I've been fortunate in that I've had the chance to help a few women over the years work from being anorgasmic or having a really hard time having an orgasm (say, taking 30+ minutes, or not having ever had one) to big ol' rolling multiple orgasms.
I take little or no credit for the women who have achieved this with me: this is a journey the woman has to take, not I.
I have, however, collected some pointers that may help others along this path.
The way I approach it causes some women to get quite angry. I really do want only the best sexual outcomes for all women, but that doesn't stop some people from getting upset anyways. Please, keep hate mail about this essay to yourself. I'll delete it unread. Constructive criticism is something else entirely, of course.
This essay is from a North American/US perspective, as well as a rather geeky one. It is, of necessity, very sexist. I am male, but I don't see any reason that this advice couldn't be useful to women with female partners.
For what it's worth, this isn't based solely on my own experience; I got a fair number of hints from my dad. My dad believes that this journey can't be explained; that you have to learn it from someone who has already been there. Having managed without that, I think that's a load of crap, but his experiences over 60+ years have definitely helped me and informed my own experiences.
I apologize for this being both rambling and semi-mystical; I'm trying to convey a somewhat non-linear experience.
I don't know whether sharing this essay with the person you're helping is a good idea or not; please do feel free to give me feedback about that, or anything else here, at rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org.
There is a particular complex of emotions, issues, and problems surrounding sex and sexuality that seems to be somewhat endemic to growing up female in NA society (I say North American here because I've experienced it in both Canada and the US). The only aspect that we're directly concerned with here is difficulty having lots of orgasms, but they're all part of a package.
I don't have a name for this, but it's going to be annoying if I
don't have something to call it in this essay, so let's go with
nacomp, which I just made up.
Some things I've noticed that seem to be parts of nacomp; as with anything else I just made up, your mileage may vary:
Having said all that, I have encountered women with few or none of those issues that still haven't found their way to easy or powerful or abundant orgasms.
I also want to mention, just as an aside, that not wanting to admit (to oneself or to others) when one is horny is very different from having an actual sex drive problem. I'm of the, somewhat controversial, opinion that actual sex drive problems should pretty much be gone after with drugs, especially in women. In particular, going on the birth control pill or changing formulations can often have profound effects on sex drive.
There's nothing quite as much fun as having a sex drive that is both high and healthy (compulsion is not healthy and not fun); I do quite recommend it. At least, if you have someone around to share it with.
In my experience, most women are capable of pretty serious multiple orgasms, achieved easily.
By "most" here I mean "every woman I've spent more than a year of serious relationship time with". I can think of maybe one exception; it was a while ago, so I'm not sure.
By "pretty serious multiple orgasms" I mean a normal sex session including a dozen or so, sometimes all chained together in a nice rolling wave.
By "easily" I mean less than ten minutes, as often as not, to the first orgasm, and the others following pretty easily after that.
I am certain that there are women for whom this journey isn't possible; there is nothing about humans that is absolutely predictable. Maybe I'm just lucky. But I think a lot more women can go there than give themselves credit for it, and I blame our society's shitty attitude towards women's sexuality.
This isn't a sexual technique manual. I'm not going to tell you some exact technique for clitoral stimulation or g-spot rubbing or what have you; that isn't how this works.
Similarly, if your goal is to be able to pick up chicks by bragging about your vast orgasm-inducing skills, this isn't for you.
This essay is about a journey that you take with your partner. It requires kindness, love, and a lot of patience. Months of it.
If you're not up for that, find something else to read.
Having said all that, some sexual skill and/or experience is probably required here. You need to have some sense of what a normal woman's orgasmic cycle is like, I suspect. The reason is that you need to be able to believe that your doing a decent job. If you're busy wondering whether your own skill is the problem, you're unlikely to be able to provide the safe, secure environment required. If you need some help in this area, you could probably do a lot worse than The Guide To Getting It On.
(There actually turns out to be a book by almost that exact title; I Love Female Orgasm. I haven't read it, but I think it's great such a book exists.)
