Working on Orgasm

If you haven't yet read our page on ecstasy, you might want to begin there, because some of it is relevant to achieving and enhancing your orgasms.  Also, take a look at Sanguis Bella's personal experiences with fantasy and orgasm. 

Overcoming difficulties with orgasm

If you've never actually "come" (had an orgasm), or you can't come with another person, or you have a really hard time coming, or you come too quickly, or your orgasms are disappointing, or they've declined significantly, or you just want more intensity — what can you do? 

If you've never had an orgasm or have a hard time reaching orgasm with another person, there are some proven techniques that seem to work for most people.  Because more women seem to find themselves in this predicament than men, the best books all address women, but many of the basic principles hold for both sexes.  Lonnie Barbach's For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality (Anchor 1975) is a really good place to start, as is Julia Heiman's Becoming Orgasmic: A Sexual and Personal Growth Program for Women (Fireside 1987).  Betty Dodson's Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving (Three Rivers 1996), and Rachael Swift's (Dido Davies') How to Have an Orgasm...  As Often As You Want (Carroll & Graf 1993) may also be helpful.  See also our masturbation page.  

Many of the exercises in these books focus on getting past blocks that are essentially negative feedback loops, mental traps in which a backlog of past failure, hurt and embarrassment inhibits the positive feelings you need in order to successfully escape the trap.  Everyone falls into mental traps of this sort, and they can be quite difficult to get out of. 

Men, probably because they have ten times as much testosterone as women on average, are less likely to have difficulty reaching orgasm than women are.  Instead, when they get in a negative-feedback loop, they may come to orgasm too quickly.  Such problems with "premature ejaculation" can often be overcome using the same kinds of techniques that help people achieve orgasm when they find it difficult. 

Also, of course, crude medical/biochemical factors can cause problems with sex.  If you're depressed and/or on anti-depressants, that can significantly reduce both your libido and your ability to come to orgasm.  Not all doctors or psychiatrists take this side effect seriously — many feel that fighting depression is more important than helping you have a good sex life, even though the two may be closely related.  Also, doctors and psychiatrists are hampered by our great void of ignorance around the mechanisms of arousal and sexual response — you can be suspicious if someone acts as if they're sure of the answers in this area. 

People who take hallucinogenic drugs that affect the brain's dopamine-serotonin balance (e.g. MGMH, LSD, mushrooms)  quite often report that if they have sex while tripping, the experience is very pleasant, sensuous and arousing, leading them right to the brink of orgasm, but then they don't go over the edge and actually have an orgasm.  Clearly, your crude brain chemistry does affect your orgasmic response. 

Also, as people get older their testosterone levels tend to fall, which in turn tends to depress libido and make orgasms less intense.  There are several herbal supplements that appear to increase testosterone levels successfully (see our aphrodisiacs page), but you should be very cautious messing with your hormonal levels. 

Before you rush off to a doctor, psychiatrist or herbalist for meds or supplements to change your crude brain chemistry, though, try making biochemicals rather than taking them.  Don't forget, you yourself are (in addition to all the other things you may be)  an incredibly sophisticated chemical factory.  In many cases, you can change the way you feel and respond just by changing the ways you think and behave. 

And if you're thinking, "Hey, I have no orgasm problem, this doesn't apply to me," you can learn from people's difficulties in this area just how sensitive orgasm is to state of mind.  Many of the same techniques that people use to overcome problems can also be used to enhance orgasmic experience, because they change entrenched patterns of thought.  Like all of us, you may have some habits of mind that keep you from going as deep as you'd like. 

The Expensive Secrets of the Ultimate Orgasm

You can find a huge amount of information, much of it hype, about Tantric practices and their derivatives that have to do with delaying, prolonging and enhancing orgasm.  Quite a few people are willing to charge you lots of money to show you in one weekend wonderful secrets that will make your sex life stupendous forever.  Plenty of less expensive but no less questionable books make the same claims.  Although some of the techniques involved do produce interesting effects for most people, they have a spiritual context that may or may not feel right for you.

