Standing in the street outside a sex clinic on London’s Harley Street, I paused a moment to consider: “What on earth am I doing here?”

Well, quite simply I wanted to know why, despite being able to enjoy orgasm through masturbation since adolescence, I had never felt anything like the same sexual arousal during sex with a lover.

For many women, orgasm is never an issue. Sex fulfils all their expectations for a sexual and emotional act with a man they love.

Not all women have this experience. I for one, was bitterly disappointed when sex did not deliver the easy arousal portrayed in erotic fiction.

I also could not believe that I was the only woman on the planet to have noticed that sex was so much more spontaneously rewarding for men.

At first I honestly thought there must be something wrong with me. Much later I came to realise that the facts and explanations that would have helped me are not generally promoted because of widespread mis-understanding about the role of the clitoris in achieving female orgasm.

“Most women do not orgasm as a result of intercourse per se. The overwhelming majority of women require specific clitoral contact for orgasm.” (p29 The Hite Reports 1993)

Most women define sex purely in terms of ‘love-making’. Although manual or oral stimulation of the clitoris are both more likely to lead to female orgasm, intercourse (which focuses on male orgasm) is often more acceptable because it leads to family.

This is Nature’s design, which explains why, although it is very NORMAL for a woman to masturbate, it is also quite UNUSUAL. Relatively few women explore their own sexual arousal either alone or through genitally-focused sex play with a partner.

Sadly, female orgasm is not required for reproduction and so women do not approach sex fully aroused (just short of an orgasm). A woman’s challenge during sex is to achieve sufficient mental arousal for clitoral stimulation to lead to orgasm.

Sex information for women and their partners

Jane Thomas, author of Ways Women Orgasm, is unique as a modern sex writer because she talks openly about her own personal experiences, both of masturbation and sex with a partner. Having struggled to obtain any logical answers from the experts, Jane has established this site to provide other women with the kind of open discussion that would have helped her.

“As Ann Koedt put it, in ‘The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm’: ‘Perhaps one of the most infuriating and damaging results of the whole charade has been that women who were perfectly healthy sexually were taught that they were not.’” (p46 The Hite Reports 1993)

Ways Women Orgasm is a forum for women of all ages, who want to compare notes on how to orgasm with a partner:

• Female sexuality: a better understanding of women’s true sexual arousal.
• Orgasm during sex: a fresh approach to understanding the techniques women use to reach orgasm.
• Investing in your sex life: suggestions for couples on keeping sex alive especially over the longer-term.

Ways Women Orgasm is set up as a blog so that you can comment on the discussion pages (stories). There is a Member Forum available (for sharing ideas on making sex even better) once you have registered with WWO.

Jane has also been married for over twenty years so she knows the challenges of aspiring to the kind of sexual relationship that includes sensual pleasuring as part of a wider loving relationship. She believes that information is vital if young women are to get the most out of their sexual relationships. These are the 10 facts of female sexuality that every sexual woman should know.