Dear Beth,
I can't orgasm through penetration alone, even after 8 months with my boyfriend that I love very much. This never bothered me before, but my boyfriend swears that he was able to teach his previous partners to do it so I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.
I enjoy sex a lot and get really turned on during it, but can’t climax unless he’s touching my clit at the same time. He was ok with that for a while, but lately he doesn’t do it unless I ask. The problem is, now I feel bad for asking because he thinks it’s because the sex isn’t good enough.
Do you think if I stop asking I’ll learn to come from sex alone?
Thanks,
Randy P.
Oh, Darling Randy…
Your poor boyfriend is caught up in the Hollywood/porn fantasy world where penises are all powerful!
He shouldn’t feel bad, though, the world is full of men who have grown up believing this. (Even brilliant ones like Freud bought into it completely.)
Sadly, many women have compounded the problem by faking an orgasm rather than risk being seen as “broken” or “frigid” because they, like you, couldn’t get off without clitoral stimulation. (While I obviously don’t know his exes, and I’m sure that he’s “certain” they weren’t faking, research shows that ~80% of women fake orgasm at least sometimes, and up to 25% of women fake it “most of the time”.)
Since over 75% of women require direct clitoral stimulation to orgasm, it’s highly likely that your guy was fooled by fakers.
(Btw, one theory is that close proximity between a woman's clit and vaginal opening is what allows her to orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. In other words, some women receive more clitoral stimulation than others during penetration and thus are more likely to orgasm.)
What all this means is, while it may be possible to find positions that cause his body to stimulate your clit more during penetration, and/or you might be able to train yourself to orgasm with less stimulation than your body naturally desires, I don’t suggest that your pleasure depend on either of those options.
In short, the idea that there is a “best” way to orgasm is factually incorrect.
The reality is, if you and your boyfriend value your pleasure as much as his, he’s going to have to give up the belief that you “should” orgasm in any certain way. Rather, you should both enjoy exploring as many different ways to pleasure each other as possible, and to enjoy orgasms in whatever ways feel good instead of basing your sexy life on urban myths.
Bottom line: Each of us, including you, deserve to enjoy pleasure according to our own uniquely personal emotional/physical desires. How you orgasm doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone else.
I hope this helps you and your guy will give up “orgasm discrimination” and that you’ll both be newly empowered to give and take whatever pleasure appeals to you in the future.
Big hugs and love,
Beth