Some people think of sex as a zero-to-sixty race towards orgasm that can be accomplished by following a glib set of mechanical directions that work in the same way for every person, or the same way for people of a given sex or gender. Many people feel there are particular things that everyone universally enjoys, things that will sexually satisfy every person every time, and that the way people experience sexual response is only as diverse as binary notions of gender. These ideas are neither accurate reflections of the reality of human sexual response, nor do they tend to result in what actually is satisfying for people when it comes to sex. While we’re all human, and our bodies share a similar collection of parts, that doesn’t mean we all function the same way sexually or experience sexual response the same way; not even close.
It’s not too hard to understand why people might ask things like, “What makes a girl orgasm?” or “What do guys like?” The 10 Things That Drive Men to Absolute Orgasmic Lunacy kinds of articles that have long populated a lot of mainstream media are the sort of things that let people make money with the titillating promise that they can make sex “easy” or that they have all the “secrets.” However, those kinds of tips are rarely useful, and often only serve to cause more frustration, dissatisfaction and confusion.
The truth is that sexual response is more complicated and diverse than people often want it to be, even though that complexity and diversity is a big part of what makes sex rich, intimate and interesting.
Think about it this way: if our experience of eating was only about getting nutrients we need into our bodies, we could all eat a very similar meal, three times a day, every day. We wouldn’t care that it all tasted the same, and we’d never crave any one particular food or another. We would all like to eat the exact same kinds of things, and we’d all be perfectly happy with that all the time. If our bodies all operated identically, we would all need exactly the same diet and nutrients, get hungry at the same times, and like and dislike the same foods.
Not the way it works, is it? In fact, if someone told you it was supposed to be that way, you’d think the idea was pretty ridiculous. Sex is pretty much the same way. We are all different, even though we share the same or similar basic physiology.
That said, there are certain physical, neurochemical and psychological feelings and phases that typically come into play for most people. Understanding them is helpful for a foundational understanding of how sex can feel for ourselves and for our partners. Understanding how our bodies can or do work when it comes to sexual response can go a long way to helping us learn how to enjoy ourselves and help any sexual partners enjoy themselves. No, none of us can “make” another person enjoy sexual activity or orgasm. We also can’t insist that someone “give” us an orgasm or “give” us good sex. But when we understand the basics of sexual response, we can often better create or co-create environments and experiences that make it most likely for us to enjoy and experience all the phases of the sexual response cycle.
The Process of Sexual Response
A linear Masters and Johnson model of sexual response from 1966external link, opens in a new tab is basically the mother of sexual response models. It isn’t always right for everyone, but it’s a good basic place to start. It posits that any sexual experience, for people of every gender, will involve some or all of five different basic stages: sexual desire (which some people call libido), arousal, plateau, orgasm and resolution. None of these stages are superior to others, and all should ideally be pleasurable.
For each of these stages, the stage preceding can be vital to moving on to the next stage. Not everyone can or will be able to skip around randomly through them. They often tend to follow some kind of continuum, much like we have to learn to stand before we can walk, but we often can or may experience toggling back and forth between them, whether that’s about having more than one orgasm on a banner day or about going back and forth between desire and arousal when our phone won’t stop ringing or the dog won’t stop barking.
There are plenty of valid critiques of this model, and some modern additions to it or ways of understanding some or all of these phases of it that are important. One critique of this model, for example, is that it doesn’t account for the fact that some people, usually people with a vulvovaginal system rather than a penis, can sometimes move right from arousal to orgasm (skipping plateau), for example. Another flaw in the model is that it doesn’t account for interpersonal issues, like safety and satisfaction in relationships. It doesn’t account for the fact that sometimes people will experience orgasm or arousal when they don’t feel desire, as sometimes happens to victims of sexual abuse or assault. But like I said, this model is a good starting point, particularly since it includes all the basic parts of sexual response most people will or at least have the ability to experience. Let’s dig in!
Desire
In a sexual context, desire is the physical, neurochemical, intellectual and/or emotional wish or want to participate in sexual activity of some kind; an urge for some kind of sex, be that a makeout session, intercourse, or masturbation while sexting.
Desire for sexual activity is a like being hungry in order to eat: if you aren’t hungry, eating doesn’t tend to feel good. If you aren’t experiencing any desire for sex, then sex often won’t feel good physically or emotionally, and may even feel bad or painful. You might think of desire as a sexual appetite. We achieve desire any number of ways, but it is generally not primarily (and certainly not solely) physical, but instead also sensory – based in all or any of our senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, taste – emotional, intellectual and, when we’re talking about sex with someone else, interpersonal.
