If you can’t reach orgasm with your partner, you’re not alone. I spent close to 10 years being able to reach orgasm easily and reliably on my own but never having a single orgasm with a partner. I felt all of the things that most women feel when they struggle to reach orgasm during sex: I felt alone, broken, embarrassed, ashamed, frustrated, and hopeless. I truly believed that I would never be able to learn how to reach orgasm with a partner. I finally got to a point where I had become so invested in delivering Oscar-worthy performances that I had completely lost my ability to enjoy sex. I realized that I was going to have to stop role-playing fake orgasms if I wanted to start actually having real ones. It was tough, but I resolved to never fake another orgasm, and I stuck to that promise. One of the biggest steps I took personally was realizing that my orgasm is just as valuable and important as my partner’s. I tell myself that I’m a generous partner, and I deserve to have a partner who is equally generous. I’ve also gotten fired up about the “orgasm gap”—the term for how many more orgasms men have than women, on average. Whenever I feel discomfort about receiving, I remind myself that I deserve pleasure too, and that my pleasure is part of a broader revolution happening around female pleasure. I also took this one step further. I used to use only one very specific technique with myself. Whenever a partner would try to focus on me, I couldn’t help but compare what I did with what he did. I started exploring different techniques on my own and helping my body learn how to reach orgasm from a wide variety of stimulation. I also practiced taking my time and enjoying the experience of masturbation more, instead of approaching it like scratching an itch. The more time I spent exploring masturbation, the more comfortable I got with my sexuality, pleasure, and orgasm. Once my body had become more responsive to my own touch, I found that it was also much more sensitive to stimulation from another person. It was too hard for me to learn how to be more present during sex itself, so I started working on staying centered outside of the bedroom first. I realized that working on this skill separately made it a lot easier to learn. I now start every day with 10 to 20 minutes of mindfulness practice, usually a guided meditation on a mindfulness app. The more consistent I am with my practice, the easier I find it to be fully present during sex and soak up all of the sensation and enjoyment that I can. When you’re having intercourse, you’re mostly getting stimulation in your vagina, and the reality is that vaginas just do not have a lot of nerve endings. The vast majority of nerve endings are in the clitoris, which doesn’t typically get a lot of action during intercourse. From a nerve-ending standpoint, I like to say that intercourse for a woman is the equivalent of a man getting his testicles stroked. It can feel good, but for the vast majority of people, it’s just not going to be enough stimulation to lead to an orgasm. I now realize that my body needs different things (more on this in a minute) to reach orgasm, and that’s perfectly OK! I’ve learned how to reach orgasm during intercourse, just not from the in-and-out penetration itself. What I’ve now learned is that orgasm requires me to be active and take responsibility for my own pleasure. I literally and figuratively took my pleasure into my own hands. I explored my body and discovered specific techniques that felt good for me and taught them to my husband when we first started dating. I discovered that one of the most reliable and pleasurable ways for me to reach orgasm with my partner was to get the crucial clitoral stimulation that I need while we’re having intercourse, either by touching myself, having him touch me, or using a toy. I get to feel that closeness and intimacy that intercourse creates while making sure I get the stimulation my body needs to reach orgasm. I coined the term “selfish sex” to convey that I care as much about my own pleasure as I do about my partner’s. A lot of women think that “selfish” is a dirty word, but I think it’s healthy to want to shift the balance back to thinking about your own experience at least as much as you think about your partner’s. For me, selfish sex was all about putting an end to spectator-ing and evaluating my performance and starting to focus on my experience. After years of struggling, I’m thrilled to be able to have orgasms with my husband whenever I want them. But I can also say that taking ownership of my orgasm—and actually taking steps to make it happen—feels even more incredible. It has been one of the most transformational things I’ve ever done, and I know that any other woman out there is capable of the same kind of transformation.
