Natalie, a woman in her late twen­ties, had a close rela­tion­ship with her mother who was a doctor. I approached Natalie hoping that a mother with a medical back­ground might be more likely than others to have discussed her sexual exper­i­ences with a daughter.

When young women have diffi­culty reaching orgasm during sex, it can be diffi­cult for them to find answers. Natalie was relieved and grateful on real­ising that she was not alone in exper­i­en­cing a lack of arousal during sex. She was too embar­rassed to talk to me but wrote: “On reading your book, I spoke to my mum who said (I quote!): ‘OF COURSE YOU DON’T ORGASM DURING SEX!’ Like this was a well known fact!!!!”

“The married female reaches orgasm in only a portion of her coitus, and some 10 per cent of all the females in the avail­able sample had never reached orgasm at any time, in any of their marital coitus.” (p352 Sexual beha­vior in the human female 1953)

For me, Natalie epitom­ised the modern profes­sional young woman: successful, attractive and confident. Tall and slim, she wore her blond hair cut short, which gave her a sweet elfish look.

I envied the easy-going friend­ships she main­tained with her male work colleagues both within and outside the work­place. Despite her predic­a­ment, it was evident that Natalie had never been either brave or curious enough to research explan­a­tions for women’s sexual arousal through reading or talking to someone.

“Everything you talk about in your book, partic­u­larly with refer­ence to your prob­lems with having an orgasm during sexual inter­course, I had been having the same problem. For many years, I had thought there was some­thing wrong with me but was just too embar­rassed to talk to anyone about it.”

“In fact, I once heard on a radio talk show someone called in and said they couldn’t orgasm during sex. The response to the person having the problem was to blame this on the man!” Holding men respons­ible for women’s sexual arousal makes men feel inad­equate and puts pres­sure on women to fake orgasm.

We think we live in an inform­a­tion age and at a time when people have relat­ively relaxed atti­tudes towards sex, yet this educated young woman was unable to find explan­a­tions for her sexual exper­i­ences or even to talk to her friends or to her mother. Young women often don’t know how to orgasm and unfor­tu­nately there are very few sources of inform­a­tion to help them learn.

Natalie told me: “As a result (of reading your book) my rela­tion­ship with my partner has stepped up a level. I had been reluctant to have sex with him for about a year as I had it in my head that HIS inab­ility to make me orgasm during inter­course must mean I didn’t love him or don’t want to be with him…!”

“Waiting for the Right Man to make us orgasm is like waiting for the prince to come.” (p254 The Hite Report 1976)

Why is it so diffi­cult to find answers? Female orgasm is not required either for men’s enjoy­ment of sex or for successful repro­duc­tion. To keep her man happy and to have a family, a woman is more likely to be concerned with the basics of whether vaginal inter­course is possible than with orgasm (the cherry on the cake!). Most women are too embar­rassed to ask for more.

So typic­ally sex experts deal with sexual dysfunc­tion (primarily prob­lems with male sexual perform­ance). Any problem with female sexual perform­ance, even though considered to be a sexual dysfunc­tion, is not as well under­stood. Since relat­ively few women are seeking answers there is little funding to improve our under­standing of female sexual arousal and orgasm.

“Shocking though the stat­istics are, many women have found it secretly comforting to discover they are not the only ones who exper­i­ence this enormous discrep­ancy between masturb­a­tion and inter­course. For years I was unable to have an orgasm except by masturb­a­tion, and assumed I was a freak. I remember the relief when I discovered Hite…” (p207 Satis­fac­tion Guar­an­teed 1996)