What to do if you cannot orgasm during intercourse: How to beat the "cannot orgasm during sex" blues!

Comment should be made about the practical implications of the relatively minimal role that sheer amount of sexual practice (as in marital intercourse) has been found to play in orgasm consistency. Years of marital intercourse seem to have rather unimpressive effects on orgasm attainment. It will also be recalled that measures of the elaborateness of the sexual stimulation delivered to women were found to be uncorrelated with sexual responsiveness. For example, number of intercourse positions and length of foreplay had only chance correlations with orgasm consistency. Beyond a moderate level of knowledge concerning primary erogenous zones, the factors facilitating sexual arousal seem to be largely interpersonal, involving feelings of intimacy, closeness, and dependability. Women with orgasm difficulties may irrationally criticize their sex partners for not being sufficiently expert to stimulate them properly.

Many questions about female sexuality are still not really understood. These questions include:

1. Cross-cultural studies are badly needed in which orgasm consistencies of women raised under different conditions can be compared. Special attention should be given to looking at cultures that differ in how much they try to instill anxiety in girls about loss of love and love objects as a means of maintaining control over them. This would provide an opportunity for directly evaluating the formulation that concern about object loss plays a significant role in these women finding they cannot orgasm easily. 

2. How much influence do childhood factors such as the influence of the father have on a woman's ability to reach orgasm? When a woman cannot reach orgasm, cannot orgasm during intercourse, she is much more likely not to have experienced her father as a dependable love object than a woman who reaches orgasm easily.

3. A related question that needs to be probed is the possible role of the male partner in a woman's orgasm capacity. Her feelings about his dependability as a love object may mean she cannot orgasm. A study on this would probably have to be carried out on married couples. The attributes of the partner reflecting his dependability would be correlated with his woman's orgasm behavior. One would want to evaluate the partner with respect to traits such as conscientiousness and ability to identify with his woman, and one would also want to ascertain how much confidence she had in him.

Parallel to such inquiries, it would be informative to have a sample of women keep "diaries" in which they would record how often they achieved orgasm over a period of time and simultaneously, for the same period, report the major events and feeling states in their lives. Various questions could be investigated. Does orgasm consistency decline when the partner is planning to be away from home for a while? Do crises in the family, such as illness of children or financial difficulties, make it more likely she cannot orgasm? If a woman loses one of her close friends does this adversely affect her orgasm response by increasing her uncertainty about the dependability of objects? Does successful achievement influence a woman's orgasm potential? Do periods of sexual deprivation increase subsequent orgasm potential? A personal account: I just cannot orgasm!

4. Detailed and finely etched reports must be secured from a variety of women concerning the perceptual changes that occur as excitement builds up to orgasmic levels. This information is necessary, first of all, to gain a better understanding of how sexual excitement diminishes the woman's perceptual hold on objects. Furthermore, it might prove of value in helping to develop practical procedures that would enable women with orgasm difficulties to recognize and adapt to experiential "object fading."

5. Controlled evaluations are needed of possible treatment procedures for increasing orgasm consistency in women who have response difficulties. Treatments ranging from the simple to the complex should be appraised. For example, one could compare joint counseling designed to reduce the frequency with which a woman's partner displays behavior demonstrating his lack of dependability (such as being away from home frequently) with a more complex procedure that focuses on the history of a woman's relationships with her father and the fantasies she entertains about his lack of dependability.

6. Detailed descriptions and ratings need to be obtained of the manner in which women experience their male sex partners in the clitoral-versus vaginal-stimulation situation. How much do the men know about how to give a woman an orgasm? To what extent do sexual techniques and positions, and knowledge of female sexual anatomy and female sexual behavior, affect a man's ability to give her an orgasm?

7. Is it possible to find cultures that clearly differ in the degree to which women prefer vaginal versus clitoral stimulation? If so, what are the differences between them in the way they raise girls? Do they place contrasting amounts of emphasis on how much a girl is really an individual who should be in charge of her own body? Does this reflect whether she can or can't reach orgasm or induce an ownership of the position "I can't reach orgasm"?

8. Much more has to be learned about whether clitoral-vaginal preferences are modified by sexual experience. Is there a shift toward greater vaginal preference in the average relationship as a woman has an increasing amount of experience with vaginal stimulation? The fact there seems to be significant correlation between length of marriage and clitoral-vaginal preference would argue against this possibility. However, no information was obtained from individual women as to whether they had observed a change in clitoral-vaginal orientation over the course of marriage or relationship.

9. Another penetrating question is whether the average woman has observed her clitoral-vaginal preference to change with different sex partners. Can one man bring her to orgasm while another leaves her unable to orgasm? That is, does a woman find that she is quite responsive to vaginal stimulation with one man and unresponsive with another? If so, what attributes characterize one partner as compared to the other?

Relatedly, there should be a study of the partners of women who differ in clitoral - vaginal orientation. Do such partners differ in their attitudes about feminine autonomy and the need for a woman to "fuse" with her partner? Many other problems could be mentioned that are important to clarify and are in need of investigation. The following are a few illustrations of the diversity that come to mind: We need to know more about the conditions that increase or decrease intercourse rates. Is intercourse used as a means of narcissistic enhancement at times when life events are threatening self-esteem? It would be of theoretical import to find out whether a woman's sexual responsiveness is related to any aspect of the sexual behavior of her parents (for example, their intercourse rate) and more specifically the orgasm consistency of her mother. One wonders whether low or high sexual responsiveness shows up consistently in families over several generations. What does the non-orgasmic woman derive from her sexual contacts? What kinds of sensations and experiences does she selectively highlight in order to make intercourse satisfying?