Why Do Women Have Difficulty Reaching Orgasm During Intercourse?

You may not realize how much influence our mind and psychology exerts over our sex lives - especially the difficulty of reaching orgasm during intercourse. Many, many psychological reactions affect our sexual performance for better or worse, and even the smallest thing can create difficulties which we may not have full awareness of, but which cause trouble in achieving orgasm during sex play or sexual intercourse. Many cases of partial - and even complete - impotence in men are the result of psychological factors, but anorgasmia in women is probably the condition which is most affected by relationship issues and other psychological blocks. These fall difficulties into two groups: those difficulties around reaching orgasm based on the relationship, and troubles around orgasm which have nothing to directly to do with the relationship.

Consider Helen, who had been very happily married, so she said, to her husband, Tom, for three years. For the duration of their marriage, she had experienced only a few orgasms during sex - mostly in the first six months of the relationship. She was twenty-nine when they got married and she had changed her life completely after they settled down together -- in fact, she had given up her career when they married. They had enjoyed sex about twenty times before they married, and they had never failed to enjoy sex and both reached orgasm easily.

'When I think about it,' she said, 'sex was good fun for a few months, but gradually I realized my sexual desire was getting less and less, and my difficulties with reaching orgasm were growing all the time. After a year, no matter what Tom did during foreplay, even if it lasted an hour or more, I never got sexually aroused, and when we actually fucked, or tried oral sex, or mutual masturbation, there was never the prospect of an orgasm. In all other ways, we were happy, though. Even so, I've come to believe Tom is beginning to lose interest, and I think he's having sex with someone else, and because I still care about him - in fact, I love him - I've come to you.'

'Why so long before you came?' I asked her. She replied: 'After about a year with no orgasms at all, we did go to see our doctor. I suggested this, though it was no help at all, because Tom was blaming himself, saying he was a sexual failure, and becoming so frustrated that he could not take me to orgasm that he was really irritable. We nearly always finished sex with a row. The doctor told us this happened to a lot of couples, and our troubles would work out with time. Then I got pregnant, we had a baby, Mark, and still everything isn't all right. In fact, sexually and in the relationship, things are getting worse.' But by now her problem was obvious.

"How are you managing with the baby?" I asked. She looked at me and said rather aggressively, 'Pretty well. Why do you ask?' I replied: 'I wondered whether a baby might be too much for you, restricting your life in so many ways and not having your career?'  She looked thoughtful: 'He does make extra work, naturally, and I've always found housework rather dull.' Now I was sure I was going down the right lines. Helen's trouble in reaching orgasm during sex with Tom, I believed, had its origins in the fact that she had chosen, perhaps not entirely willingly, to give up her job when they got married. When I suggested she missed her work and would be pleased to go back to it, she agreed immediately. When I suggested her difficulties with orgasm during sex were caused by her resentment towards Tom and the baby, not least because she saw them as responsible for her giving up her job, she was initially doubtful, but gradually came to agree with me. Sex was not fulfilling, she didn't give herself completely to Tom, kept her emotional distance, and did not give him the satisfaction of reaching orgasm - though not a conscious strategy, this certainly reflected her lack of connection to him, both sexually and emotionally.

While lots of women have no orgasm during sex, there are plenty of ways to learn how to become fully orgasmic. In some cases, of course, relationship issues lie at the heart of the problem - sometimes a woman cannot orgasm during sex because she is resentful, withholding her love, or simply cannot invest her trust in the man she is with. She may feel used, or may not believe he loves her. Depending on her system of values, all of these causes may prevent her knowing how to reach orgasm during sex. Helen found it very hard to believe that unconsciously she was deliberately withholding her orgasm because of her resentment, but she eventually came to see that there might be something in this idea. A practical solution to her difficulties was harder to find because the baby was so young. Helen did not wish to take a job immediately, but I thought it would help if they could agree that as soon as their domestic circumstances permitted she might take a job. Tom found this challenging, thinking as he did that a man should support his wife, but he adapted quickly enough and realized that for a happy partner - not to mention a good sex life, he would have to stop being so controlling.

Therefore they agreed Helen should take a job when she wanted to do so, even if this was not for a year or two. I did not think Helen would have an orgasm the first time they had sex; I thought it might take a little time. It was obvious, however, that though she had unconsciously been extremely resentful, she did indeed love Tom, and the change in their sex lives was remarkable. I suggested that if possible they let grandmother babysit and have a sexy weekend to themselves. Early on Monday morning Helen phoned me and related her exciting news: 'It's wonderful,' she said. 'We hardly stopped enjoying sex all weekend, and I reached orgasm every time. I can't tell you how often - I had orgasm after orgasm! I don't know if I'll ever go back to work now, because a great sex life makes everything else seem less important!

So it's an illustration of how unconscious emotions and feelings about your relationship can affect the pleasures of sex and cause difficulty for the woman in reaching orgasm. And, as you may expect, resentment against the partner is only one of the causes of psychologically induced anorgasmia. Even though complete absence of sexual desire and orgasm is rare, anorgasmia is not at all uncommon. With anorgasmia the woman experiences sexual desire and responds to it with sexual arousal to a greater or lesser extent. The common factor in all anorgasmia is that a woman never reaches orgasm during sex with her partner.

The old fashioned word "frigid" means that a woman never reaches orgasm, but it also implies the absence of sex drive and any kind of sexual arousal. But this is not common: it corresponds to complete erectile dysfunction and absence of sexual desire in men. Sometimes this is caused by physical conditions - such as hormonal abnormalities, and in particular the absence of any testosterone in a woman's body - but it's usually psychological in origin.

The level of testosterone in a woman's blood stream is far lower than it is in a man's, but even so it is produced by the adrenals and it has a role in controlling sexual desire. Hormone replacement therapy for women may well include testosterone to increase libido. Another physical cause of complete lack of sexual desire is dyspareunia or painful intercourse. This is attributable in many cases to  vaginismus, a condition where the sphincter muscle which guards the entrance to the vaginas closes so tightly that penetration is impossible. A number of women with dyspareunia can accept penetration but not thrusting, and as soon as the penis starts to move, the vaginal muscle sphincter clamps down on the penis very strongly. Vaginismus can also be caused by fear (often resulting from past trauma) or pain induced by small lesions of the labia or vagina. in the next section, how to have an orgasm during intercourse, we explain the information you need to easily enjoy orgasms.