We must usually experience desire to feel sexually aroused; to feel turned on. People sometimes describe sexual desire as feeling “hungry” or “horny.” We may feel sexual desire towards a particular person, or we may feel it simply in and of itself, a kind of free-floating feeling of wanting to be sexual.
What Masters and Johnson didn’t know then, that we’ve learned in the decades since, is that desire isn’t spontaneous for everyone. In other words, back then, the idea was that sexual desire was something that all people could experience any time as something that started, seemingly even out of nowhere, with them and they then felt, or projected out, onto someone else. If you have an idea of desire as something where you’re walking down the street, and someone walks by you who turns you on, even though they haven’t interacted with you in any way, that’s spontaneous desire.
But desire can also, and often does, happen in ways we call responsive. Responsive desireexternal link, opens in a new tab is when we feel desire in response to something or someone because of something like someone touching us, or looking at us, or telling us they want to be sexual with us, or only after some kind of sexual activity has already started. Some people even find that responsive desire is the only way they experience desire: that they need something they experience as sexual to start first before they feel interested in being sexual.
Arousal
Arousal is a state of sexual excitement that sends messages to your brain which create physical changes and sensations in your whole body as well as your genitals, messages that make us feel like we want and feel ready for sex (whatever “sex” may be at a given time). In that same articleexternal link, opens in a new tab I linked to in the previous paragraph, Emily Nagoski explains some things about arousal that Masters and Johnson also didn’t know back in 1966, namely that, “Your brain has a pair of mechanismsexternal link, opens in a new tab called the Sexual Excitation System (SES) and the Sexual Inhibition System (SIS) — I just call them the accelerator and the brake. The accelerator notices all the sexy things in the environment and sends the signal that says, “Turn on!” At the same time that’s happening, the brake notices all the very good reasons not to be turned on right now, all the potential threats, and sends a signal that says, “Turn off!”
So the process of becoming aroused is the dual process of turning on the ons and turning off the offs. And desire emerges when enough ons are on and enough offs are off for a person to feel motivated to pursue sexual stimulation.”
When we feel aroused, typically our blood pressure rises, our heartbeat and breathing quicken, and our body becomes more sensitive and receptive to touch than it is when we aren’t aroused. Sometimes users write in to us saying they just “aren’t feeling anything” with various kinds of partnered sex or masturbation: if and when that is the case, chances are that person just isn’t all that aroused, which is why what could feel very exciting feels like a whole lot of nothing much. We can be aroused by physical stimulus – in other words, by touch – and by intellectual, emotional or hormonal stimulus. Arousal is usually about a combination of those things. We can be aroused by all of these things, or only some of them, or even just one of them at any given time, with or without physical stimulation. For instance, we might become aroused by being kissed or touched, but we may also become aroused simply by the sound of someone’s voice, our own thoughts, sexual memories, or our creative imagination.
It’s important to note that we don’t all experience the same things as sexual. We’re also not all aroused by the same things. What seems sexy or arousing to any one of us differs, sometimes tremendously, from person to person based on our individual personalities, our life experience, our particular body sensitivities, and what we were raised to interpret as sexually or sensually exciting.
But when we are aroused, we all usually have some fairly similar bodily responses.
One of the primary physical responses to arousal is called vasocongestion, which means the increased flow of blood to the genital tissues (and/or breasts and nipples), and the condition of those tissues becoming swollen with blood. Some people call this “blue balls” if and when it feels uncomfortable instead of good, even though it can feel that way sometimes for people of any anatomy. Vasocongestion is how the penis becomes erect, how the clitoris and labia become erect, and the vagina produces a slippery lubrication. As arousal continues for folks with a vagina, the uppermost third of the vaginal canal also expands and loosens a bit, which can result in an emptier or larger feeling inside the vagina.