As an adjunct to needing to be a caring, considerate partner that can put aside your own desires to help the woman you are with find her way to lots and lots of orgasms, it helps if you really enjoy being with a woman while she cums. It's certainly one of my favorite things.
(The section title is a twisted Dune quote; I'm a geek.)
The mental/emotional headspace associated with full access to the female orgasmic experience is very, very different then anything that men go through.
The way that I illustrate the profundity of the difference is as follows.
For most men, while orgasm is nice and engaging and all, it's not a complete separation from the rest of the world, or if it is, it's very short. I am completely confident that if ninjas broke in right while I was in the middle of cumming, I could be out of bed and trying to defend myself (and my partner!) within a few seconds.
This is very, very much not true for a woman in the middle of her 6th, or 10th, or 20th orgasm of the night. Not without a lot of practice, anyways. Women in the midst of a good orgasm, or a good chain of them, are utterly vulnerable, both emotionally and physically.
The first time having such an experience, even more so.
The actual path to the place of the many ultra-intense orgasms is extremely simple: the woman needs to become very, very relaxed and feel absolutely secure whilst being effectively sexually stimulated at the same time.
That's, umm, that's pretty much it.
Specifically, I recommend the following; there'll be more details on much of this later.
As I said before, this isn't a sexual technique manual.
You don't need to like, declare in advance that this is a Special Orgasm Session or whatever, or put up signs or something.
Just tell her that you want to pay attention to her pleasure for a while, and that she can let go and relax and enjoy herself. Be convincing, because if she doesn't fully believe that you are happy with whatever happens and whatever she enjoys, this isn't going to work.
I've seen this process take anywhere from months to years, generally with a session a week or so.
Don't hold your breath.
Having said that, I promise the wait is worth it. Lying next to (or on top of, or under, or whatever) a woman having a full-fledged series of out-of-control orgasms is ... a truly profound experience.
If that doesn't sound to you like it's worth several months or more of fairly hard work... Well, on the one hand, this document isn't for you. On the other hand, you're part of the problem: people like you are how women in our culture end up like this.
The weird thing is that somehow, women who haven't experienced the totally overwhelming orgasm thing, and have no idea that that's what they're headed for, still somehow know that something big is over the horizon. They usually don't know what, but they know it's different then anything they've previously experienced, and they know that they're going to utterly lose control and be completely vulnerable. OK, maybe not utterly and completely, but it often feels that way to them, and we're dealing with their beliefs at this stage, not reality.
I have no idea how they know this, but trust me, they do. In fact, objections about that sort of thing (some particular ones I've encountered are mentioned below) are the surest possible sign that you're on the right track.
As I say, they know, and they are terrified. Some of the most frightened people I have ever seen have been women getting close to that place. It's a dark, black unknown to them.
Once they've gotten to the point where they are staring into the abyss and they know it, do feel free to tell them exactly what's coming and that you're trying to help them get there and so on; there's no further need for secrecy at that point, if there ever was. It happens to be that I mostly haven't told women about the happy orgasm place before that point, because when I say "You know, you could be having 40 orgasms in that same time frame where you just had one", women hear "there's something wrong with you; you suck", and that just doesn't help anybody. But once they're at that precipice, they know something new is waiting for them, and they're much more likely to believe your assertions as to what is going on.
This may already be obvious, but it's all about self-control. Women approaching this experience know (again, I've no idea how) that they must relinquish all self-control to get there. Completely and utterly. This means that you need to be in control, and you need to be confident about your ability to stay in control, and you need to indicate that (non-verbally) and they need to utterly trust you. More on that later.
I know this sounds bizarre, especially to men who haven't seen it before, but I've actually gotten this a few times, in more-or-less those exact words.
Some women see the utter loss of control coming and assume they won't be able to regain control.
This is, simply, crap. I've never heard of or seen anything even remotely like the permanent loss of control that some women seem to expect ever happening to any woman who has been through this.
Reassure her that she will come out of this experience OK, and she will be very happy she did it. It may also help to say that once you've been there once, it's easier to get there again, and much, much easier to control.
