By Gwenn Harper

When I was younger and less experienced it didn’t occur to me that I was having deficient sex. It thought it was fun to be naked with someone else and as for orgasms, well that was something I took care of on my own. In private. And I was happy. But as I got older and my partners more sophisticated, a trend has started to emerge -- their all consuming need for me to orgasm. Correction. Their need for me to orgasm as a direct result of them being inside of me. Now, instead of having a bit of mindless fun I have a directive, a clearly defined goal to achieve and to be honest, it hasn’t been going too well.

Denial

“That was great.”

“What do you mean? Of course I did!”

“No, seriously, it was great.”

Most people expect cuddling and soft words after sex. Or at least some well-earned sleep. For me, it’s show time and I’m about as relaxed as a hostile witness about to take the stand.  Now, I appreciate my boyfriend’s (we’ll call him X) interest in my happiness but X’s concern quickly becomes wounded pride. He simply can't understand. How can I not have had an orgasm when his other lovers always did? Every time? At which point I mentally congratulate the superior acting jobs done by my predecessors.

Because that’s what it turns into. No amount of reassurance on my part can convince him I’m satisfied. It doesn’t matter that I’m able to enjoy myself without the big finish. No, it’s just not “real” unless he's made me orgasm. And so starts my homage to every porn or European art house flick I’ve ever seen. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. With only a few missteps my performances have become more nuanced and convincing over the years. But it requires a great deal of attention and I wind up focusing on performing instead of on what I’m actually feeling, therefore creating a vicious circle of faking an orgasm because I’m not having one which I’m not having because I’m so busy faking one. This naturally leads to:

Anger

This is a wide net covering many, many aspects of my sexual life. For instance, anger at myself for feeling like such a failure in bed. Anger at my boyfriend for needing to satisfy me -- according to his standards.

Who’s at fault? If I’m going to take an empowered stance then I have to take responsibility and say me. I shouldn’t be letting anybody push me out of myself. I shouldn’t be so worried about taking care of X emotionally that I deny myself during what has to be life’s most intimate and primal moment of self-satisfaction. And yet, there I am focused on the other so exclusively I’m not paying attention to myself at all. I may as well be giving him a haircut or a back rub that's how out of my body I am at times. Case in point: I got a call once from a poll-taker. I forget what it was this man so badly needed my two cents on, but I felt charitable enough to take the time to rate my agreement from one to five as he read out statements from his notes. It was on about the fifth or sixth question when my boyfriend at the time emerged – naked – from my bedroom wondering what the hell was keeping me. I’d managed to completely forget I was having sex.

You’re thinking, “Who does that?” Actually, it’s easier than you think. Just before the call my then boyfriend had been getting worked up that I wasn’t enjoying myself "enough" and had been analyzing my reactions to such an extent that the fun of the moment had long since died off.  Sex had morphed once again into a carefully timed routine aimed at making HIM feel okay. At least with the polltaker my opinions mattered.

And then there’s the anger I feel towards society at large. When you aren’t having penile induced orgasms it seems that everybody else in the world is. They write songs about this, make movies about this, print books and host dedicated chat rooms about this. And there I am, the lone, still being in a world apparently shuddering its way through the universe in one, continually ongoing orgasm. What’s a girl got to do to get off?

Bargaining

I’m Catholic, so it’s only natural that prayer, at some point, be brought into the equation. Once, while having sex, I prayed the entire time to Archangel Raphael for an orgasm. This isn’t as weird as you think when you realize that, one, Raphael is the angel of healing and two, the Raphael I pray to looks remarkably like Michael Fassbender. I made promises to eat better, pray more, donate to charity, if he’d just, only, let me stay focused enough to, just this once, cause it’s almost, I can tell, and there! no, it’s, wait… No. No, no, it’s not, yeah that… didn’t work.

A few years ago I tried to imply a deal with God whereby my muted sexuality would be worth it if He would bless me with tremendous talent. I figured I would forego having sex altogether and simply channel the excess energy into riches and fame… Have you ever heard of me? Yeah, I didn’t think so. You can see how well that panned out. Plus, I was too distracted from constantly thinking about sex to accomplish anything.

I’ve also bargained with boyfriend X hoping to just let the orgasm matter slide for a while. He is unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, far too hip to my ways to be fooled by a(n) (awesome) performance.

For a while we cycled between the bargaining and the anger stages. X was angry with himself for, as he saw it, failing me. I was angry at him for turning something fun into a kind of test that I felt like I was flunking before we’d even started, and I was angry at myself for even having such a ridiculous problem to begin with. It's embarrassing after years of focusing exclusively on my partners to say out loud what it was I wanted. And for that matter, did I even know what I wanted?

Depression

It’s a sad state of affairs when you realize you have the sexual sophistication of the average 10th grader. How can an otherwise successful woman let such a huge part of her life go fallow for so long? What was wrong with me? This went beyond the Catholic thing; it felt like a fundamental flaw in my character, in the blueprint of who I am. Again, I had this feeling that I was alone in the great rocking van of the sky.

Logically of course I know that many other women go through what I go through. But it doesn’t feel like it. And even though I’m confident and outspoken in other parts of my life, having a sit down with my nearest and dearest about my lack of partner assisted orgasms juuuust isn’t something I can do with great ease. But I have started to talk to a few close girlfriends after many, many, many, many, many, many drinks and finally opened up on my big secret.

“So do you, you know?”

Completely blank stare from friend.

“Huh?”

“Do you, you know…when, with like sex, when…you know!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Do you have…” I make hand gestures that in no way relate to what I’m trying to say but look more like I’m doing some cracked out ‘wheels on the bus’ thing.

“Do I have? Gwenn, are you trying to say ‘orgasm’?”

At which point I walk away.

“Get back here!”

And I do, eventually, come back. Because I’m finally at a stage in life where my embarrassment over things is not enough to stop me, is second to my desire to finally enjoy sex to the fullest extent. Which brings me to:

Acceptance

I accept that having an orgasm from penetration is something I'm going to have to work towards but I no longer accept my boyfriend's theory that one way is better than another or that I even need to have an orgasm for sex to be satisfying.

I accept that I have blocks I want to get past, only now I want to get past them to satisfy myself and not someone else's vision of what satisfying sex looks like.

After far too long I’m finally reclaiming sex and having it on my terms. And while progress hasn’t happened overnight it is happening. Who knows, pretty soon I may understand what all those songs are about.