Ways Women Orgasm

During adoles­cence, I read books that gave me both sexual know­ledge and an insight into erot­i­cism. So that even before I had sex for the first time, I had the impres­sion that sex would be sensa­tion­ally pleas­ur­able. Erotic fiction showed women enjoying the same sexual arousal and easy orgasm during sex as men.

I learnt about female masturb­a­tion from books. I never felt any compul­sion to masturbate so it was simply curi­osity that motiv­ated me. When I was seven­teen, I found that I could become aroused by imagining a sexy scen­ario (whilst lying in bed contem­plating sleep) and then I discovered orgasm by pushing my fingers against my vulva and down towards my clit­oris in a gentle massa­ging rhythm.

I met my first boyfriend in the South of France. David was a chef from Liver­pool and at twenty-two, four years older than me, he had plenty of sexual exper­i­ence. Sadly, losing my virginity was severely disap­pointing because abso­lutely nothing happened. When I remarked that I had felt very little (in fact a complete lack of arousal during sex) David replied that other virgins had said the same thing.

Pleasing my partner was easy and since none of it moved me in the least, I resigned myself to the fact that our sex life focused on his sexual arousal and orgasm. Back in the UK we lived together for two years. Unfor­tu­nately, we never talked about sex so whenever David pressed and I found it diffi­cult to say “no” I offered the minimum: basic­ally missionary style intercourse-to-male-orgasm every time.

Accepting a lack of orgasm during sex (only because I had to)

Six months after we split up, I met an Italian boy called Alfredo. At twenty-one, although I was resigned to a lack of orgasm during sex, I found the prospect of a sexual rela­tion­ship exciting. Alfredo was good with his hands and he succeeded in arousing me through clit­oral stim­u­la­tion. This fuelled the hope that I might one day learn how to orgasm during sex.

Later the same year, I met Peter and we fell in love. Despite my reluct­ance to become involved in a sexual rela­tion­ship, I accepted that sex accom­panies any intimate rela­tion­ship with a man. There was an almost inev­it­able cycle that once started would natur­ally end in sex. Simply being affec­tionate with a man was enough to lead him on (stim­u­late his need for orgasm).

As with my earlier sexual rela­tion­ships, I was open about the fact that sex failed to arouse me. Peter was keen to try but my body seemed to be inert to any stim­u­la­tion. I continued to be severely disap­pointed but there was nothing I could do about it. I read sex manuals galore but all the indic­a­tions were that adults of both sexes natur­ally find sex mutu­ally rewarding.

Rather than carry on in ignor­ance, we went along to rela­tion­ship ther­ap­ists early on. They used the book ‘Treat your­self to Sex’ by Paul Brown & Margot Faulderby, which suggested sensual massage and fore­play but this did not improve my levels of sexual arousal. We ended the sessions none the wiser and I put on hold any ambi­tion of finding an answer to my ‘problem’.

Fifteen years later, our rela­tion­ship hit rock bottom. At 35 I was master­minding a house­hold of three young chil­dren, a daily nanny and a live-in au-pair while my partner and I both worked in full-time careers often trav­el­ling abroad. In addi­tion my partner felt I should be orgasmic during sex. No wonder we are called the ‘have it all’ gener­a­tion! I resolved to visit a sex clinic.

After five hours of talking to their consultant psycho­lo­gist, he concluded that there was nothing wrong with either of us. His therapy focused on phys­ical stim­u­la­tion tech­niques but, frankly, after being sexu­ally active for over fifteen years, I could not see how any sexual posi­tion, however unusual, was going to increase my sexual arousal suffi­ciently to enable me to orgasm.