Let’s face it: because of the location of the clitoris, hands-free intercourse is not an efficient or effective way for a woman to have an orgasm. A very small percentage of couples may be able to make the clitoral-hood or clitoris-bumping technique work, but for everyone else, unadorned intercourse will never be an arena for serious female satisfaction. Accepting that fact is the essential starting point for finding our way to more mutually satisfying lovemaking.
Simultaneous Orgasms—
An Idea That Just Won’t Quit
These facts notwithstanding, the idea of a man and woman having orgasms together during intercourse has
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persisted. Starting in the late 1920s, sex researchers and sex manual writers relentlessly pushed the idea that orgasms should happen
at the same moment
. T. Van de Velde’s widely read marriage manual,
Ideal Marriage
(published in the U.S. in 1926) said, “In normal and perfect coitus, mutual orgasm must be almost simultaneous. The usual procedure is that the man’s ejaculation begins and sets the woman’s acme of sensation in train at once.” This, of course, was complete nonsense, but because an authoritative book said it was true, thousands of couples worked hard to make it happen—and concluded there was something wrong with them (or at least with the woman) when it didn’t.
The simultaneous-orgasm juggernaut continued. In 1953, the Kinsey Institute proclaimed that simultaneity was the “maximum achievement which is possible in a sexual relationship.” Postwar marriage manuals exhorted husbands to “find the man in the rowboat” (an attempt to give prudish readers a visual image of the clitoris nestled between the labia) and touted the simultaneous orgasm as a virtual duty. In one popular advice book,
Love without Fear
, Eustace Chesson wrote: “Success comes to those who consciously and deliberately will to achieve. Both partners should, in coitus, concentrate their full attention on one thing: the attainment of simultaneous orgasm.” Small wonder that one commentator bemoaned the “sex as work” ethic of this era.
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Couples tried and
Many couples have not been
tried, and when the
able to escape the penetration-
earth didn’t move (a
produces-female-orgasm myth,
phrase coined by Ernest
and one-sided sex continues to
Hemingway to describe
be the norm.
a torrid, apparently
simultaneous climax in
For Whom the Bell Tolls
,
a popular novel during this era), they felt let down.
Lovers were being exhorted to have simultaneous orgasms, but the manuals didn’t tell them
how
. Once again, exhortations without explanations—a formula for female frustration and a reason for women to fake orgasms at the moment that their partners ejaculated.
Despite a high failure rate, the idea of simultaneous orgasms kept rolling. In the last few decades, three off-beat books and a cottage industry of sexual gizmos have suggested new and better ways for couples to synchronize their orgasms. All have tried to address the inherent challenges to making this happen: the seemingly mismatched pleasure geography of men’s and women’s bodies (i.e., the difficulty of sustained, sensitive, and appropriate clitoral stimulation during intercourse); the different pace of arousal for men and women during intercourse (with women usually taking longer to reach orgasm than men); and, of course, the deeply rooted penetration-produces-female-orgasm
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mind-set (which makes couples think that nothing
“extra” should be necessary for a woman to climax during intercourse).
1.
Gizmos.
Many Internet sites and sexual catalogues tout an assortment of penile attachments designed to stimulate the clitoris during intercourse. At first blush, these seem like a good idea: the thrusting movements of the penis push the attachment against the clitoris, giving direct stimulation to the woman in just the right spot.
But if the man is out in front of his partner on the road to orgasm (and he usually is), he has to slow down or stop to avoid coming before her—but this slows down or stops his device from stimulating her clitoris! Even if the gizmo vibrates (which some do), the positioning, pacing, and timing challenges are significant. In addition, a rubber or plastic attachment often fails to stimulate the clitoris in the sensitive way that’s necessary for maximum pleasure. Finally, lots of couples are loath to buy and put on such attachments, believing that sexual pleasure should happen using only the equipment they were born with. So for all the marketing hype, penile attachments are far from being a surefire route to simultaneous orgasms.
2.
Triggering Techniques.
In their book,
Simultaneous
Orgasm and Other Joys of Sexual Intimacy
, Michael Riskin and Anita Banker-Riskin touted the sublime experience of reaching orgasms together and described 9 6
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a series of exercises, practice sessions, and triggering techniques for climaxing at the same moment. The Riskins report that this approach works for many couples, bringing a much higher level of mutual pleasure and togetherness than is possible with separate orgasms.
But the Riskins’ techniques are almost never mentioned outside their own publications. The failure of their approach to sweep the nation is most likely due to two factors. First, the steps they describe are complicated, challenging, and time-consuming, which goes against a strong cultural belief that intercourse should be a spontaneous, unscripted, and instinctive act of love—in other words, good lovers should be able to perform well in bed without needing to follow an elaborate instruction manual. Second, many couples do not have the time and energy in their busy lives to implement this program on a regular basis; late on a Friday or Saturday night, they need a lovemaking approach that is quicker and less elaborate. The Riskins’ approach works only for couples who don’t mind following an involved script and have large blocks of private time for lovemaking. This is not a large demographic.
3.
The Tip Technique.
In her book
How to Satisfy a
Woman Every Time
, Naura Hayden proposed a technique that seems much simpler. After some foreplay, the man rubs his partner’s clitoris with the tip of his penis and then teases her by partially entering her vagina until she begins to have an orgasm, only then pro-
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ceeding with his own. Hayden enthusiastically claims that her technique is virtually foolproof and that thousands of couples are using it successfully.
But there are real challenges to using this approach.