And because the more profound Tantric effects depend on spiritual attitudes rather than technique, they require that you be interested in a good deal more than simple orgasm enhancement — they have to do with how you relate to yourself, your partner or partners, and your life.

If Eastern mysticism calls to you as it does to many Westerners, then one of the Tantric traditions may well be the right path for you.  If not, just learning the orgasm-prolonging techniques may not turn out to be very satisfying even if they do work for you, because most people are more interested in the depths of their orgasms than in the heat and pleasure.  

I've recommended against spending money on workshops and seminars if you're just looking for information, but one of the great benefits of a good workshop is that it can help you find the nerve and the permission to try new things.  The kind of safe group setting offered by a reputable organization is very liberating to most people.  Watching other people being sexual helps you realize that most of our culture's taboos are pretty silly, and helps you bypass them to focus on more important things.  Watching others grapple with issues similar to your own lets you really grasp that you're not alone.  Many people find this kind of setting helps them make significant changes in places where they feel stuck. 

The good and the bad news is, there are no great sexual secrets (at least none I've ever heard of).  The recipe for good sex is widely known — all you have to do is mix love, intimacy and safety together with the right proportions of fear, excitement and arousal, and then keep them cooking as long as you possibly can, until they're done (preferably several times over). 

The Best Way to Have an Orgasm

What's the best way to have an orgasm? — the way that feels best, of course!  We've come a long way from the time when men were supposed to go blind if they masturbated, or women were supposed to be "immature" if they couldn't come through penetration (thank you, Shere Hite!), but people still tend to get stuck in ruts.  It doesn't matter at all what you do while getting to orgasm as long as the resulting orgasm feels wonderful. 

It's important to stress this: it really doesn't matter how you get to orgasm as long as the orgasm itself is satisfying.  We're so vulnerable around sex, it's easy to feel bad that our responses don't follow some preconceived model, but of course they don't.  People differ widely in what they like and how they respond, and there's really nothing wrong with that at all. 

So don't waste time endlessly trying things that don't work for you because you think they ought to.  Instead, keep experimenting to try to find the things that do work really well.  Don't get hung up on some mythical idea of copulation as the defining format of sexual interaction, because it's only one of the many, many ways you can be sexual with other people. 

Some women, for example, still feel obligated to try to come from the sensation of being penetrated, even though it's not necessarily as nice or effective for them as other forms of stimulation.  Actually, most women don't find penetrative fucking effective at all as a way of reaching orgasm (even though they may like it a lot).  Who cares?  Collaborate with your partners — get them to do what feels best for you, and you do what feels best for them.  What you really care about is making your own and your partners' experience as powerful and positive as possible. 

Lots of men, especially young men, find it hard not to come fairly quickly from the heavenly sensation of entering a receptive cunt.  In their embarrassment and dedication to being "good" lovers, they then diminish their own experience by obsessing over "lasting" longer.  It's just not that important, unless you insist on following a stereotyped script.  We'll say it again: collaborate with your partners — get them to do what feels best for you, and you do what feels best for them.  What you really care about is making your own and your partners' feelings as powerful and positive as possible. 

Some people get hung up on intercourse because they want to "come together," both at the same time.  That's indeed a lovely goal and certainly worth trying (although it's also nice to focus first on one person and then on the other). 

Well, if you want to come together and intercourse isn't working for you, try hands.  With a judicious application of water-based lube, hands can feel every bit as good as any other kind of stimulation (and they're much more easily controllable).  Lie or sit where you can see at each other, look in each other's eyes, and enjoy your power to cause wonderful sensations! It still takes a lot of practice to reach orgasm at exactly the same moment, but practicing is so much fun!  And you may find you really don't care that much about the timing thing...

Keep in mind that your mental state as you approach orgasm is much more important to the result than what kind of physical stimulation you happen to be using.  Work on feeling safe, and take some pride in doing things you find a little shocking.  Let yourself feel intimate with a partner in a genuine way, and do your best to be safe for your partner's vulnerability too. 

