I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide (4 page)

This book also reaps the benefits of the insights of the 1,956 people who filled out our detailed online survey. We’d read the major U.S. sexuality surveys published in the last century, from Masters and Johnson to
The Hite Report
to the 1994 “Sex in America” study, but we wanted to update the picture to include the perspective of a new century and a new generation. Our survey asked over 125 questions, some on topics like piercings, porn, female ejaculation, and sex toys that received little, if any, attention in most past national surveys. (Alfred Kinsey’s 1940s research didn’t ask his subjects whether genital piercings improved their sex lives!) We’re immensely grateful to each person who took the time to share his or her thoughts and experiences with us.

Our survey respondents were female, male, and transgender, representing forty-five states (plus a handful from Canada and other countries outside the United States). Because our original mailing list came from attendees of our educational programs, the majority were college-age and twentysomething, but there were plenty of older folks, as well—our oldest respondent was sixty-eight. We encouraged survey-takers to spread the word, and in the end, two-fifths of the
respondents had never attended one of our programs. While our sample is certainly not demographically representative, we were struck by the diversity and often startling honesty of the participants. The survey data is reflected throughout the book in people’s own words (italicized quotes), in statistics (which we checked against other research studies when these were available), and in our advice. Thanks to this rich source of information, what you’ll find in the pages ahead isn’t just our opinion or advice from some scientist in a research laboratory. It’s reality-tested against the experiences of nearly 2,000 people like you.

beyond the big O

ALTHOUGH IT MAY sound more than a little ironic coming from the authors of this book, if you think sex is just about orgasms, you’re missing out. Here’s the thing: Orgasms—the female variety and every other flavor—are really,
really
fun. They feel great; in fact, they’re likely to be one of the most pleasurable physical sensations you’ll ever experience. For many people, they rank way up there as emotional and spiritual experiences, too.

But orgasms aren’t the only point of sex. Get too obsessed with orgasms, and you can miss out on a lot of other things: The sensations of touching and being touched. The experience of riding the roller coaster of arousal with its teasing climb and unexpected surges. The quieter joy of intimacy. As the best lovers know, you can have great sex without an orgasm at all.

We’ve seen orgasm-obsession lead people astray. Often this happens when a couple has a single sexual experience in which an expected orgasm didn’t happen: a guy lost an erection for no reason whatsoever, or a woman couldn’t come through oral sex, even though that had always worked before. Some turn to us in a moment of panic. Does she still find me sexy? Does he still love me? What’s wrong with me, with her, with him, with us? The greater the panic, the more tension the next time they have sex. The more tense they are, the less chance of future orgasms. The downward spiral begins.

That’s why each individual orgasm isn’t the point. If you have an orgasm on a given night, great! If not, laugh. Or sigh. It’s not a big deal, and the journey can be as sweet as the destination. There’s too much fun, pleasure, and intimacy to be
had—by yourself or with someone else—to spend a lot of energy worrying about any individual orgasm.

With that in mind, read this book not only for advice about how to reach the orgasmic finish line, but also about how to enjoy good sex. Listen to your own body, relax, and have fun, and you won’t be disappointed.

Last but not least, if anything we say contradicts the naked person in your bed, always believe the naked person. Each person knows his or her own body better than we possibly could.

1

The Lowdown on the Big O

TOP TEN REASONS TO HAVE AN ORGASM

 
 1
. It feels great.

 
 2
. It’s free.

 
 3
. It’s legal.

 
 4
. It reduces stress.

 
 5
. It burns calories.

 
 6
. It helps you fall asleep.

 
 7
. It releases tension.

 
 8
. It can help relieve menstrual cramps and headaches.

 
 9
. It’s available to you whether you have a partner or not.

10
. Why not?!?

BONUS
: There’s nothing else quite like it.

what is a female orgasm, anyway?

ONCE YOU STRIP away the romance and openmouthed shrieks of pleasure (or the silent, blissful tremor of a quieter orgasm), a female orgasm is just a series of involuntary muscular contractions. Unlike the contractions of a hacking cough or a series of sit-ups, orgasmic contractions feel great. You can’t control how an orgasm feels, just as you can’t exactly control the sensation of a sneeze. (Let us guess: You, too, had that kids’ book about sexuality that describes an orgasm as being like a sneeze? If so, we bet you were pleasantly surprised when your first orgasm felt nothing like a sneeze!) During arousal, a woman’s bloodstream is spiked with pleasurable hormones, and at the moment of orgasm even more flood in. It’s your body’s best natural high.

During an orgasm, women can often feel the muscles contract in their vagina, uterus, and anus, and sometimes in other parts of their body, like their hands and feet. Some women describe a sensation like waves of warmth washing over their genitals or over their whole body; some say it feels like lightning bolts of electricity. A woman may be quite still and quiet while she comes, or she may move her body a lot.

I feel warm. My body stiffens and, with a particularly strong orgasm, my face tingles and my legs stop working.

