Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms (6 page)

Again, remember that this is all Extra Bonus Sexy Fun.

Having or not having simultaneous orgasms is no re-flection on your sexual health and wellness.

I think it’s worth trying, though. What makes simultaneous orgasm so compelling, I believe, is the abandonment of the barriers we so often use to defend ourselves, to maintain our sense of identity, of separ-ateness from others. It’s our task as adults to stay over our own emotional center of gravity. Simultaneous The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 67

orgasm is about falling into each other at the bifur-cation point between order and chaos, at the pivot between control and abandonment. It requires skilled neglect of your own personhood and precise, focused joy in your partner’s. In other words it takes practice.

Happily, every occasion that you practice can potentially improve your life and relationship—not just your sex life and sexual relationship, but your whole life, your whole relationship. It’s good. Do it. Try it.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms Chapter Fourteen: Orgasm Differences I mentioned earlier that there seem to be some differences between male and female arousal processes. It’s also true that there are differences between male and female orgasm. Some are fairly straightforward and others are really very complicated, but I think they’re all important and interesting and are a great way to win friends and influence people.

Orgasmic “latency.” Latency is the amount of time it takes from the start of stimulation to orgasm. For women, it’s somewhere between 5 to 25 minutes on average and for men it’s more like 4 to 7 minutes. Unless they’ve changed the diagnostic criteria since the last time I checked, men are chosen for clinical trials for premature ejaculation drugs if they take, on average, less than one minute to ejaculate after penetration. If a medication takes premature ejaculators up to two and a half minutes, still well below the average time to orgasm for women, it’s a significant result. Simply put, most women take longer to come than men do.

Orgasmic “modality.” Virtually all heterosexual men are reliably orgasmic from penile–vaginal intercourse, while only about a quarter to a third of women are.

Another third of women are sometimes orgasmic from The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 69

penetration, and the remaining third of women are never or almost never orgasmic from penile–vaginal penetration. These results have been replicated over and over, in the lab and by self-report. And yet more than 90% of women can have orgasms by some modality—manual or oral stimulation or vibrators, or even just from muscle tension and imagination. Still, men and women alike wonder if a woman might be dysfunctional if she never has orgasms from penetration. Penetration may be pleasurable for both men and women, but it’s not your best bet for women’s orgasm.

Duration of orgasm. There are a lot of complications with this one. Depending whether you go by physiological measures of muscle contractions or by self-report, it’s not even clear what an orgasm is, much less how long it lasts. As with so many aspects of sexuality, there’s not a clear relationship between what the body does and what a person experiences.

For example, in one study, the physiological symptoms of orgasm lasted on average 26 seconds, plus or minus 14 seconds, but the reported duration was 12 seconds, plus or minus about 10 seconds.

(Can we just take a minute to notice how HUGE that variability is? 26 seconds plus or minus 14 seconds?

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms That’s a range from 12 to 40 seconds! Count out 12

seconds, and then count out 40 seconds. Those are VERY different experiences.)

So how long did those orgasms last? As long as they were measured, or as long as they were
experienced?

Some women report orgasm when researchers measure no contractions at all. Did she really have an orgasm?

Of course she did! But how long did it last?

In another study, roughly 40% of women reported in retrospect that their orgasms lasted 30 seconds or more, which raises the whacky conundrum about the relationship between our experience of sex and our memory of sex, and the implications for sexual well-being. Do we remember the duration of orgasm more accurately than we experience it at the time? How?

Why?

So the orgasm duration thing is an open question that can’t really be answered unless you clarify what you mean by orgasm.

Refractory period. Men experience a post-ejaculatory refractory period, when their bodies do not respond to sexual stimulation and ejaculation is impossible. At ejaculation, a man’s body throws a massive, systemic The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 71

“shut-off ” switch, which effectively puts his sexuality in “park,” leans back the seat, and turns lulling music on the radio. The hypothesized reason for this phenomenon is that it gives a man’s body an opportunity to begin replenishing the sperm stores spent in ejaculation. Since women don’t ejaculate (at least not in the same way men do), no refraction happens.

It’s important to note that ejaculation and orgasm are two distinct functions; even though most of the time they’re very closely coupled, it is possible to decouple them and experience one without the other. A man who orgasms without ejaculating can maintain his erection, continue stimulation, and even have more orgasms. (Blocking ejaculation requires a lot of practice.) Lack of refraction is a likely reason why multiple and extended orgasms are easier for women than for men.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms Chapter Fifteen: Energy Orgasms

Did you know that some people can have orgasms without touching themselves? It’s not well understood yet, but here’s my take on it.

Remember, first, that an orgasm is the explosive release of sexual tension, which is generated by giving your Sexual Excitation System something to respond to.

Your brain notices the sexy things in the environment and sends signals down to your genitals to say, “Turn on!” Mostly we think of sexy stimuli as sensory experiences—touch, sound, taste, smell, sight—but they can also be
imagined
sensory experiences.

When you
think
about a body part being touched, the area of your brain that represents sensation to that body part “lights up,” as if you that part actually were being touched.

Energy orgasms work because we can stimulate our genitals with our brains. People who have energy orgasms are using their brains to generate those “Turn on!” signals without external stimulation.

It’s a neat trick, to put it mildly.

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 73

How can you do it? Here’s a strategy to try: Set aside an hour or two, and be ready to dedicate the entire window of time to sexual pleasure. Get yourself in a calm, happy, and sexy context (turn off email and phone, etc.), lie in bed (or wherever) and use a combination of imagination, muscle tension, and breath to increase your arousal level.