Orgasm and Intimacy

The recipe for good sex may be simple but it certainly isn't easy.  In fact, getting it to keep coming out the way you want is one of the hardest things in life.  To begin with, intimacy isn't safe.  Okay, in a long-term relationship, you fix that by creating a bunch of barriers — you learn to keep the other person at bay, even though they know you better than anyone else in the world.  Then, surprise, they're too safe, but you can't let down those barriers because by now you're so vulnerable to them that they could wound you terribly, without even meaning to.  So now sex is boring with them because you're too scared to do anything exciting.  Welcome to the marriage doldrums. 

In short-term relationships, on the other hand, it's easy to avoid intimacy altogether and just surf that courtship wave...  except it always takes you to the same empty stretch of beach.  Eventually, most people decide they want a lot more. 

What it comes down to is, you always have to be willing to take a bit of a risk.  No one else can push you into it, you have to come to it on your own, and it's important not to take a stupid risk that will just get you hurt, but at some point almost everybody finds that frustration, yearning or just plain curiosity drives them to let down their barriers in a way they thought they just couldn't.  A good sex life, in my observation, takes an ongoing combination of nerve and patience. 

Experimenting with Orgasm

If you feel like it, there's nothing to stop you from experimenting with your own orgasms and finding your own techniques for enhancing them, without paying a penny to anyone else.  Here are a few things you could try, to see if they make a difference:

1. Be intimate.   Try to open your heart to the person you're with (as long as that feels right).  If you can't open your heart to a partner, try opening your heart to the divine, whatever that is for you.  See if it has an effect on your orgasm. 

2. Be hungry.   This is easy. Hold off a bit to let the desire for sex grow urgent.  For a lot of people, just the decision to wait makes them start thinking about it... 

3. Get horny.   Anticipate.  Think about the things you'd like to have happen.  Think about the things you find sexiest.  Turn yourself on ahead of time, so you can hardly bear to wait.  Drive yourself crazy. 

4. Go slowly.   The time for sex arrives, and if you've been anticipating it enthusiastically, now you can hardly stand not to tear your clothes off and come right away — but don't.  If you're with a partner (who is, hopefully, in the same desperate state you are), tease each other.  Help each other draw out the experience as long as you can stand (or a bit longer) until the intensity of your pleasure is unbearable.  If you're by yourself, it's harder, because at a certain point there's no one to hold you back. 

5. Use breathing.   Yoga puts a strong emphasis on breathing, and for many people, it can have a pronounced psychotropic effect (see our page on breathing). If that's something you'd like, use breathing to move your mind into a state of heightened awareness or altered consciousness as your pleasure grows. 

6. Get in trance.   If you want to explore the spirituality of orgasm in a more explicit way, use meditation techniques to enter a trance state.  This cools down your lovemaking, but tends to prolong it and lets you be more aware of it. 

7. Hover on the brink.   Many of the more surprising effects of Tantra are achieved by learning to hover at the brink of orgasm without going over.  Practice this while masturbating — pay attention as you approach orgasm, and see how long you can hold yourself close to the edge without crossing it.  This has been compared to riding a wave without letting it break over you (which, of course, makes it last a lot longer).  Some men can even learn to experience multiple orgasms this way, without ejaculating. 

The key to applying these concepts is to pay attention to the ways you can control your own responses.  In some areas, you've doubtlessly been doing it for years, but in others, perhaps you've never thought of trying to. 

If you're not having much success experimenting in some area that interests you, there are books and videos that can walk you through specific exercises that have worked for some people.  Take them all with a grain of salt, though — they are variations on a common theme, but many present themselves as the best, last word on the subject.  Treat them instead like recipes, prepared by chefs of varying tastes and talents, some of which you can use as is, some of which are completely useless, and some need a lot of creative adjustment to suit the unique needs of your personal kitchen.