“My husband has never made me come.”
If you can’t reach orgasm with your partner, you’re not alone. I spent close to 10 years being able to reach orgasm easily and reliably on my own but never having a single orgasm with a partner. I felt all of the things that most women feel when they struggle to reach orgasm during sex: I felt alone, broken, embarrassed, ashamed, frustrated, and hopeless. I truly believed that I would never be able to learn how to reach orgasm with a partner.
Spoiler alert: I finally did learn! Despite years of fear and anxiety, I’m now at the point where I can have at least one orgasm every single time my husband and I have sex. Here’s exactly what I did to get there, so you can learn how to reach orgasm during sex with your husband or partner, too.
I don’t fake orgasms.
As soon as I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to reach orgasm with a partner as easily as I could on my own, I started faking orgasms. I faked tons of orgasms over the course of many years and several relationships. Faking was unsatisfying, but I always felt the temptation to do it because I didn’t want to hurt my partner’s feelings. I wanted him to feel like he was good in bed. When I would start a new relationship, I would want my partner to think that we had good sexual chemistry. By the time things were more established, I felt I was in too deep with the lie to come clean.
I finally got to a point where I had become so invested in delivering Oscar-worthy performances that I had completely lost my ability to enjoy sex. I realized that I was going to have to stop role-playing fake orgasms if I wanted to start actually having real ones. It was tough, but I resolved to never fake another orgasm, and I stuck to that promise.
I tell myself I deserve to have orgasms.
Because my orgasm felt so complicated and difficult with a partner, I started feeling like it just wasn’t worth the effort. Like so many other women out there, I struggled to receive. I felt bad asking my partner to focus on me when I didn’t know what I needed or how long it would take for me to get there. I didn’t want to give feedback because I didn’t know what to say. It felt easier to forget about my own pleasure and instead focus on my partner.
One of the biggest steps I took personally was realizing that my orgasm is just as valuable and important as my partner’s. I tell myself that I’m a generous partner, and I deserve to have a partner who is equally generous. I’ve also gotten fired up about the “orgasm gap”—the term for how many more orgasms men have than women, on average. Whenever I feel discomfort about receiving, I remind myself that I deserve pleasure too and that my pleasure is part of a broader revolution happening around female pleasure.
I keep exploring my orgasm on my own.
As I mentioned, I first learned how to reach orgasm on my own. After coaching thousands of women on how to have their first orgasms, I firmly believe that this is the best way to become orgasmic. You have to learn how to pleasure your body on your own before you can teach a partner how to get you there. (Here’s our full guide to how to make a woman reach orgasm.)
I also took this one step further. I used to use only one very specific technique with myself. Whenever a partner would try to focus on me, I couldn’t help but compare what I did with what he did. I started exploring different techniques on my own and helping my body learn how to reach orgasm from a wide variety of stimulation. I also practiced taking my time and enjoying the experience of masturbation more, instead of approaching it like scratching an itch. The more time I spent exploring masturbation, the more comfortable I got with my sexuality, pleasure, and orgasm. Once my body had become more responsive to my own touch, I found that it was also much more sensitive to stimulation from another person.
I practice mindfulness.
Like so many other women, I struggle to stay focused during sex. My mind is so used to running at a million miles an hour, and I have a hard time slowing down and being present during sex. I used to beat myself up for getting distracted during sex, then distract myself even more.
It was too hard for me to learn how to be more present during sex itself, so I started working on staying centered outside of the bedroom first. I realized that working on this skill separately made it a lot easier to learn. I now start every day with 10 to 20 minutes of mindfulness practice, usually a guided meditation on a mindfulness app. The more consistent I am with my practice, the easier I find it to be fully present during sex and soak up all of the sensation and enjoyment that I can.
I don’t expect to reach orgasm from penetration.
I now realize that one of the biggest mistakes I made about reaching orgasm with a partner was expecting that I would get there from intercourse. I thought that because intercourse worked for my male partners, it should work for my body too. Now that I’ve learned a whole lot more about how female orgasm works, I understand that this was an unrealistic expectation, especially for my very first orgasm with a partner.
When you’re having intercourse, you’re mostly getting stimulation in your vagina, and the reality is that vaginas just do not have a lot of nerve endings. The vast majority of nerve endings are in the clitoris, which doesn’t typically get a lot of action during intercourse. From a nerve-ending standpoint, I like to say that intercourse for a woman is the equivalent of a man getting his testicles stroked. It can feel good, but for the vast majority of people, it’s just not going to be enough stimulation to lead to an orgasm. I now realize that my body needs different things (more on this in a minute) to reach orgasm, and that’s perfectly OK! I’ve learned how to reach orgasm during intercourse, just not from the in-and-out penetration itself.
I recognize that orgasm is an active process, not a passive one.
Whenever you read about female orgasms online or in magazines, you see the same sort of advice over and over again: “Just relax” and “Stop thinking about it.” These articles make it seem like orgasm is a passive process. There’s nothing for you to do or learn; you just try to relax and let an orgasm happen to you. So that’s what I did for many years.
What I’ve now learned is that orgasm requires me to be active and take responsibility for my own pleasure. I literally and figuratively took my pleasure into my own hands. I explored my body and discovered specific techniques that felt good for me and taught them to my husband when we first started dating. I discovered that one of the most reliable and pleasurable ways for me to reach orgasm with my partner was to get the crucial clitoral stimulation that I needed while we were having intercourse, either by touching myself, having him touch me, or using a toy. I get to feel that closeness and intimacy that intercourse creates while making sure I get the stimulation my body needs to reach orgasm.
I stopped having selfless sex and started having selfish sex.
When I was struggling to reach orgasm with a partner, I would spend so much more time, energy, and effort caring about my partner’s experience than about my own. I would only let my partner touch me for a minute or two, so he wouldn’t get bored. I wouldn’t speak up if I wasn’t enjoying what was happening, or even if I was in pain, because I didn’t want to interrupt my partner. I faked orgasms so my partner could get to feel like he was good in bed. I focused all of my attention on my partner and none on myself. I now call this “selfless sex,” and I think a lot of women can relate to it.
I coined the term “selfish sex” to convey that I care as much about my own pleasure as I do about my partner’s. A lot of women think that “selfish” is a dirty word, but I think it’s healthy to want to shift the balance back to thinking about your own experience at least as much as you think about your partner’s. For me, selfish sex was all about putting an end to spectator-ing evaluating my performance, and starting to focus on my experience.
After years of struggling, I’m thrilled to be able to have orgasms with my husband whenever I want them. But I can also say that taking ownership of my orgasm—and actually taking steps to make it happen—feels even more incredible. It has been one of the most transformational things I’ve ever done, and I know that any other woman out there is capable of the same kind of transformation.