How can you tell when you or someone else is aroused? Sometimes, we don’t have to ask. It’s seriously obvious. We feel it and express it. But some typical changes, most of which are physical and noticeable, when a person is probably aroused include: • Flushing of the face, lips or chest • More rapid breathing • An elevated pulse • Hard nipples (when we aren’t just cold) and/or slightly fuller breasts • Erection of the penis (though this can also happen without arousal) • A loosening as well as erection (often experienced as a “puffiness”) of the mons, labia and clitoris; the inside of the vagina and the whole vulva becoming more sensitive • Vaginal lubrication or pre-ejaculation • Swelling, tightening or elevation of the testicles • Expansion of the back of the vagina and elevation (pulling back) of the cervix • Tightening of the foreskin or the foreskin moving back • A strong feeling of desire to be sexual • Someone telling you they’re aroused
Plateau
If we continue to be sexually excited, and continue sexual stimulation of some kind that feels good to us, our arousal may then progress to what’s called a plateau phase, where sexual stimulation continues and we are kind of hanging out on the border between arousal and orgasm, being and feeling excited in our bodies and minds. Many people experience this phase as a feeling of being “on the edge.” Our bodies will feel increasingly sensitive, we may get flushed, or feel our heartbeat more strongly. Imagine how you feel after running a lap or jumping up and down: it’s kind of like that.
Orgasm
Orgasm is a brief – even when it feels like longer, it usually only goes on for a handful of seconds – peak of sexual excitement which begins during and follows the plateau phase. While we feel it in our bodies, particularly in and around our pelvis, it’s mostly happening in our brains and central nervious systems. Orgasm for someone with a penis often involves involuntary contractions of the prostate gland, vas deferens and seminal vesicles which usually (but not always!) also causes the ejaculation of semen. Orgasm for those with a vagina often involves a series of involuntary muscle contractions around the vagina that may or may not produce an ejaculate or a vaginal secretion (and when it does, may or may not happen at or around the same time as orgasm). For all people, throughout the whole body there is an increase in muscle tension and relaxation, especially around the pelvis, and orgasm also creates chemical changes in the body in terms of inducing hormones like endorphins. We also know that orgasm quite literally alters our brain: the limbic system (the part of the brain about emotions) is very involved in orgasm: orgasm can tend to trigger emotions and visual and other sensory memories.
It’s really tough to describe what an orgasm feels like. Not only does it differ from person to person, one person can experience any number of different sorts of orgasms that vary with every sexual experience, from day to day. Orgasm can feel like a tickle or a hiccup, but can also feel like a very heavy head rush or wave of dizziness through the whole body. Joani Blank once described it in a sex book for kids as feeling similar to when you really, really have to pee and then finally urinating. Overall, having an orgasm is a bit like being a balloon: your body fills up with pressure, then releases that pressure when it gets to its fullest point, much like a balloon does when it pops.
Resolution
The last stage, called the resolution stage, is a relaxation of the muscles as well as a psychological relaxation and sense of wellness which occurs following orgasm. All the blood that has been pooling in the genitals and other sensitive body parts will drain out slowly, usually causing genitals to return to their “resting” state. If we’ve reached orgasm, resolution can feel like a release of tension and stress in our bodies. The resolution stage can also happen without orgasm: if we simply stop being sexually aroused, our bodies will gradually return themselves to their normal, everyday, non-aroused state. It is perfectly okay for this to happen, and it cannot hurt you in any way.
Other models of sexual response
The last print edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves (by The Boston Women’s Health Collective) added an alternative model to consider. Late sexologist Gina Ogden’s sexual response model expresses the sexual response cycle as “three dancing spheres of energy:” pleasure, orgasm and ecstasy, which people can experience separately, or together in any combination, and which describes sexual response aspects as not just physiological but also as emotional, intellectual and spiritual.
Sex researchers Beverly Whipple and Karen Brash-McGreer developed a circular model of sexual response in which the stages are described as seduction (desire), sensations (arousal and the onset of sexual activities), surrender (orgasm) and reflection (resolution).
There’s also Rosemary Basson’s model (unsurprisingly called the Basson model), which coach Vivian Baruch M. Coins summed up by sayingexternal link, opens in a new tab it, “incorporates the need for intimacy, acknowledges that desire can be responsive (to someone or something else) or spontaneous and may come either before or after arousal. It recognizes that orgasms may contribute to satisfaction but aren’t necessary for satisfaction, and considers relationship factors that may impact the cycle of sexual response as costs or rewards.”
There are more than three models for the sexual response cycle, and the diverse way we all can experience sexual response means that we could actually have millions of different models, but even with these few – and your own experiences – you can likely see the common denominators and understand that the way our bodies respond to sexual experience tends to be more than one-note or a clear, linear progression where every element has the same flavor or leads us to the same place.
