When they talk about their sexual rela­tion­ships with men, women will often refer to love, trust and commitment.

These factors are obvi­ously important for the stability of long-term rela­tion­ships that family life depends on. But they are not factors that will help a woman learn how to enjoy orgasm during sex.

Many women see sex as an emotional and loving exper­i­ence. Either they have no expect­a­tion for orgasm or they assume that their loving emotions result in the phenomenon that other people call orgasm.

This is fine and no one wants to upset other people’s sex lives if they are happy with them. Many women enjoy sex as a sensual and sexy phys­ical act with a partner regard­less of their own sexual arousal.

But women who ask about female orgasm need to know the facts.

Loving emotions do not lead to true sexual arousal. Just as men have to (usually very will­ingly!) focus on erot­i­cism if they are to become aroused, women also have to accept that enjoy­ment of sexual arousal depends on having ‘naughty’ thoughts.

Guilt about sexual fantasies is misplaced because our ability to enjoy our own sexual arousal is part of the human exper­i­ence. Such feel­ings occur natur­ally and as long as we enjoy them alone or with a consenting adult partner, are quite harmless.

The degree to which we are able to enjoy our sexu­ality depends on the balance between our desire to enjoy sexual pleasure and our need to satisfy moral constraints. It is the taboo nature of sexual activity that causes us to feel sexu­ally aroused.

Why women still prefer ‘making love’

Men tend to become defensive when it is suggested that vaginal inter­course does not facil­itate female orgasm. One reason is that embar­rass­ment about sex causes many less adven­turous couples to limit their sex life to intercourse.

Nature’s fault again but women do not find the kind of phys­ical sex play that men enjoy arousing enough for orgasm. More than that, many women are actu­ally disgusted by the idea of any activity more sexu­ally explicit than ‘making love’.

But we are talking about quite different women and atti­tudes here. A woman only asks about female orgasm because she already knows how to achieve it from masturb­a­tion. Such women are likely to be more open to exploring sex with a partner, including a wider variety of phys­ical sex play and tech­niques, because they enjoy erot­i­cism through fantasies.

Women need to stim­u­late their clit­oris for orgasm just as men need to stim­u­late their penis. Inter­course does not provide enough clit­oral stim­u­la­tion for female orgasm no matter how long and enthu­si­ast­ic­ally a man keeps thrusting.

What is confusing, for women who masturbate, is that clit­oral stim­u­la­tion can only lead to orgasm once a woman has achieved the neces­sary psycho­lo­gical arousal through fantasy. Women do not become aroused enough for orgasm by looking at the naked male body. If they did, then women would enjoy porno­graphy, lap-dancing and pole-dancing bars as men do.

Women’s sexual arousal depends on sexual fantasies with a complex psycho­lo­gical context (often BDSM) that can be tricky to combine with a real life sexual rela­tion­ship. Many women do use fantasy during sex but others find that their mind-based fantasies are inef­fective with a partner. A woman may need to learn other ways of incor­por­ating her fantasies into her sex life.

This may include reading some erotic fiction imme­di­ately prior to sex and during fore­play (man doing all the work!) or bringing some ideas from her fantasies into phys­ical sex play (activ­ities other than inter­course) that may be combined with intercourse.