Sex Made Easy (14 page)

• The so-called “orgasm gap”

• How women have orgasms

• Three major nerve pathways that are important to female orgasms

• The many ways that women experience orgasm (some of them may surprise you)

• The link between orgasm and sexual variety

Orgasm is not a critical part of sex for all women or men, but it is an important aspect for many people. In a national survey of British women and men, less than half (49 percent of men and 43 percent of women) agreed or strongly agreed with a statement that said sex without orgasm cannot really be satisfying.
¹
However, orgasm—both one's own and that of one's partner—is important to most women and men. In a 2011 study of more than a thousand long-term couples in five countries
²
(the men and women were between ages forty and seventy), there were several interesting orgasm-related findings, including:

1. Men highly valued their own orgasms and their partner's orgasms.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1=not at all, 10=very), the average
“importance score” for men's own orgasms was 8.45. The value they placed on their partner's orgasm averaged out to be 8.53.

2. Women valued their partner's orgasms more so than their own.
Using the same scale as for the men, the value women placed on their own orgasm averaged to be 7.35 whereas the value they placed on their male partner's orgasm was 7.96.

3. The more value men placed on their partner's orgasm, the more likely they were to be happy in their relationship.
Men's sexual satisfaction was also linked to the value they placed on their partner's orgasm.

Again, orgasm isn't the number-one focus of sex for every person every time they have sex. However, it is one aspect of sex that matters to many women and men. For those who want to enhance this aspect of their sexual experiences, there are facts about orgasm and sexual pleasure that can make a real and noticeable difference. Here, you'll find a number of orgasm questions answered as well as a few fun facts to share with your friends or sexual partner.

W
e women are unique in countless ways. We differ from each other in terms of our height, weight, curviness, breast size, hair color, nose size, shoe size, skin color, labia size, and the number of freckles that dot our bodies. And that's just the outside parts. We also vary in terms of our musical abilities, whether we're better with numbers or art, and how well we can sing or dance or remember the birthdays or anniversaries of our families and friends. Some women can wrap gifts more beautifully than Martha Stewart. Some women can manage an office or a large family with almost military precision. We all have our gifts and unique characteristics that make us who we are.

Orgasm isn't much different, despite what many women's magazines
and so-called “sex experts” would have you believe. There are so many myths about orgasms that I hear all the time: that G Spot orgasms are more intense than clitoral orgasms, or that any woman can have an orgasm if she can find her clitoris, or that one can learn to experience orgasm for hours and hours at a time. These myths are harmful to women, particularly when some of them make women feel inadequate if they're not orgasmic or not orgasmic “enough.”

The truth is that some women experience orgasm very easily, even if they don't put any effort into trying. Other women may try for months or years and never have an orgasm, or else they may have orgasms in some situations (such as when receiving oral sex) but not others (such as intercourse). Many of us are in the middle. Like most women, I can remember a time when I didn't have orgasms. When I learned to experience orgasm, it was little by little and with different types of sexual experiences (masturbation, then hand stimulation from a partner, then oral sex, and—years later—through vaginal intercourse). This is important because it goes against the way many “sex experts” divide the world: that there are women who orgasm and women who don't. The reality is that most of us will experience orgasm at some point in our lives; it may just take a little while and require some practice and learning.

One of my favorite recent scientific studies added to our understanding of how orgasm varies from woman to woman. In this study, published in a 2011 issue of
Hormones and Behavior,
researchers from Emory University and Indiana University found that in two samples of women they studied, the distance between a woman's clitoris and her urethra was linked to her likelihood of having an orgasm during sex.
³
Scientists who study sex, including me, aren't quite sure how this might work, if it's true for other women. For example, do some women's genitals allow for greater contact between the penis and the clitoris during sex? Are some women's genitals better positioned to allow the penis to stimulate the inside parts of the clitoris? Or is this anatomical difference a sign of something else—for example, that these women are different hormonally from other women? This was a preliminary research study but an important step in our understanding of how the experience of orgasm varies for women. And it
reminds me that we are all different in many ways. We don't expect our hair, eyes, or breasts to all look alike: why would our orgasms all be alike?

Finally, it's important to add that this study provides just one piece of a larger orgasm puzzle. Not all orgasms involve clitoral stimulation; a minority of women experienced orgasm from breast stimulation or mental fantasy, and some women who have experienced more extensive versions of female genital circumcision, involving removal of most or all of the clitoris, report experiencing orgasm. And of course not all women have penile-vaginal intercourse, let alone experience orgasm from it. However, this study suggests that one of the many things that may matter to women's orgasmic ease has to do with how her body happens to have been formed in the womb, or how it developed as she grew into adulthood.

W
hile scientists still have a great deal left to discover about the female orgasm, it's not a complete mystery. We are learning more and more about it all the time and these findings can help us all have more pleasurable, and often more easily orgasmic, sex.

