Guest Post: “Why is reaching Orgasm so easy for a man and so hard for a woman?”

Ladies, I would like to share this post from the Blog, To Love Honor and Vacuum. This is a great blog for you ladies and one that I enjoy reading.  So take some time to read and understand the “Whys” and the “What Abouts” in our marriages as it pertains to sex with our husbands.  -Kerry

When I was writing The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, I surveyed 2000 women. And I found that about 64% of women usually or always reached orgasm during intercourse. But that leaves 36% of women who rarely or never, or only sometimes do. If I limit the pool to just those who have been married for 5 years or less, 41% of women have difficulty.

I’m pretty sure the number of men who have difficulty reaching orgasm is about 10 times less.

And if you’re a woman who has ever laid in bed thinking desperately, “will this be the night?”, you know how frustrating it is.

Then sex becomes this pass/fail thing: if you don’t climax, you didn’t do it right. And you feel like the failure, because he ALWAYS has fun. (If your husband does have performance issues, though, I do have a series on that). He’s disappointed, you’re disappointed, and sex seems like so much work! In the media everyone seems to love sex, but you figure they’re pretending. Or they’re deluded. Or you’re just broken.

You’re not. You’re really not! There totally is hope.
I’ve talked before on the blog about how to reach orgasm, and I have tons of tips in The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex and in 31 Days to Great Sex. I’ll summarize really, really quickly, but my top 5 points would be:

1. Use lots of foreplay

Before you even start intercourse, touch each other a lot. Get yourself really excited, even if that means that you take control by rubbing against him.

2. Use lubrication

It can be much easier to get aroused if you’re well-lubricated! Coconut oil or Astroglide work well.

3. Bring him to orgasm earlier in the day

Just so that he’s able to last longer, and it can be more about you!

4. Breathe and think of it like surfing

You want to ride the wave, not get in front of the wave. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense if you rarely orgasm, but the more worked up you get about it, the less likely it is to happen. If you can focus on feeling pleasure and letting your body almost sink into the pleasure, then it’s more likely you’ll ride it to the top!

5. Remember angle matters

Most arousal in women is caused by clitoral stimulation, not vaginal stimulation. So change the angle so that you are getting stimulated at the right spot. Lying flat on your back (or with a pillow under your head) in the missionary position is often the WORST position for this type of stimulation. Engaging your muscles to tilt your hips up, or using a different position, is often better.

Okay, there’s more in the books, but that’s just a few pointers. The bigger issue I want to deal with today, though, is why do we even need posts like this? Why is it so tricky for women? What on earth could possibly be the purpose of us being made in this way? Is our difficulty in climaxing a result of the fall or something?

Nope. I actually think God had a purpose when He created us like this. And here it is:

1. Satisfying Sex Requires Communication

For us to reach climax, we need to be touched in a very particular way. We need to be touched in a very specific spot. We need that touch gentle at first and then more pressing and urgent.

And so we need to communicate that to our husbands.

That’s hard. Telling him what we want requires first of all that we actually know what we want, and many women don’t. We get married with very little knowledge of what feels good or how our bodies work (that’s true whether we’re virgins or not; most sexual encounters when you’re young are not sexually satisfying, and that can solidify some ignorance about how to feel good).

So we have to learn about ourselves, and then we have to tell him. That’s right: we have to tell him something that nobody else knows about us. We have to open up and pull back the curtain and show him the most primitive part of ourselves; the part we try to hide. And that’s why:

2. Communication Requires Vulnerability

To tell him what we want means that we are willing to let down our defenses and get real with our husbands. It means that we share the most private parts of ourselves, and we allow ourselves to even acknowledge those parts. We can’t pretend to be in control all the time. We can’t be prim and proper. We have to empty ourselves, bare ourselves, and let go.

And that’s why:

3. Vulnerability Requires Trust

In order to be that bare with someone we need to trust them–trust them that they love us, that they will keep this private, that they actually care and want to see inside of us.

This trust is often built over time, and that’s one reason, I think, that women tend to have more fun in the bedroom the longer they’ve been married. We’ve learned to trust, which means we can be vulnerable, which means that we can fully communicate now. We’re not ashamed and embarrassed.

The Big Picture on Women, Orgasm, and Why God Made Us This Way

So let’s take a step back now and look at the big picture.

What if God made us so that we responded sexually as easily as men did? There would not be the same need to work on the relationship. We wouldn’t have this need to be vulnerable, to grow trust, to learn how to confront our own inner fears and insecurities and bring them to light for healing. Our relationships would be very shallow.

The way that we are made ensures that if two people are going to have an awesome sex life, they are going to have to grow other parts of their relationship, too. Communication. Vulnerability. Trust. That sounds like a great marriage to me!

Why Do Married Women Have More Fun?

And this is why my study, as well as many others, have shown that married women enjoy sex more. Our world sells anonymous encounters as the highest on the sexy totem pole. But when you can’t open up and be vulnerable, you’re missing one of the keys to great sexual response. Our response is tied into our ideas of intimacy. Without real intimacy, something will always be missing.

The Good News Moving Forward

So here’s the good news, ladies!

You all can reach orgasm. Really. It may be more difficult for some. It may take years (it did for me). It may take a lot of practice and a lot of trying. But anatomically, there is no reason to think that you can’t. Just grow your relationship, calm down and don’t get too uptight about it, and read books on how to make it more likely. And then make it a really fun research project you do with your husband!

And when you do get to the point that you’re achieving orgasm usually or always, here’s some more good news: women have more intense orgasms. We can have multiple ones, which can last for quite a long period of time–far longer than his. Inasmuch as researchers can figure this out, we may have more difficulty getting there, but once we’re there–we have the capacity for more!

So don’t despair. God doesn’t like men better. He just made us differently so that we would have a reason to grow our relationship. Communication. Vulnerability. Trust. Work on those things this Valentine’s Day, and you may find even more fireworks than you had planned!