I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide (31 page)

8

Let’s Hear It for the Boys: men and female orgasm

Female orgasm can
be a challenging subject if you’re a guy. American culture says guys are supposed to know what they’re doing sexually. The perfect man supposedly knows how to make any woman melt with pleasure, while having an even better time himself. Men are supposed to make the first move, lean in for the first kiss, divine the perfect moment to start removing clothing, and know all the right techniques—even from their very first sexual experience or two. The trouble is, where are they supposed to learn how? Though it’s a subject many men would find valuable, “How to Help a Woman Have an Orgasm” is definitely not covered in high school sex ed.

Without much useful information from schools or parents (many of whom are terrified to discuss sex with their kids), guys are generally left to figure things out on their own—a little extracurricular activity, if you will. Besides personal experience, a lot of guys learn about sex from porn, which is easier to access now than ever before in human history. Ninety-seven percent of our male survey-takers said they’ve watched porn. (An additional 2 percent said they preferred not to answer the question, so maybe we should make that 99 percent?) Regardless of your opinion about the politics or morality of porn, as a source of information about sex,
it leaves people wildly misinformed. If a male alien came to Earth and porn were his only source of information about human sex, he’d probably conclude something along these lines:

1.
Sex is something that generally happens spontaneously between strangers.

2.
Pizza delivery boys get more action than the average guy. Lucky for the pizza guys, most women answer the door naked.

3.
Women scream with pleasure no matter how you touch them. No one is concerned about disturbing the neighbors.

4.
Mind-reading is a standard form of communication, given that no one ever talks about what they like or don’t like.

a note to female readers

THIS CHAPTER IS about men—people who have male bodies or were socialized male—who have sex with women (which is not all men, of course), because of the specific challenges facing these guys. Because of biological differences including anatomy and hormones, female bodies tend to be a more foreign territory for male partners than for female ones. Men are also socialized differently than women, and grow up with different expectations about sex, which can affect the relationship dynamics between men and women.

While we’re focusing on men in this chapter, we also know that people of any gender or sexual orientation might learn a thing or two in these pages, so we welcome non-male readers. Plenty of women have female partners who may identify as lesbian, bisexual, queer, or something else. That’s why we use the word “partner” throughout the book, because most of the time, the topics we’re talking about could apply to a woman’s partner who’s either male or female. If you’re interested,
chapter 9
is specifically about girl-girl sex.

5.
Women frequently say things like, “Oh, big boy, do me now!” Women never say, “Ow, you’re on my hair.”

6.
People rarely, if ever, use condoms. When condoms are used they just magically “appear.” No one ever pauses the action to put one on.

7.
Once intercourse starts, kissing stops.

8.
Men are expected to come on women’s faces—women love that!

9.
Humans prefer to have sex to really bad music.

10.
There’s no such thing as love, intimacy, sweetness, sensuality, tenderness, cuddling, or emotional connection.

We cringe to imagine the scene if this alien ever found himself alone with a human female.

Fortunately, most guys know this is a far cry from reality. It’s easy to conclude that what works in porn often doesn’t work in real life. The challenge is to figure out what
does
work with real, live human beings. Unlike the overly-tanned, acrobatic, emotionless pseudo-sex in XXX downloads, this book is about the real thing. If you’re a guy who hasn’t already checked out these sections, we recommend you read up on:

a lot of men have told us this joke:

Question:
How can you tell if a woman had an orgasm?

Answer:
Who cares?

So, just in case you need them:

Four Excellent Reasons a Guy Should Care if a Woman Has an Orgasm:

1
. If you’d like her to sleep with you again.

2
. If you’d like her to tell her friends, “[Your name here] is amazing in bed.”

3
. If you’d like your wife or long-term partner to feel like she has a satisfying sex life with you.

4
. Because a woman having an orgasm is really hot. Even more so if you helped.

do you and porn need to see less of each other?

MORE AND MORE guys are telling us that after watching tons of porn—with its “hot lesbian action,” enhanced body parts, and loud, easily-obtained female orgasms—the sight of one normal, naked human female in their bed is practically disappointing.

After watching porn, partner sex became different to me. Unless my girlfriend became the porn image, my penis stopped responding and I got turned off. Fantasies of the porn chicks dominated my head.

As a connoisseur of “perfect” porn, it’s sometimes a problem in that I prefer to think about the women I see online rather than my girlfriend. It generates a lot of guilt and tension.

Some of these guys have gone on a self-imposed cold-turkey porn hiatus. If you find that porn is interfering with your ability to enjoy your
real
sex life, you might consider a similar “trial separation.” To do so, set a number of months for which you’ll allow yourself no porn access at all. Then pay attention to how it affects your thoughts and reactions to real partners, and decide at the end of that time what role you want porn to play in your life. Men who’ve tried it tell us they’ve been pleased with the results!

○the clitoris, page 16

○the G-spot, page 150

○oral sex, page 90

○intercourse, page 115

○helping a partner who’s never (yet) had an orgasm, page 87

how to make her very, very happy (eight tips on being a great lover)

We’ve talked to thousands of women about what makes a great lover, and what a partner can do to increase the odds that she’ll have an orgasm. Besides the tips covered in the sections listed above, here’s the best of their collective wisdom. These are the things that women talk about when there are no guys around to hear, the things they wish guys knew and bemoan that not enough do.

1. A great lover is showered and shaven
(we’re talking facial hair). Beards and mustaches are usually soft, but a day or two’s growth of prickly facial hair can be particularly unpleasant. Sandpaper against one’s face or between one’s thighs isn’t much of a turn-on.