The Miracle of Masturbation
Now that you understand those stages, you can try and apply them to yourself. Can you recognize feeling any or all of those things? Think about what sorts of things have brought about feelings of desire for you, and what sorts of things tend to arouse you, based on how your body responds. What sorts of touching do you like? What parts of your body feel sexually good when you or someone else touch them?
Knowing when and how you feel desire and arousal is really important when it comes to your sexuality. It can help you to be aware of when you are and are not actually interested in sex, help to make clear when you should be having sex with a partner and when you should NOT be having sex with a partner. It can also help make you feel more in control of your own body and sexuality.
We do ourselves a disservice if we think our sexuality only starts the first time we engage in sexual activity with a partner. Our sexuality really starts from the day we are born, in many different ways. Our first sexual experiences not only usually are, but really SHOULD be the ones we have all by ourselves. The best way – as well as the safest both physically and emotionally – to start exploring and understanding your sexual responses is with your own two hands. While most people say abstinence is the only safe sex, around here we say that masturbation is the only safe sex, since abstinence is NOT having sex. Masturbation is sex you have with and for yourself, and it is sex.
Betty Dodson, Ph.D., the author of Sex for One, said that, “I used to say masturbation leads to sex, but now I know masturbation IS sex. The next time someone asks ‘When was the first time you had sex?’ the appropriate response would be your first memory of masturbation, not the first time you had [sex with a partner].”
Not only is masturbation a safe and healthy thing to do, it is the very best way to get some concrete ideas about what you do and do not like when it comes to sex, and it’s important if you want to work on enjoying sexual pleasure and on achieving orgasm. It also gives us a chance to figure out a lot of important things about how we feel about sex, sexual pleasure, and being sexual people. Masturbating can be a wonderful, no-risk way to figure out how you feel most comfortable and satisfied being sexual and experiencing the way that makes you and your body feel.
To use masturbation to observe and learn more about your own sexual responses, you can start by making yourself comfortable. Figure out what puts you in a space where you can relax both your mind and your body. It’s important that you are in a physical place where you can BE comfortable. It’s very difficult to feel relaxed and free to be sexual if we think someone may walk in on us. You need privacy. Seek it out. Allow yourself to have whatever sexual fantasies you like. Again, you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings: it’s all in your head, and no one is having sex right now but you. Sexual fantasy is a big part of arousal, and because it’s just in our heads, and not in our actions, all sexual fantasy is okay, as long as you’re okay with it. Observe what happens when you have feelings of sexual desire, and what happens as you start to become aroused. Pay attention to where the borders of different parts of sexual response are for you, like how things feel at first as you’re moving from feeling desire to feeling more aroused, or how it feels in that space our bodies are in before orgasm compared to how it feels during orgasm or after.
Masturbation — just like sex with partners — may or may not bring us to orgasm, and we may not always even want it to. It depends on what we want. Sometimes, it feels good just to get aroused, touch ourselves in ways that feel good, and then stop, and there is nothing physically bad for you or anyone else about any kind of sex without orgasm. If you want to experience sexual pleasure without orgasm, but feel an uncomfortable pressure in your body afterwards (which can happen when vasocongestion from arousal lingers), that can be relieved by some simple exercise or rest, or even with a couple of aspirin or ibuprofen. That pressure feeling, which can sometimes feel achy or throbbing, is the same phenomenon that happens when you have a headache: there is lots of blood trying to get through tiny blood vessels, and it can be uncomfortable unless you can help dilate (open wider) those blood vessels so the blood can flow. Relaxation, physical exercise, or plain old over-the-counter headache remedies help.
On the other hand, if you want to achieve orgasm, you’ll generally just want to go with the flow and keep doing whatever feels good and also keeps you excited. You’ll find that certain ways of touching yourself will trigger more excitement than others. Follow those cues, and just keep doing what works for you. The more you masturbate, the more you’ll get to understand what arouses you, the more you’ll learn to become orgasmic if you aren’t already, and the more you’ll learn and what usually brings about orgasm for you.
Understand that we can’t always orgasm or experience any phase of sexual response when we want to. Our bodies are complex systems in which our genitals don’t work independently. If we’re sick or stressed out, tired, preoccupied, or feel guilty, shameful or upset, it’s hard to feel sexual pleasure, let alone orgasm. Cut yourself a break when that happens. Go do something else you enjoy. Honor what your body is trying to tell you it needs. Just like it’s not a good idea to eat when you aren’t hungry, it’s not a good idea to have any sort of sex when you’re not interested or when your body isn’t up to it. The beauty of sexuality is that it is with you your whole life: you can’t miss out on anything. You have your whole life to enjoy it.
