You Can’t Fake it ’til You Make it

If you are a woman, the chances are good that you answered yes to this question.  Decades of study on this subject have revealed that on average, 53% – 67% of women fake orgasms.

That’s as many as two in every three women – a remarkably sad number.  So naturally, researchers followed up with the question, why?

Why are so many of us faking it? Among the top answers were: wanting to avoid hurting a partner’s feelings or to boost their egos, wanting sex to end, or a fear of appearing inadequate or abnormal.

But given that over half of women have faked it, ‘normal’ may not be what we think it is. A famous study conducted in the 1970s found that just 26% of women climax from intercourse alone, with no accompanying stimulation to the clitoris. More recent studies have corroborated this. Instead, most women need direct clitoral stimulation to reach orgasm.

Sex alone does not generally provide this. While the walls of a vagina can stimulate the penis directly, the female erogenous zone (the clitoris, which contains many more nerve endings) is external and receives indirect, inconsistent stimulation during intercourse. This indirectness is not enough for most women to orgasm, which is why more than 70% of us cannot climax from intercourse alone.

Unfortunately, however, many men and women alike believe that a woman can and should orgasm from sex. This causes up to two-thirds of female partners to settle for a fake climax, rather than a real one.

So what is normal, really? The absence of an orgasm during sex does not mean there is something wrong with a woman; in fact, it is very natural given our anatomies.  And the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ strategy won’t offer any favours here – fake orgasms don’t lead to real ones! Only by learning to understand our own bodies can we become one of the 33% who answer ‘no’ to having faked it, and eventually, help this minority to grow.