How to Make Yourself Cum: Bridging the Orgasm Gap | Sex Toys

IIt surprises some people when I tell this story, because I am perceived as a very sexual person in my circle of friends.

I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was 21. And someone must have drawn me a picture. I was in a coffee shop with my friend Clara. We were talking about sex. I had been sexually active for 5 years now, since I was 16. But I had never had an orgasm, and none of the men I had slept with had ever seemed to think twice about it. While it’s true that I hadn’t yet had a long-term relationship, I had had lovers and one-night stands galore. Okay, mostly one- and two-night stands. But still.

She stared at me, mouth agape, and I laughed, enjoying her shock and outrage at me. Then my dear friend asked me a simple question that changed my life.

“How can you expect someone to make you cum if you can’t cum yourself?”

I looked at her.

“Good point,” I said.

“Once you know it, you can do it anywhere, anytime,” she continued. “You could be sitting here in this coffee shop and having an orgasm under the table.”

We laughed like crazy.

“How can you expect someone to make you cum if you can’t cum yourself?”

And then Clara did the unthinkable: she drew me a diagram. I knew where my clitoris was. I knew where everything was. It wasn’t a location problem. And it wasn’t an inability to please myself. I had been touching myself generously with intention (and effect) since I was a little girl. But when it came to following through, to overcoming that stage, I had no idea. It was like starting a creative project and abandoning it.

So she drew the diagram and explained the mechanics to me: the different ways to move your fingers, your hips. The different forms the movement could take. It was poetry, really. And philosophy. But when I got home and followed one of her simple prescriptions, lying on my bed with my feet against the wall, I had a mind-blowing orgasm for the first time in my life. In less than 10 minutes. And then I had 5 more.

What surprised me the most was that it wasn’t complicated. I had just never been taught how my own pleasure centers worked. And this coming from someone whose parents are extremely sex-positive.

The Orgasm Gap

According to Planned Parenthood, one in three women have trouble reaching orgasm during sex. According to Cosmopolitan’s 2015 Female Orgasm Survey, only 57 percent of (straight) women typically orgasm when having sex with a partner. The same women reported that their male counterparts orgasm 95 percent of the time.

That’s not all: 50% of women said their partners were very close to them, but they couldn’t get them home. 38% of women felt they weren’t getting enough clitoral stimulation. And 35% said they weren’t getting the right kind of stimulation. If that’s not a serious gap, I don’t know what is.

1 in 3 women have difficulty reaching orgasm during sexual intercourse.

Mechanical problems

As simple as it may seem, many women’s orgasm problems can be attributed to poor mechanics, just like my inability to achieve orgasm. These statistics aren’t exactly surprising when you consider the crucial role the clitoris plays in helping a woman achieve orgasm. While statistics and percentages aren’t exactly precise, experts say that most women need their clitoris to be stimulated in order to achieve orgasm; only about 8% of women have reliable, unassisted orgasms during penetrative sex, while almost all men can.

In a 2005 study of 833 undergraduates, women and men were equally likely to misidentify the clitoris on a diagram! So I guess despite my lack of skills at age 21, I may have had a head start. It’s troubling.

Lack of attention

In the same study, while 78% of women believed their partner cared about their orgasm, 72% still experienced a moment where their partner reached orgasm but didn’t try to help them finish. While leaving a woman panting and wanting may stem from a lack of mechanical know-how, the orgasm gap also illustrates how cultural conceptions of male pleasure differ from those of female pleasure. For example, while it takes a woman longer on average to reach orgasm (up to 20 or even 40 minutes, according to some experts), the prevailing view is that sex ends when the man comes. Mainstream pornography often reinforces this idea.

Bridging the Orgasm Gap

There’s no silver bullet for anything worthwhile (unless it’s a good friend with cutting-edge sketching and lecturing skills), and bridging the fun gap is no exception. But go for it, progress is being made. For one thing, beauty It’s about deconstructing these dubious assumptions. Of course, yes.

Other things you can and should do if you haven’t already:

1. Knowing how to please yourself
2. Practice what I like to call radical honesty with the men (or women) in your life. Don’t be afraid to say what you like or need. Your orgasm depends on it.

Image source: Tony Futura