'How Do I Have An Orgasm During Intercourse?' And Nine Other Common Questions About Sex Answered

by Rachel Moss

Even if you've got an amazing sex life, you're probably interested to know what everyone else is up to in the bedroom and how you can make your own experience even better.

Despite this, most of us can be a little coy when discussing sex with other people.

That's where sex educators like Emily Nagoski come in.

In her new book Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, Nagoski says most questions she receives around sex stem from three main concerns: Am I normal, am I okay, and will I be okay?

Thankfully the resounding answer she gives to all three is YES.

Of course, she says, people hardly ever just ask these questions outright.

Here, Nagoski tells HuffPost UK Lifestyle the answers to the 10 most common questions people ask about sex:

The Questions About Sexual Response:

1. How do I have an orgasm during intercourse?

Less than a third of women are reliably orgasming from penetration alone. The remaining 70% are sometimes, rarely, or never orgasmic from intercourse alone.

The reason for this is pretty simple: intercourse is not an effective way to stimulate the clitoris, and clitoral stimulation is the most common way that women orgasm.

That means the simplest way to orgasm during intercourse is to add clitoral stimulation.

Your hand, your partner’s hand, a vibrator, rubbing your pubic bones together, whatever.

2. How often am I supposed to want sex?

As often as the context of your life supports – so your desire will change as your context changes.

And that’s a good thing. Think how inconvenient that would be, if you wanted to same amount of sex when you’re single as when you’re partnered, when you’re staying with your maiden aunt as when you’re cozily at home?

Desire is – and needs to be – dependent on context. It’s not always convenient, showing up at times that you don’t want it, and it’s not always obedient, failing to show up at times you do want it.

But a great place to start is to take an inventory of which contexts create desire in you and which squelch it. It will naturally fluctuate over the course of your day, your week, your life.

There is no “supposed” to, there just… is what it is.

3. Is my penis doing it right? Subquestions: does size matter? (Nah.) Why can’t I get an erection and/or how do I delay ejaculation?

The sexual response mechanism in the brain consists of two parts: the Sexual Excitation System (SES), which responds to sexual stimuli and sends the “turn on” signal, and the Sexual Inhibition System (SIS), which responds to potential threats and sends the “turn off” signal – you can think of them as the sexual accelerator and the sexual brakes.

This means that the process of becoming aroused is both the process of turning on the ons and the process of turning off the offs.

Erection and ejaculation difficulties are caused by an imbalance of these two processes.

Erection difficulties are about too much brake, usually, so figure out what’s hitting the brake (it’s often performance anxiety – ironically the more you want and try to have an erection, the less likely it is).

Premature ejaculation is effectively treated by the stop-start method – get aroused, back off, get aroused, back off, over and over, to get to know the landscape of your arousal, so that you can recognise when you’re close to orgasm and take pressure off the accelerator and/or tap the brakes, to stop from going past the “point of no return.”

4. I liked it when my partner touched me a certain way yesterday, but I didn’t like it today. What the hell?

Pleasure, like desire, depends on context.

Like tickling - if you’re feeling flirty and sexy and your partner tickles you, that would, at least in theory, feel fun and sexy.

But if you’re feeling annoyed and pissy with your partner and they try to tickle you, how does that feel?

Stabby, right? Like you want to punch them in the face.

Pleasure depends at least as much on the context in which you receive a sensation, as it does on the nature of the sensation itself. So if something felt good (or not) yesterday, that doesn’t mean it will feel good (or not) today. That’s normal.

The Questions About Sexual Interests:

5. Why does pain sometimes feel sexy and good?

See question 4.

6. Why did 50 Shades of Grey sell so well?

Because of the arbitrariness of market dynamics and its ability to deliver the most basic fantasy anyone has: feeling wanted and cared for.I mean, who wouldn’t want an attractive billionaire to sweep them off their feet, buy them cool stuff, protect them from danger, and want them so much they can’t think straight?

All the other stuff was just window dressing for feeling wanted and cared for.Some people liked that window dressing, others did not. People vary.

But we all like to feel wanted and cared for.

7. Why do I fantasise about things I don’t want to do in real life?

Because the context of fantasising about something – lying safety in your bed, alone, with the door closed and your hand down your pants as you imagine being cornered, held down, and licked by five unknown but beautiful men, say – is an entirely different context from being actually cornered, held down, and licked by five unknown men, no matter how beautiful they may be.

And The Questions That Science Can Never Fully Answer..

.8. Why does the world insist that my body has to a particular size or shape before I’m allowed to experience sexual pleasure, before I’m allowed to be loved, before I’m allowed to be included fully as part of the human race?

9. Why did my family turn away from me, why do strangers shame me and beat me, just because I fall in love with a different kind of person than they expected me to love?

10. Why did my partner use sex against me as a weapon?

Why didn’t he stop when I said no? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

There’s science about these questions, theories, evidence… but in my heart, I don’t know why we, as a species, are so quick to shame and humiliate and hate others because of their bodies and what they do with them.

I don't know why we are still using sex as a weapon against each other or why we do not reach first for compassion when we encounter differences.But, under even these impossible-to-answer questions lies the same deeper questions as all the others:

Am I normal? Am I okay? Will I be okay?