First, the penis is a fairly blunt instrument for providing sensitive stimulation to the clitoris, and it can’t do the job by itself (someone needs to take it by the hand); most people find that fingers or the tongue are more sensitive and therefore more effective at bringing a woman to orgasm. Second, Hayden doesn’t say how the clitoris gets stimulated during the endgame when the penis is inside the vagina (and, as we have seen, continuous stimulation up to and during orgasm is essential to full satisfaction for a woman). The Hayden technique might work the first few times by dint of novelty and sheer excitement, but after that, many of the women using it may be secretly unsatisfied, settling for a milder
“emotional” orgasm—or faking it.
4.
The Coital Alignment Technique (CAT).
In their book
The Perfect Fit
, Edward Eichel and Philip Nobile gave a detailed description of what they called a revolutionary new technique. They said that CAT allowed up to three-quarters of the women in their study to have hands-free orgasms during intercourse, and that the frequency of simultaneous orgasms during intercourse increased from 5 percent to 50 percent of couples.
Here’s how the Coital Alignment Technique works: 9 8
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using the missionary position, with the woman’s legs extended and wrapped around her partner’s calves and the man’s weight distributed evenly along her body, the man rides higher than usual and uses deep penetration so that his partner’s clitoris is aligned with the base of his penis. The partners then use an up-and-down rocking motion that continuously stimulates the clitoris.
One man quoted in
The Perfect Fit
described how his lover taught him CAT as they made love one day: In the middle of a basic thrust (I was on top), she suddenly grabbed my hips and whispered to me, “No, don’t…slow down…stop.” At first, of course, I panicked, imagining that perhaps we were back in the “rushing it”
category, that I’d made some wrong, horrifyingly anti-erotic maneuver that signaled to Anne—“system shut down.” Not the case! She grabbed me passionately, and as I looked at her, I could see that the expression on her face was not one of frustration, but of happiness and anticipation. She said, “Stop…just rock, so slow, so slow…” She grabbed me tightly, and then with her hands on my hips she guided the way she wanted me to go. She lifted me slightly higher so that my body was more acutely on top of hers. And as I tried to thrust (because I still didn’t know exactly what she had in mind), she held me back. I was still inside her, but rather than pushing in and out, she led me into what I would
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call almost sliding my shaft along her clitoris in a slow, rocking, almost circular motion. I could see on her face that this was deeply erotic to her, that, compared with the look on her face just a few moments before (tradi-tional style), she was in another zone. Her head arched back, her eyes closed tight, she whispered to just keep doing that, doing that. In what seemed just a few seconds, she came. She came for what at the time felt like thirty or forty seconds, writhing and almost crying and even letting out a small yelp.
Another fan of the Coital Alignment Technique had this to say about how it affected her view of intercourse: You realize that you can feel even more positive about your partner because this isn’t something that somebody else
did
to you. You did this thing
together
. You don’t think, this guy is
a great lover
. It’s not just him—it’s you, too! I think you feel better about the other person
because
it wasn’t all him…Intercourse is more equitable.
Eichel and Nobile’s book contains helpful diagrams and it all sounds and looks great. But once again, we have to be skeptical about a hands-free approach, however ingeniously choreographed, because of the challenges of pacing and timing. With the stimulation of the clitoris dependent on the man’s thrusting move-
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T h e G r e a t S e x S e c r e t
ments, how can the man hold back his own orgasm while bringing his partner to hers? In addition, the CAT
positions are somewhat awkward, and even Eichel concedes that “it requires considerable discipline to learn this motion.”
So after the novelty has worn off, is CAT just one more attempt to make the penetration-produces-female-orgasm model work without solving the fundamental problem? It’s not surprising that Em and Lo, the savvy, let’s-try-anything online sex advice columnists, greeted the CAT with skepticism in their book,
The Big
Bang.
Too difficult, too complicated, not worth the trouble, they said. Although there are no reliable statistics, it appears that the CAT is going the way of other simultaneous orgasm techniques: practiced successfully by a few, tried and abandoned by others, unknown to most.
The simultaneous orgasm approaches advocated by Eichel and Nobile, Hayden, and the Riskins (and the devices that stimulate the clitoris during intercourse), are all thoughtful, well-meaning attempts to address the challenge of mutual satisfaction during intercourse, and they all have their devotees. But none of them has suc-ceeded in bringing about a major revival of the idea of synchronized orgasms. It appears that only a small minority of couples are using these techniques, and the conventional wisdom in the sex literature is now quite
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negative on simultaneous orgasms. A perusal of current articles, books, videos, and Internet sites on the subject of simultaneous orgasms reveals the following:
• An evasive silence. The unstated conclusion may be that simultaneous orgasms are physically impossible and not worth discussing—or perhaps some authors have yet to realize that penetration-produces-female-orgasm is a myth.
• Advice to chill out. Some counsel couples not to be so goal-oriented and genitally focused; women don’t need to have orgasms to have a satisfying sex life, they say. Natalie Angier finds this as convinc-ing as saying that some homeless people like living outdoors. Indeed, this argument sounds like a male rationalization for not making the extra effort to bring their partners to orgasm. Either way, this advice is a recipe for female frustration. Healthy adults have a built-in appetite for orgasms—an appetite that grows with each passing day and wants to be satisfied at regular intervals. Sure, there are times when one partner or the other is not able to have an orgasm due to fatigue, preoccupation, illness, etc. And yes, it’s possible to enjoy intercourse without an earth-shattering orgasm. But with a little extra care and attention (details in the next chapter), orgasms can be part of lovemaking for
both
partners almost all of the time, satisfying the 1 0 2
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man’s
and
the woman’s emotional and biological needs as part of one conjugal act.