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 women’s use of orgasm techniques during sex.

“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)

Although manual or oral stimulation of the clitoris are more likely to lead to female orgasm, women often prefer ‘love-making’. Intercourse allows a woman to assist with the much easier task of facilitating male orgasm rather than aiming for her own.

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.

Information about female sexuality 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 to compare notes on female sexuality. A Member Forum (for sharing ideas on women’s sexual arousal) is available to members who can also comment on 120 stories. The discussion covers:

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

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. Ways Women Orgasm is a family-friendly site sensitive to parents’ concerns. There can be no harm in presenting sex to young people as a positive aspect of adult loving relationships.

Women need information to make the most of their sexual experiences but equally men need to be encouraged to invest in pleasuring their partner rather than seeing sex purely as an opportunity to enjoy their own orgasm. Any couple interested in sharing emotional and physical intimacy together over many years needs to know the 10 facts of female sexuality.