In our recent National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior we found evidence for the idea that orgasm truly may become easier with age, at least to some extent. Although 61 percent of women ages eighteen to twenty-four and 58 percent of women ages twenty-five to twenty-nine said that they experienced orgasm during the most recent time they had sex with a partner (which could have been oral sex, vaginal sex, anal sex, or something else such as mutual masturbation), more women reported orgasm as they grew older.
⁴
A total of 65 percent of women in their thirties and 69 percent of women in their forties reported experiencing orgasm during their most recent sexual event. However, we also found a sort of bell curve with more women in their thirties and forties reporting orgasm and then fewer women reporting orgasm in their fifties and sixties (in our study, 61 percent of women in their fifties and 44 percent of women in their sixties reported having an orgasm at their most recent event). In contrast, more men (above 90 percent in men younger than sixty) reported experiencing
orgasm when they most recently had sex with a partner. For men, orgasm and ejaculation become more difficult with age.

What this tells me is that scientists have been correct in their finding that, particularly for women, learning to experience orgasm takes practice. Generally speaking, men tend to find it easier to orgasm than women do. Also, more young men start masturbating at earlier ages than young women, so they have more time to practice and learn what “works” for their bodies and minds. These data also tell us something else: that although orgasm gets easier with age to some extent, it's not completely true. Over time, many women experience health problems or the loss of a partner (due to illness, death, divorce, or separation), and this can result in many profound sexual changes for women in their forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond. Therefore, age doesn't automatically make for better sex or more frequent orgasms. There are always ups and downs to any stage of life.

R
ecent research published in the
Journal of Sexual Medicine
in 2011 added to scientists' thinking on women's orgasm. In an interesting fMRI study (which involves taking brain scans), it was discovered that stimulation of a woman's nipples activates the same part of the brain that is activated when a woman's genitals are stimulated.
⁶
This may help explain how it is that some women are able to experience orgasm when their nipples are stimulated.

These researchers learned another fascinating piece of information about women's orgasm. They found that stimulation of a woman's vagina activates a different part of the brain than stimulation of a woman's clitoris does. For some women, this underscores the differences they feel between an orgasm from vaginal stimulation and an orgasm from clitoral stimulation. It's not that one orgasm “type” is universally better than the other—remember, every woman is different and has her own preferences—but it does help explain why they might feel somewhat different to women. And if it's true that vaginal intercourse often stimulates both the vagina and the clitoris (as mentioned earlier in
chapter 1
), then these data may add to our understanding of how some orgasms feel different or more or less intense than others. Maybe combined vaginal and clitoral stimulation feels qualitatively different than stimulation of just the vagina or just the clitoris—not necessarily better or worse, but different.

Earlier research found that there are different nerve pathways involved in women's orgasms and that this may explain why some orgasms feel different to different women (for a detailed account of this, check out
The Science of Orgasm
by Barry Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores and Beverly Whipple). The clitoris, for example, sends a lot of its sensory information through the pudendal nerve, whereas the vagina is mainly supplied by the pelvic nerve and the cervix by several nerves (including the vagus nerve). If the clitoris is the main part that's stimulated, then most of the sensory information about pleasure will be conveyed through the pudendal nerve. If more than one part is stimulated (say, the vagina, clitoris, and cervix through deep vaginal intercourse) then it might be the case that sensory information floods two or three
nerve pathways, “lighting up” multiple parts of the brain.

Not only are the nerve pathways different, but women stimulate these body parts and nerve pathways in all sorts of different ways. As young children, parents and other caregivers (such as preschool teachers) have reported seeing both girls and boys stimulating themselves with their hands, stuffed animals, playground equipment (such as repeatedly sliding up and down poles), blankets, and pillows. In scientific studies that ask adults about their childhood experiences, in addition to recalling playing with stuffed animals or blankets in this manner, they also sometimes say they remember stimulating themselves by dripping water on their genitals from a bathtub faucet or by sitting on top of the washing machine while it rumbled away (essentially serving as a large vibrator that also conveniently cleans one's clothes). And as teenagers or adults, women may engage in a wide range of sexual behavior that helps them experience orgasm including breast stimulation, erotic massage, masturbation with the hands, masturbation with sex toys, vaginal sex, oral sex, anal sex, sexual fantasy, fingering, and much, much more.

O
ne of the great joys of my job is that I hear from so many people about their sex lives, and their personal stories inspire my research. For years, I would receive letters from women about their experiences having orgasms while running, lifting weights, doing sit-ups, or engaging in some other form of exercise. When I looked to the scientific literature, I found that there had never been a study on the topic and that women's and men's magazines had written more about these experiences than scientists ever had. So of course I decided I needed to conduct a study and learn more from women themselves.