust—maybe that’s reason enough.

Maybe chemistry is there to teach us something. A perspective. A reminder. A part of ourselves we haven’t met yet. Maybe they have no idea what they’re offering, or why they’re there with you, feeling a sense of togetherness that hasn’t been taught. Maybe there’s no explanation for any of it. But I think our bodies know when we need each other—and I don’t think any of us are immune to that.

Hey, quick side note. I’d love for you to follow me on Instagram. I share all of my other work on there, including my fortnightly sex column. Come and connect. My DMs are always open.