That’s what teenage boys used to tell teenage girls they would get if the girls didn’t, you know, help them out. I recall much discussion with my friends about whether this condition actually existed or whether we were, you know, being sold a bogus testicle story.

Bettina Arndt’s new book, above, could well have been subtitled: “BLUE BALLS AND THE MEN WHO HAVE THEM” because it’s all about the sex discrepency between men and women, most notably, when he wants more than he’s getting.

I’ve written about this subject before, here, (where you’ll also find one of my favourite youtube clips of all time) and I think it’s one that deserves more thought and discussion than many women give it. Hearing Bettina speak about her research last year and reading NIgel Marsh’s book where he talks about the very real emotional implications of men who are “overworked and underlaid” as he wittily calls them, has certainly given me new insight into the sex gap that exists within so many couples. And it’s not just men who are frustrated. I know a couple of women who are wanting a whole lot more sexy times from their partners than they’re currently getting.

The first excerpt from Bettina’s new book was published in the Good Weekend on Saturday and there has been much discussion about the issue in all forms of media ever since.

Here’s what a report said today:

Forty years after liberated women felt able to say “no” to their partners’ demands for sex, they have been urged to say “yes” more often to keep their men happy.

Sex therapist and psychologist Bettina Arndt said different libidos were creating a generation of men who were “miserable, angry and really disappointed” that their need for sex was “being totally disregarded in their relationship”.

Arndt has written a book based on the diaries of 98 couples, who kept records of their sex lives for periods from six to 12 months. The Sex Diaries, an excerpt of which appears in Good Weekend today, revealed women dreading bedtime and men hurting from rejection.

A woman, 54, from Hobart spent the first 10 years of her marriage fighting about sex, always nervous about an unwanted advance. “He’d be snoring loudly and I’d still lie there worrying that the hand was going to come creeping over.”

On the other hand, a 43-year-old Townsville man wrote: “I just feel so lonely. We get on really well, we don’t fight or argue, but when it comes to intimacy, or sex, she doesn’t want to know.”

Arndt said while giving women the right to say “no” to sex was an undisputed success of the women’s movement, “the female libido tends to be a fragile, easily distracted thing that gets buffeted by normal life and a couple can’t afford to have their intimacy reliant on that fragility”.

“Mismatched desire is the burning issue, it’s what is filling the waiting rooms of sex therapists all over the world,” she said. “I have spent half my life hearing from sex-starved men and the women saying, ‘Oh, do I have to?”‘

Arndt was surprised at the openness of the men, who traditionally have been reluctant to discuss such matters.

“They don’t know what’s hit them,” Arndt said. “They listen to what women want, try to please them and … this need that is so important to them is totally ignored. Sex is just one area in relationships where men now are on the back foot.”

She said one man, a 66-year-old from Darwin, eventually gave up and told his wife: “I’ll make no advances or ask for sex until you ask me.” The result? “In the last eight years there has been no sex in our marriage at all,” he wrote.

Arndt said low-libido partners, which are mostly women, needed to put sex on the “to-do list”, even if they didn’t feel like doing it.

“The notion that women have to want sex to enjoy it has been a really misguided idea that has caused havoc in relationships over the last 40 years.”

With the right approach from a loving partner, if women were willing to be receptive “and allow themselves to relax … they would enjoy it”, she said.