Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms (2 page)

So where, amid all this other anatomy, is the g-spot?

Let me start with a little historical and biological back-ground, and then I’ll tell you where to find it. Feel free to skip this part if you just want to know WHERE THE

THING IS.

The g-spot is not well understood by scientists, so all I can give you is the theory that I think offers the best explanation of what the g-spot is, where it is, how to find it, and what to do with it:

History: “G” stands for “Grafenberg, the gynecologist who “discovered” the spot. In 1950 he wrote an aca-demic article about the role of the urethra in female sexual response, particularly with regard to orgasm through vaginal penetration. The “g-spot” was named by researchers Beverly Whipple and John Perry, 30

years after Grafenberg’s original article was published.

What it is: It’s your prostate… sorta. For every part that a man has, a woman has an equivalent part, or

“homologue.” It’s all the same stuff, just organized in a different way. The penis is the homologue of the clitoris, the scrotum is the homologue of the outer labia, The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 17

and so on. Make sense so far? Well, the prostate is the homologue of the urethral sponge, a spongy body of tissue that wraps around the urethra inside a woman’s body.

The prostate in men is known to have two functions: It swells up around the man’s urethra when he’s aroused, preventing him from urinating while he’s turned on.

It also produces seminal fluid, the whitish liquid in which sperm travel.

The urethral sponge, we therefore assume, has the equivalent functions in women. It does, in fact, swell with arousal, closing off the urethra. Ever tried to pee immediately after orgasm? You need to take a few deep breaths and relax in order to dissipate the sexual tension that keeps the urethral sponge swollen. Whether or not the urethral sponge also produces some kind of fluid is less certain. There are some who suggest that this is the source of female ejaculation, a relatively rare but normal and healthy phenomenon where a woman ejaculates a large amount of fluid that is definitely not urine but also definitely not vaginal secretions. It looks for all the world like it’s coming from the urethra, but it’s not. (More about female ejaculation in the

“Advanced” section at the end.)

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms How to find it: The urethral sponge is sandwiched between the urethra and the vagina. It’s easiest to find when you’re already aroused. Because the tissue swells with arousal, the g-spot becomes more sensitive and more pronounced with arousal. So get yourself warmed up with whatever clitoral or other non-penetrative stimulation gets you warm and wet. Then insert a finger about two joints, and feel along the anterior (front – the side closer to your belly button) wall of the vagina. You’ll feel either a little nubby or an area where the texture is different from where it is everywhere else.

g-spot

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The vagina does not go straight up and down. For most women, it is angled toward the abdomen. Pay attention to that angle as you’re feeling for the g-spot. It will be a crucial factor in generating effective stimulation later.

If you put pressure there, you might feel like you have to pee. That’s because you’re essentially pressing against the urethra, and your brain is interpreting that sensation as a need to pee. If you pee beforehand, you can relax knowing that your bladder is empty. Also, remember the g-spot swells with arousal, making it impossible to pee even when you want to. It’s
really
not likely that you’ll pee.

It might also be that pressure against the g-spot just hurts. If that’s true for you, there are a couple things that might be causing the pain. The first is the g-spot itself. You might be one of the women not wired for pleasurable g-spot stimulation. Don’t worry—there are plenty of other ways for you to have an orgasm.

It might also be that the pain is related not the to g-spot but to penetration itself. Were you lubricated sufficiently that your finger slid easily into your vagina? Friction burns and can cause irritation. Or you might have long fingernails poking into your vaginal 20

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms wall. Cut your nails down below your fingertip and file them smooth.
Very
important.

A last source of pain might be inflammation or infection of the vagina. Yeast infections, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and other imbalances of the vaginal flora can cause burning, itching, and irritation. If your ladyship is not in tip-top condition, this will interfere with your enjoyment of your sexuality. If you’re not sure about your health status, get ye to a gyno.

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Chapter Three: The 5 Rules of the

G-Spot

1. Pee first. I’ll be explaining the anatomy of the g-spot later, but a crucial rule of g-spot stimulation is to pee first. This is mostly for psychological reasons: When you’re very aroused, it’s very,
very
difficult to pee, but stimulation of the g-spot sometimes feels like needing to pee. If you know your bladder is empty, you can relax.

2. Vibrators and toys are your friends. This is no time for shyness or inhibition! Since most women take longer and require more intense stimulation in order to have orgasms from vaginal rather than clitoral stimulation, it’s perfectly acceptable—in fact, it’s encouraged!—to use accessories to generate that high level of arousal. I recommend acrylic or glass toys, since they provide firm penetration.

3. Take your time. The build-up required for orgasm stimulated by the g-spot is, for most women, long and slow and intense. Don’t worry about taking

“too long”—the longer it takes, the bigger the orgasm.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 4. Stop if it hurts. Learning about the g-spot and what it can do for you is recreational. You can have a perfectly satisfactory and happy sex life without ever doing anything with it—and a lot of women do. Your decision to learn more about this intense new kind of stimulation is like a daily jogger deciding to run her first mini-marathon. It takes something you already know and love to a profound new level—but it is a hobby, something you do for fun and pleasure, not because you have to. G-spot stimulation isn’t for everyone. If it hurts, stop.