My breath catches, I either can’t make a sound, or I’m stifling a scream (thin walls in my apartment complex). My entire body goes rigid, my toes curl, my fingers clutch at whatever happens to be handy, and I shudder. I generally can’t move.

It’s like this unbelievable, almost unbearable buildup of tension and almost too much pleasure till I just feel like my whole body is struggling and squirming for some sort of release. And then suddenly it’s like something just breaks free and I feel tingles all over and sort of an electric buzz. Then I just feel calm and relaxed.

Although being highly sexually aroused is extremely pleasurable in its own right, an orgasm is (usually) a short period where the intensity of pleasurable sensation is much higher than in the arousal period just before. Most female orgasms last three to fifteen seconds, although it’s possible for them to last a minute or more. There are big, strong, wowwowwowWOW! orgasms, barely noticeable ones, and everything in between. Orgasms vary from woman to woman and from orgasm to orgasm. Each orgasm is unique—like a snowflake!

It feels so good I forget about everything else in the world for a few seconds. It just feels like being alive, with every cell vibrating.

I used to call my orgasms mini-O’s because I thought orgasms were going to be better, more body-shaking, if you know what I mean. But then I came to accept the fact that this is it. But I’m learning to enjoy it more, so it’s okay.

My body starts tingling, I get a fluttering in my stomach and then I feel like I have to pee really bad. Then it’s like a wave comes over me, like all my muscles become relaxed.

An orgasm can feel almost spiritual, complete, like I’m one with my partner.

First it feels like lightning shoots throughout my body, and then if stimulation is continued, all the energy is sent to my genitals and then released at the same moment.

“coming” versus “having an orgasm”

A LOT OF people wonder if there’s a difference between a woman
coming
and
having an orgasm.
In fact, the terms are interchangeable. The confusion is probably because the slang word for men’s semen is “come” (sometimes spelled cum), so people figure that “coming” means ejaculating. Then they’re not sure if a female orgasm–the nonejaculatory kind–is also called “coming,” or if “coming” only refers to female ejaculation (more on female ejaculation in
chapter 6
).

Banish the confusion. When a woman cries out, “I’m coming!” it means she’s having an orgasm–and if she’s having an orgasm, she’s coming! Female ejaculation has nothing to do with the phrase.

Not sure if you’ve had an orgasm? Check out “Not Sure” on page 64.

the almighty clitoris

YOU PROBABLY ALREADY know that for most women, the clitoris (pronounced KLIT-eh-rus or kli-TOR-es—either way is correct) is the primary sex organ.

hold the morphine, give me an orgasm

RESEARCHERS WHO STUDY women having orgasms in laboratories find that a woman’s sensitivity to pain is dramatically reduced when she’s aroused, and even lower when she’s coming. Several studies have first determined how much pressure women found painful under normal circumstances (for instance, by pressing on a woman’s finger). When the same women were sexually aroused, these studies found, they could comfortably experience significantly more pressure before they said it was too painful. During orgasm, the pressure could be far more intense (more than twice as much in some cases) before they found it too much to tolerate.

It’s not just that orgasms distract women from pain, either, because other distracting activities don’t have the same pain-relieving results. MRIs show that orgasms release endorphins and naturally-occurring steroids that temporarily numb the nerve endings that signal pain.

Many women find that this lovely feature outlasts the climax itself. Some say having an orgasm reduces the intensity of their menstrual cramps, and others have found significant headache relief from having an orgasm. One woman told us she’d discovered that orgasm was the surest way to end a migraine. She laughed that while other women might use the phrase, “Honey, I have a headache,” as a way to rebuff their husbands’ advances, her husband knows that if she uses the identical sentence she’s initiating a night of passion.

A fan of the clitoris marches in a Pride Parade.

Unlike a penis, which can be used for reproduction, urination, and pleasure, pleasure is the clitoris’s only reason for existence. Research finds that although the penis and clitoris grow from the same tissue in the early development of a fetus, the female organ is even more sensitive than the male’s: The head of the clit has more nerve endings per square inch than any other part of human anatomy, and two to four times more than the head of a penis.

Starting in the 1970s, researchers and groups of self-taught women began to take a closer look at the clitoris. They pointed out that rather than just being a tiny nub, the entire organ has eighteen separate parts, many of them internal and some quite large. In addition to the glans, shaft, hood, and inner lips (the clit’s primary externally visible parts, which you can see on page 70), inside a woman’s body there are also a pair of wishbone-shaped clitoral legs made of erectile tissue. These are 2 to 3½ inches long, point back toward a woman’s tailbone, and fill with blood when a woman is aroused. These “legs” were documented in the 1600s, but then “forgotten” by later anatomists.

Bulbs of erectile tissue lie under the inner lips, and erectile tissue also surrounds the urethra (the tube you pee through). (This area, the urethral sponge, is also called the G-spot. For more on this, and a diagram of how this all fits together inside a woman’s body, see
chapter 6
). The clitoral organ also includes a complex of nerves, blood vessels, muscles, ligaments, and glands that assist in lubrication and in some cases, ejaculation.