I am a 20-year-old female in a two-year-long heterosexual relationship, and I’ve never had an orgasm. Well, with anyone else to be exact. For a long time that was something I was extremely ashamed of because I felt that I was broken. As my friends told all these invigorating sex tales that I just could not relate to, I felt like Diane Keaton in ‘Because I Said So.’
I didn’t tell my partner about it either. I had already started the premise of faking orgasms and I felt like I couldn’t go back. The longer I put off facing the problem, the harder it felt to fix. All in all, I was just frustrated at everything and stopped wanting to have sex. It didn’t take my partner long to notice the change. He would ask what was wrong and how he could help, but I put up more and more walls around my sexual problem.
I finally broke to the only person that I felt like I could talk to, my mom. To my surprise, my mom knew exactly what I was feeling. My mom began with the one thing I needed to hear; I wasn’t alone. My mom told me how she had had the same problem and how her and my father had gone to counseling for it. After getting over the innate feeling like dying inside because my mom was telling me about her and my father’s sex life, what she was saying began to help.
After that first realization of not being alone, I realized that I needed to change the way I had been dealing with it. Telling my boyfriend of two years that I had faked every orgasm with him was the hardest part. I felt so terrible for having lied to him, and I could tell that he was sad. But, he immediately turned that sadness into determination. We made a plan on how to work on our sexual communication, about bringing toys into the bedroom, about kinds of sex, and about patience.
My boyfriend stopped expecting me to orgasm, which took so much pressure off my shoulders. I started reading articles about the female orgasm and learned some useful facts. One-third of women have trouble reaching orgasm and 75 percent of women can’t orgasm from sex alone. It felt good to know that sex wasn’t easy for everyone and that what I was going through was common for women.
Through all this, I learned that my feeling of shame was completely misplaced. Too many women blame themselves for their lack of orgasm and feel like it’s wrong for them to expect their partner to work for it. The idea that sex ends with the male orgasm is all sorts of wrong.
Everyone, no matter their sexual orientation, should enjoy sex. Though, in particular, it seems women in heterosexual relationships have this feeling that their orgasm is their problem and not their partner’s priority. That’s what I thought for sure. But, it is time to change this idea. Talk about your sexual pleasure, as it is just as important as your partner’s. Keep up communication and try for total honesty. Most importantly, have fun! Now, go get it, girl!