5. If at first you don’t succeed… change your definition of success. For most women, mastering g-spot stimulation takes practice. If you make orgasm your goal, chances are you’ll fall short of that goal and that might feel demoralizing. Instead, make the creation of intense and pleasurable new experiences your goal. You’ll hit the mark every time. Remember, it’s not a competition and you are not being rated. The best way to improve your sex life is to enjoy the sex you’re having.

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Chapter Four: How Arousal Works

Let’s talk for a minute about how sexual arousal works.

I’m going to describe sexual physiology in two different ways. First I’ll describe it according to the most widely used model of human sexual response. Then I’ll describe it in terms of a much newer theory, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but which can be
very
useful in understanding the whys and wherefores of sexual response.

In general, sexual arousal is the process of generating sufficient sexual tension so that your body crosses its threshold and releases all that tension in the explosive sensations of orgasm. The traditional model for thinking about this process is Masters and Johnson’s four-phase model.

Excitement. The first phase is all about the rapid accumulation of tension. As you are stimulated, the blood vessels in your vagina and clitoris relax and fill with blood. Your heart rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure rise, and the erectile tissue all over your body (nipples, earlobes, lips, wings of the nostrils) swells and darkens.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms Plateau. The second phase isn’t physiologically distinct from excitement, but a lot of people will recognize the experience of the plateau. It’s a sort of leveling off at a high level of arousal, following the ascent through Excitement. During the plateau phase, your body is building up adequate sexual tension to cross the threshold to orgasm. As you approach orgasm, your abdomen and thighs get tense, your hands and feet clench uncontrollably, and your breathing becomes uneven, even gasping.

Orgasm. The third phase is what most people consider the highlight of the sexual experience. Orgasm is the explosive release of sexual tension. Honestly, no one is really sure why we have them. Most scientists assume that orgasm is there to reward men for having sex, which means they’ll have more sex, which increases their chances of reproducing, but that’s just an as-sumption; we’re still waiting for the science.

Resolution. The fourth phase is the post-orgasmic dénouement. This is the time when a man’s erection is gone and won’t be back for a while (unless he’s 18 years old). For women, it’s more complex. In fact, for some women the first orgasm is just the start. Other women have a more male-like experience of wanting to sleep.

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You can use this time for after-play or sleep, depending on what feels right for you and your partner.

The dual control of sexual response breaks the sexual response system into two parts:

Sexual Excitation System (SES). SES is the system that responds to sexually relevant stimuli in the environment, from visual stimuli to tactile stimuli and everything in between.

Sexual Inhibition System (SIS). SIS is the brakes system. Research so far shows that it’s likely there are two different SIS systems, one that responds to fear of performance failure (erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, etc.) and another that responds to fear of performance consequences (STI transmission, unwanted pregnancy, social consequences).

Both men and women have both of these systems.

Sexual arousal is a process of “disinhibition”—it’s not so much “getting turned on” as it is “turning off the offs.” So you can think about arousal as two equally important processes: providing gradually increasing stimulation for the SES, and getting rid of everything the SIS might respond to, which includes both physical 26

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms and emotional risks. It’s like putting your foot on the gas and taking it off the brakes.

On average, women tend to have more SIS (more sensitive brakes) and less SES (less sensitive gas) compared to men, though there is lots of variability. This means that, in general, women require more stimulation to become aroused, and that women are more sensitive to all kinds of threats—including physical, emotional, and social.

If you’re a woman who has trouble having an orgasm or always takes an hour to have an orgasm, you might be a woman with relatively low levels of SES and high levels of SIS. For you, it takes a lot of stimulation to activate SES sufficiently to generate a really high level of sexual tension, and it only takes a little bit of anxiety or stress for your body to hit the brakes. If g-spot stimulation is pleasurable for you, it might be a good way to explore your orgasmic potential, because it vastly increases the intensity of stimulation.

Orgasm happens when you generate a sufficient level of sexual tension in your body to cross a threshold, when all that tension releases explosively. For those familiar with the sensations of clitoral orgasm, you might recognize these signs: erratic heart rate and The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 27

breathing, muscle spasms, waves of pleasure, and the characteristic pulsing of the pubococcygeal muscle at the mouth of the vagina. For women, the whole thing takes something like 10 seconds. For men, it’s more like 5.

Orgasms generated by g-spot stimulation tend to feel different from clitoral orgasms. In general, women say that they don’t experience the same rhythmic pulses that accompany the standard clitoral orgasm. Orgasm from g-spot stimulation is a bigger, whole-body kind of experience, where the sensation fills you up until you don’t believe you could possibly feel more, and then you do and it fills up your entire body again. You might have a harder time identifying the beginning and end of a g-spot orgasm because often there is a long, slow approach, and a long, slow orgasm, with a long, slow denouement.

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The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms Chapter Five: Why It Sometimes Feels Like You Have to Pee During Sex

Earlier I mentioned that when you put pressure on the g-spot, particularly during intercourse, you may feel like you need to pee.