And the answer is:

Yes.You are normal - it’s normal to struggle when you’ve been confronted by shame, rejection, and violence.

You are okay - if you’re well enough to ask the question, you’re well enough to listen for the quiet voice inside you that’s telling you that the core of you is intact, whole, and healthy.

You will be okay - every day I meet people who are healing, who have healed, from the kind of violence, shame, and trauma that the world inflicts on us.

Every day I am inspired by the resilience, the strength, the raw capacity for survivorship that lives in human bodies, side by side with our capacity for love, for pleasure, for joy, and side by side with our capacity to judge and humiliate.

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Simultaneous Orgasm

There's a great deal of misunderstanding about the subject of simultaneous orgasm. This is when a couple orgasms at the same time.

It's clear that a lot of people, and especially younger women, think that a male and a female are supposed to reach orgasm at the same moment, every single time! In the real world, this just isn't true.

For instance, I recently spoke to a female patient who has had several lovers over the course of her life. But she said that it wasn't until she had passed the age of 40 that she found a man with who she could synchronise her orgasms with.

The notion that simultaneous orgasm is the norm is simply a myth that's been created over the last couple of hundred years, by hundreds of romantic novels and erotic stories.

Even today, a lot of people believe that couples do generally 'come together'.

The result of all this misunderstanding is that nowadays, younger women write to 'agony aunts' saying things like: 'I'm sure there must be something wrong with me because I don't come at the same moment as my boyfriend. And he is quite upset about this …'

The medical facts

But the truth is that, while simultaneous orgasms are nice, they are difficult to achieve, especially when you're young.

They are more likely to occur in a close and loving relationship, where the partners have been together for years and know reach other's sexual responses well.

Co-ordinated climaxes are unlikely to happen during a 'one-night stand' or even during a brief affair, unless both people know a lot about skilful sexual stimulation.

It also helps if the man has good control of his own ejaculation, which is not very common among younger men.

So, why is simultaneous climax so difficult? Well, there are two main reasons.

The problem of a women achieving an orgasm during intercourse

When people talk about 'coming at the same time', they generally mean 'during intercourse'.

But climaxing during sexual intercourse itself is far from easy.

Up until the late 1960s, few experts realised this. There was a general assumption that all sexually active females should be able to reach orgasm as a result of intercourse alone, rather than foreplay. But at the end of the 1960s, two British women's magazine reader surveys showed that most females' couldn't reach a climax through intercourse alone.

These findings were almost completely ignored by the medical profession. When I mentioned them to a London psychiatrist, who was considered an expert in sex, he refused to believe them.

But in 1976, the US sex researcher Ms Shere Hite published a survey that showed exactly the same thing. Amazingly, her findings provoked great hostility in the USA – so much so that she eventually decided to leave America!

So summing up, it's difficult for a woman to reach a simultaneous orgasm with her man, especially if she can't climax during intercourse. And most women (not all) find this quite difficult.

The problem of timing the man's climax

Secondly, even if the woman can climax during intercourse, there's the question of whether the man can 'time' his own ejaculation to synchronise with hers.

Unfortunately, many younger men cannot time their climaxes at all, particularly if they suffer from premature ejaculation (PE).

Furthermore, a lot of men simply do not want to time their orgasms.

So again and again, what happens is that the woman starts thinking that she may climax soon. Then her partner suddenly comes – and that's that.

Definitely, no simultaneous orgasm tonight.

How to achieve simultaneous orgasm

For many couples simultaneous orgasm is not going to happen, at least on a regular basis. Many of them just accept this, and maybe that's not a bad thing, if they're both happy.

But if you really want to 'come' in the same instant as your partner, it can be done.

Here' a guide to help you.

1. Learn how to ensure that the female partner can orgasm more or less at will, during sexual intercourse.

If you work at it over a period of time and are always in a loving, romantic, unhurried atmosphere – this isn't all that difficult to achieve.

The trick is to make sure that you can reach the woman's clitoris, with the fingertips during intercourse. When you're both nearly ready to 'come' then rub it gently but enthusiastically.

2. Exploit the advantages of multiple orgasms.

If the female partner has learned how to have multiple orgasms, that makes the objective of simultaneous orgasms a lot easier.

Why? Because the male now has a number of different 'targets' to aim at.

In other words, if he isn't ready to climax by the first time she comes, he can always do it when she orgasms for the second, third or fourth time.

But the ability to reach multiple orgasms isn't very common in younger women. Females tend to learn it as they get older.

This underlines the fact that simultaneous orgasms are a lot easier for couples who have been together a long time in a loving relationship and who really understand each other's bodies.

3. Make sure that the man learns to control the timing of his orgasms.

Frankly, this might take years to do! But there's a strong tendency for men to learn more control as they get older.

A lot of 40 and 50 year olds can simply make love for hours on end and then ejaculate when the woman is ready.

What does this mean for couples?

Simultaneous orgasms aren't that common, particularly among younger people.

So, it's not a good idea to make a 'big deal' of them. But if you and your partner really want to enjoy simultaneous orgasm, this can be achieved.

It usually requires quite a lot of work and determination, preferably in the context of a long-term, loving, romantic relationship.

So if you both really want to do it, go for it.

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