On this note, masturbation is an excellent tool when it comes to finding control and balance with our sexuality. Sometimes, when they’re feeling sexual or sexually aroused, people will say that they just HAVE to go “get laid” or “get some.” When we feel like that – towards no one in particular, but simply feel a high level of desire within ourselves – it’s better to masturbate than to have sex with a partner, where sex should be about MUTUAL needs and about wanting to be with someone else. Masturbation can help us in that way to be in charge of our own sexuality, without pressuring others to get involved. No one else needs for us to feel sexually satisfied – when we feel like we need to have sex, we’re the ones who need something, not someone else. Also, no one is responsible for our sexual pleasure but ourselves.
Masturbation is also a good tool to have on hand if you are abstaining from sex with partners for any reason. It is a good way to give yourself an outlet that can’t hurt anyone, a way to express yourself sexually so that you don’t find yourself doing something you don’t really want to do or aren’t ready for.
Taking it On The Road: Sexual Response With a Partner
If you understand how sexual response works in general and for yourself, and have a good handle on what pleases you and makes you feel good, you’ve got a great start in bringing that to a partnership, if that is something you are interested in doing.
Silly as it may sound, the best analogy I can make to having sex with a partner is that it is nearly identical to learning to dance with a partner. When we dance alone, we feel the rhythm of the music in our bodies, and move as feels natural or right for us. But if we add a partner, sometimes the way we move alone doesn’t always mesh with how THEY move, and we can both end up with a lot of bruises and sore toes.
If we know how we “move” in our own sexuality, it’s easier to work with someone else. The way that we can make our different styles, movements, desires and preferences work together is by communication — in other words, asking each other questions, and sharing what we’re experiencing openly — and by paying attention and being respectful of one another. Sometimes talking about sex with someone else can be a little awkward, especially at first, but it’s okay to be nervous or get the giggles. Things we can ask each other when it comes to sexual response to better understand how to be good partners to each other and best be sexual together are things like:
- What does sexual desire feel like to you? Does your desire feel more spontaneous, more responsive, or is it variable for you?
- When you feel aroused, do you generally like to stay in that space and explore it as long as you can, or move more quickly to the next phase of your sexual response cycle?
- Does plateau — that phase between the start of arousal and orgasm — feel fun, good and exciting to you, uncomfortable or anxious, or some other way, or does it depend on the experience?
- What do you want or need around orgasm, whether that’s about taking the pressure off for anyone to have one, downtime or aftercare after you have one, continuing activity or stopping it, or emotional safety?
- Is there any part of the sexual response cycle you struggle with or feel uncomfortable in? Is there any part that’s your favorite?
Working out sexual response with a partner is similar to working it out with yourself: the only real difference is that you need to talk out loud and you need to take someone else’s feelings, desires, needs and the way sexual response works for them into consideration and then work all that out with all of that in your own body and mind. It also helps a lot not to make assumptions about people’s experiences. Orgasm isn’t everyone’s goal or favorite part of sexual response, for instance, and while desire feels like hunger for some people, for others it feels like something else entirely (and some folks will feel little to no desire for sex with a partner, or period, at all).
Again, think of it just like learning to dance. Do what feels good to you both, where you can both enjoy yourselves. Talk about the steps that you like. If your partner doesn’t know one of them, teach him or her how! You may find you learn things with a partner you didn’t on your own, or that some things feel different than they do when you do them by yourself, and that’s the beauty of sex with a partner. There’s no shame in having something be new or unknown. We all have to learn, and learning can be enjoyable. In fact, if you’ve got it all going, every single time you have sex – no matter what you do or do not do – with yourself, or with someone else, should be a new and wonderful experience.
Sexual Response Q&A
What is multiple orgasm, and can only people with vaginas experience it?
Multiple orgasm is when someone has more than one orgasm in one sex session – as in, you and yours go to bed for the afternoon, you do this sex activity, then maybe another half hour later, have two orgasms, that’s a multiple. OR, in the process of one given sexual activity, a person has more than one orgasm: that kind of multiple can feel like orgasms that happen one right after the other, or even like it’s hard to tell when you’re experiencing one or more than one, and when you’re just feeling so good that you couldn’t say for sure what’s orgasm and what’s not. If you have an orgasm, and you then either take a little break and stimulate yourself again, or keep going with your stimulation and have another, you have also experienced multiple orgasm.