This is another really common one that's quite surprising to guys.
The issue here is probably that, for this particular woman, her really nice orgasms are ejaculatory: getting close to an ejaculatory orgasm feels like being about to lose urinary control. As far as we can tell, female ejaculate is not urine (it certainly doesn't smell like it in my experience), but no-one is really sure.
(People who claim that all female ejaculate is either lubrication or urine can just fuck right off: the consistency is wrong for the former, and the smell is wrong for the latter.)
So, you are welcome to encourage her that she isn't going to pee; it's really very unlikely, unless she has urinary incontinence during normal sex, in which case y'all probably already have procedures to deal with that.
If you can't get her to calm down about it (and remember: her being completely relaxed and at ease is the whole point here), get a couple of towels, put a garbage bag under them (or get a proper plasticized blanked), stick her on top of that, and instead of convincing her that she's not going to pee, convince her that you don't care and she shouldn't either.
At the risk of repeating myself, the goal for her to be as close to completely at ease as possible. You're not going to get all the way there, because the fear of what's going to come next seems to be instinctive (as I said) and fear gets in the way of being relaxed, obviously.
You do need to get as close as you can, though, and the most important component is trust. Specifically, her trust in you.
She needs to believe that no matter how crazy things get, no matter how weird she acts, no matter what, you will still love her, and care for her, and be there when she gets through it.
She needs to believe that you will be fully in control of the situation, and that you will keep her safe and protected throughout the process.
She needs to trust you so much that she's willing to completely cede control of herself and her reactions to you.
As a comparitor, imagine trusting someone enough that you'd let them give you Rohypnol and do to you as they liked, because they get off on sex with sleeping people. Ignoring how creepy that is entirely (if you find it creepy), that's essentially the level of trust we're talking about.
Furthermore, this level of trust is far harder for women than men. Men have a certain confidence in their own physicality; something of a sense of invincibility. Most women live every day in a world where half of the people around them could completely overpower them at any time. If you've ever been restrained against your will and totally unable to escape, you may have some idea of the default fear and paranoia this engenders; if not, you might want to try it.
I can't tell you how to create this level of trust between you. That's up to you, and her. What I hope you'll do is simply be the kind of person that is worthy of such trust. Conveying to her that you are that kind of person is trickier, but not impossible. Start by being reliable: do what you said you were going to do, whatever that is.
Occasionally saying, in a tender moment, that she can trust you and that you will keep her safe is a good idea, but don't overdo it. Saying that sort of thing too often will give people the opposite impression.
I can't stress this enough: if a woman hasn't had these sorts of experiences, there's nothing wrong with her! If you believe, on any level, that there is, it'll poison the whole environment of trust you're trying to create.
Even if she's entirely anorgasmic, you need to feel sympathy and maybe a bit of pity but not annoyance or anything like it. You're trying to help her enjoy her sexuality to the fullest, not trying to fix a broken toaster or something.
You're doing this because you love her and you love her sex and you want her to feel so good she starts crying from joy. Keep that firmly in mind.
Perhaps more important than anything else, you need to make it really, really clear that you want her to enjoy herself in a relaxed, comfortable fashion, even if that means she doesn't cum.
I'm going to diverge for a second into something I'm less sure about then the rest of this essay. It seems to me that a standard orgasm comes out of tension: you tense up, you strain, looking for that release. The kind of orgasm we're talking about here seems to me to come out of relaxation; it flows from sinking backwards into pleasure, rather than straining up towards the goal.
Whether I'm correct about that or not, it's definitely the case that aiming for orgasm as such doesn't seem to work. The place where this journey leads isn't the same place as the journey to a normal female orgasm. She needs to feel completely free to enjoy the pleasure you're giving her in whatever way she wants. She's trying to forge a new path; aiming for the same old places isn't going to work.
This is extra important if she starts off being anorgasmic; in that case, you've got a multi-stage journey ahead of you for sure, and she won't know where she's going at any point in the journey, so you need to make sure she knows that she's free to go anywhere she likes.