* Imagination. Have you ever sat staring idly out the window fantasizing about sex, and have you noticed that the fantasy can turn you on, even though you’re getting no physical stimulation? Thoughts can create real physical changes in your body, and you can use this to your advantage. This is why people fantasize even while they’re having sex—the added juice of the fantasy heightens arousal when the physical sensations aren’t enough to get us where we want to go.

I’m afraid I can’t help you with advice on what to think about—only you and your specific sexuality can figure out what kinds of thoughts turn you on. It might be an explicitly sexy story, or it might simply be imaginary sensations over the surface of your skin or it might be a non-sexual but blissful situation. Try lots and lots of things.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms

* Muscle tension. You know all the “sexual tension”

that I keep saying gets released explosively at orgasm?

In large part, it’s actual physical muscle tension, especially in your abdominal muscles, buttocks, thighs, and especially your pelvic diaphragm (a.k.a. the pelvic floor muscle or pubococcygeal muscle or PC

muscle or Kegel muscle, the muscle you tighten to stop yourself peeing midstream).

Slow rhythmic contractions of the pelvic floor muscle generate sexually relevant stimuli that get sent to your brain and stimulate it to send back down “Turn on!” signals. As you’re lying there fantasizing, add slow, strong contractions of the pelvic floor muscle.

* Breath. Your breath is tied inextricably to your sexuality. You may have noticed that when you get close to orgasm, you gasp, your abdominal muscles lock down, and you hold your breath until it releases in a gush and then you gasp again.

You have a second diaphragm in addition to the pelvic diaphragm; the thoracic diaphragm is an arch of muscle under your ribcage that governs the The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 75

expansion and contraction of your lungs. When it contracts, it flattens out, creating more space in the lungs, so you inhale, and when it relaxes it arches up, decreasing the volume of the lungs, so you exhale.

So what we just learned about muscle tension and sexuality tells us something: If, with high levels of sexual arousal, your muscles contract in rhythmic waves, then your thoracic diaphragm will do the same. Hence the gasp (contract!) and hold (stay contracted) and exhale—often a forceful, noisy chuff of air (relax)—then gasp (contract!).

(Dear Male Readers: If you want to tell whether or not a woman is faking, watch and listen for this gasp, hold, chuff, gasp cycle. Every muscle in her body will contract at a shared rhythm. )

(Dear Female Readers: Please use this knowledge for good, not evil.)

As you become aroused, you’ll begin to breathe more deeply as your body’s demand for oxygen increases, and then as you get closer to orgasm your breath will lock into this pattern. Pay attention to your breathing and allow it to change. Allow your arousal to grow with it.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms So there you have it.

There are no negative consequences to
not
having an energy orgasm; in fact, going through this process without having an orgasm will still teach you loads about your own sexuality, give you pleasurable sexual experiences, and expand your sexual horizons. I don’t know if EVERYONE can do it… but, hey if you try and don’t manage an orgasm, you’ve still had a really nice time, right?

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Chapter Sixteen: How to Have an

Orgasm if You’ve Never Had One

About a quarter of college age women haven’t had an orgasm, as far as they know. But just because you haven’t had an orgasm doesn’t mean you can’t have one.

Your first orgasm will be easiest (A) when you are alone, (B) when you are using a vibrator, if available and (C) when you aren’t
trying
to have an orgasm.

(B) has to do with increasing excitation cues—that is, giving your brain more reasons to tell your genitals,

“Yes, NOW!” The mechanical vibration provided by toys is more intense than anything a hand, phallus, tongue, fresh produce, or other organic stimulus can provide. More stimulation –> more arousal –> easier/

faster orgasm.

(A) and (C) have to do with reducing potential in-hibitors. “Inhibition” in this context doesn’t mean

“shyness,” as it often gets used. It means “brakes,”

things that cause your brain to tell your genitals “NOT

NOW!”

(A) helps to minimize the intrusive thoughts that many women experience when their partner is in the 78

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms room. All that thinking about what your partner might be thinking about both distracts you from the pleasure you’re experiencing and gives your brain excuses to send “STOP IT!” signals to your genitals. Without your partner there, you can pay attention to the pleasure and not fret about the partner. Add the partner later, when you’ve got the hang of it.

(C), of course, begs the question, “If I can’t try to have an orgasm, what
do
I do while I masturbate?” Answer: You enjoy the lovely sensation of sexual arousal. You’re watching your arousal grow. You’re relaxing into the knowledge that your body is capable of bringing you pleasure and gratification. You’re celebrating this messy, noisy, awkward, cumbersome, beautiful gift you were given as a prize for being born—I mean your body—and exploring its capabilities. It’s like you’ve just got a new toy—a car, a phone, whatever—and you’re testing out all the cool things it can do, and finding it can do way more extra-cool stuff than you ever expected.

My belief is that every woman who is interested enough in sex to want to have an orgasm is capable of having one. It may take longer than you want it to, and it may take lots of stimulation and a well-trained ability to The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 79

pay attention to your body and erotic thoughts, to the exclusion of intrusive and un-sexy worries, but with practice and patience it can happen.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms Chapter Seventeen: Anxiety that

Inhibits Orgasm

“Spectatoring” is the art of worrying about sex while you’re having it.

Rather than paying attention to the pleasant and tingly things your body is experiencing, it’s like you’re floating above the bed watching, noticing how your breasts fall or the squish of cottage cheese on the back of your thigh or the roll at your belly or…. you’re worried about the sex you’re having, instead of
enjoying
the sex you’re having.