It isn’t unique to people with vulvas, though it is more common for people with vulvas rather than penises to be multiply orgasmic, both due to the lack of a refractory period which people with a penis often need, and/or because the type of sex many people with penises have is solely or mostly just about stimulus to the penis only.
How come I can’t orgasm when my boyfriend and I are having PIV intercourse? What is wrong with me?
For the answer to that, take a look at: The Great No-Orgasm-from-Intercourse Conundrum.
Why didn’t my boyfriend orgasm from oral sex?
No one sexual activity brings about orgasm for everyone, or for any given person all the time: something which brings us to orgasm on one day may not bring us to orgasm the next. Talk to your boyfriend: ask him how he’s feeling, what he enjoys, and what feels good to him, and think about more than just orgasm. Again, sex isn’t just about orgasm, and thank goodness, because orgasm only lasts for a few seconds, and while it can feel good, it’s rarely the most enriching part of sex or sexual response. When people try and practice sex with orgasm as a goal – rather than pleasure – they often make orgasm harder to achieve rather than easier.
How can I make my partner orgasm?
You can’t. But your partner can help you to do the things with them that often bring them to orgasm by showing you or talking about what things they enjoy, how they like to be touched, and so forth. The best thing to do if you want to please your partner is to focus on their pleasure, not an impending orgasm. If everyone is feeling good, it’s much less of a big deal whether they orgasm or not.
Is it bad for you to get sexually aroused and not orgasm? Is it bad for people to abstain from sex or be celibate their whole lives, or even for a little while?
No and no. Sometimes getting highly sexually aroused and not reaching orgasm, especially if you have been stimulating your genitals, can be uncomfortable, a little or a lot, like I talked about earlier in this piece, but it isn’t harmful.
The same goes for sex of any sort. Even if we don’t masturbate (and most people do), we won’t get sick or unhealthy, and our bodies don’t store up sperm or sexual fluids. Our bodies constantly replace dead cells of all types, including blood, sperm, vaginal fluids, and most other kinds of cells we have to keep the level of functional cells constant. You don’t need to masturbate in order to get rid of “excess” semen or sperm any more than you need to bleed out excess blood, because there is no such thing.
What’s bad for us is to have sex when we don’t want to, or to try and force our bodies or those of our partners to orgasm or have other kinds of sexual responses when it or we just aren’t in the right state.
Is sex better when partners orgasm at the same time?
Not necessarily, and most sex therapists advise couples against aiming for simultaneous orgasm.
Trying to have sex like synchronized swimming isn’t such a great idea because it makes it harder for both people to focus on simply enjoying themselves, therefore making any orgasm at all more difficult, let alone doing it at the same time. When it happens on its own, it’s pretty neat and is a very nice moment, but it’s more likely to happen on its own, without trying, than to be forced. More times than not, when people try and force it, one or both partners ends up faking an orgasm, which sets a bad sexual pattern and isn’t any fun for anyone.
What if I just CAN’T orgasm?
Then you just can’t for right now, and that’s totally okay.
Again, sex or sexual response isn’t just about orgasm, but ideally about pleasure, and it’s hard to experience pleasure when you’re trying to get past the finish line with little care for running the race. You know how people say “It isn’t if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game?” Same holds true for sex: when it’s something that is satisfying for most folks, it’s when it’s about process, not product.
To make orgasm more likely, you can make sure that you’re only getting involved in sexual activities when your mind and body really want to. If you aren’t desiring sex, or aren’t getting aroused – for whatever reason – you aren’t likely to orgasm. Maybe you aren’t in the mood. Maybe you’re tired, or maybe you’ve overstimulated your body. If you’re having trouble with a partner, maybe you’re not communicating what you need, or maybe there is some stress in the relationship that has you preoccupied. Maybe you just aren’t there yet at this phase of your sexual life.
Remember that sex isn’t about getting points or prestige, or about being “mature” or impressing anyone. You can’t do it “wrong” if you’re respecting yourself and others, practicing it safely and sanely, and you and your partner (if you have one) are enjoying one another. No one is a “sex master,” and thank goodness, or else sex wouldn’t be very exciting or enriching. Sex and sexual response is a normal and common part of life, and like the rest of our lives, is something that is always growing and changing alongside us as we grow and change. We get to know our sexual selves and sexual responses the same way we get to know all of the other aspects of ourselves, and that isn’t something we can or should rush – it’s what we’ve got our whole life to do.