2. A great lover masters the art of foreplay.
Technically, foreplay includes all the touching, kissing, stroking, caressing, nibbling, licking, whispering, and grinding that happens before intercourse. We believe foreplay
is
sex—many women, and men, too, say this “foreplay” stuff is the best, sexiest part of all. Calling it foreplay suggests that it’s like the opening act, the musician you listen to politely before the headliner (intercourse) comes on. Countless sexually experienced people have told us that some of the most thrilling, turned-on sex of their lives was as a teenager making out (foreplay!), months or years before they ever had intercourse. Some scientists believe human females need foreplay because they don’t go into “heat” like most other mammals. Mammals with heat cycles are only sexually active certain times of the month (or year), but female humans are lucky to be able to be aroused any day of the month. Foreplay is what gets their blood flowing.
 Whether intercourse is in the cards or not for a given sexual interlude, good foreplay boosts the chance a woman will have an orgasm, because
if she’s enjoying it, her arousal level sails up, up, up. Female orgasms take place only at the highest arousal levels—and foreplay is what moves a woman’s body and mind up the path.

3. A great lover asks (and listens).
There’s a stereotype that men don’t ask for directions. When it comes to sex, the stereotype is true too often, since guys are raised to believe that when they’re in a sexual situation, they’re supposed to know what they’re doing. Even if they don’t know, they often figure they should pretend. This issue of asking—and listening to verbal and nonverbal cues from his partner—is just as relevant for a man who’s never had sex as for one who’s bedded a hundred partners. Any man who has slept with more than one woman quickly realizes that what women like in bed, and how they respond sexually, varies so tremendously that it’s not safe to assume that a new girlfriend likes to be touched (or licked or penetrated) the same way the old one did. So asking questions and checking in are not, as some guys fear, a sign of sexual cluelessness; to many women, they’re a sign of a man who knows what it takes truly to please a woman.

My last partner was the best. He asked me what I wanted, made it no secret that he enjoyed making me feel good, looked at my genitals, explored all my parts, took his time. He would keep things fresh by mixing up techniques.

Listening is probably the most important thing a partner can do. Someone who listens to what I like is the best at helping me have an orgasm.

In real life, women prefer guys who communicate and ask questions. Women appreciate when guys check in as they move to start some new thing (and respect the answer), give extra points to a boyfriend who says, “I love feedback—tell me how I can make this even better for you,” and adore a man who tries out a few different techniques (flicking their nipples with his tongue versus sucking on them versus gently biting them,
a few different depths and angles of penetration during intercourse, etc.) to ask which they most enjoy.

Communication during sex definitely does
not
have to mean long, clinical conversations. Lots of communication happens nonverbally, with moans and sighs, breathing that picks up, one partner moving another partner’s hand to where he or she wants that hand to be. But a certain degree of verbal communication is key, too: A low, sultry “Is this okay?” as a man’s finger moves into his partner’s underwear, or as his head arrives between her thighs, can be answered with an appreciative, “Mmm-hmm.” Not only does this
not
break the mood, it helps the woman relax and enjoy, knowing that her partner actually cares. And if the answer is, “Not yet” or “Let’s try this first,” a great lover wants to know that—and may (or may not) get farther in the end if his partner knows he’ll respect her limits and her pace each step of the way.

eavesdropping on girl-talk

DORIAN REPORTS THAT when women talk privately with other women, it’s almost unheard of for a woman to complain about a partner who spends too much time on fore-play. The reverse problem, partners who are in too much of a rush, comes up all the time as a source of frustration. If a partner isn’t sure, most women say it’s better to err on the side of too much rather than too little.

My body is very sensitive and men tend to think they can take things so much faster than my body wants to go. My most amazing orgasms result from a very slow buildup that finally becomes completely overwhelming.

Help get me really aroused before you even think about touching my vulva. Wait until I crave that stimulation so much I feel as though I’m going to explode without it.

Ease your way down my pants. The longer you take to get there the better. I feel the sexiest and most turned on the more I’m caressed. It’s all about desire. I need to feel comfortable, so always ask if it’s okay. And then take your time.

By the way, men aren’t the only ones who should be getting consent and checking in as things proceed; women can and should be asking the same questions, requesting feedback, and trying out techniques to find out what their partners like.

myth alert

THERE’S A MYTH that if a man is a truly superior lover, he could walk into the room of a woman he’s never met before, and without exchanging a word with her, he could touch her body in ways that would give her twenty orgasms, one after another. (There’s an equivalent lesbian myth, too: the one about the lesbian lover who knows women’s bodies inside and out, who could use her mouth and hands to drive a woman she’s never before met to untold heights of ecstasy, all without ever exchanging words.)

In the real world, that’s pretty close to impossible. Yes, there may be a few women who orgasm so easily that it doesn’t much matter how you touch them–they’ll be able to have an orgasm. But what the vast majority of women respond to is so incredibly diverse that you have to have some good communication if you’re going to get a woman off.

4. A great lover knows what to do with a clitoris.
First, he knows where to find it (for some pointers, see page 70). Second, he knows not to rush for the clit too early. Some guys would be thrilled if their partner started rubbing their penis within the first minute of making out. Most women don’t want the same kind of immediate attention to their clit. In order for clitoral touching to feel good, most women need to be aroused already. (The same way men are often surprised to realize women don’t want a hand to go between their legs right away, women are often surprised to learn how early in a sexual interlude guys would enjoy attention to their privates. Of course people’s preferences vary widely; it can be a fun, and fascinating, conversation to have with a partner.)