I love writing about sex.  It’s one of my favourite topics to blog about and I enjoy publishing posts about toys, BDsM and sexuality.  But I’ve never felt right publishing those Cosmo-eque “15 ways to have an explosive orgasm” posts.

I was a passionate consumer of these types of articles for years.  I never had trouble finding my orgasm, but I was always eager to find new ways to bring on that pleasure for myself.  I felt compelled to try every new position, every technique that might possibly bring on a bigger, better climax.

 

And for years I found myself deeply disappointed.  Because each time I read one of these articles I wound up feeling broken.  More often than not, the fail-safe techniques contained therein didn’t work for me.  They didn’t bring me an earth-shattering orgasm.  In fact, most of the time they didn’t bring me any orgasm at all, just a feeling that I was inferior, that my body wasn’t working right and that I was missing out on untold pleasures as a result.

 

I vividly recall one holiday I took where my hotel room was equipped with a spa.  I was excited because I’d read so many stories of women who had masturbated by allowing the water from the jets to stimulate their clitorises or by letting a running faucet flow over their vulva.  Eager to try this method out, I ran myself a bath, scooted in line with one of the jets and waited.  And waited some more.  And shifted position.  And then began to wonder “at what point does this start to feel good?”  It wasn’t doing a darn thing for me.  I pulled out the plug, towelled myself off and went to bed feeling disappointed.

 

This pattern repeated itself over the years in so many different ways.  It even popped up when I was given my first ever sex toy.  I jumped into bed, eager to play with it because I was sure it was going to give me an earth-shattering orgasm.  I pressed it to my genitals, turned it on and waited for the magic.  And turned up the power and waited.  And finally gave up.  I thought my beautiful new vibrator was a total dud because I hadn’t wanted to scream with pleasure as soon as it made contact with my body.  How wrong I was.

 

I think the problem I had was twofold.  Firstly, I was taking a purely mechanical approach to pleasure.  I was reading the techniques in these articles and following them stringently.  But the thing is, our erogenous zones can’t be manipulated by pressing the right series of buttons in the right order.  You’re trying to have an orgasm, not operating a coffee machine.  And a lot of the time articles that promise to show you a new technique to help you come are written like an instruction manual.  So even if you follow all the steps, you still might not reach the desired end result because most of us need more than that to orgasm.  We need to be sufficiently relaxed and we need to feel safe.  There are hormonal fluctuations, physical rhythms and stress patterns that come into play.  Our body is a hugely complicated system, and so many factors come into play when you’re talking about physical pleasure.

 

The second part of the problem is decidedly more personal.  It’s taken me a while to be able to articulate it.  But a few days ago I listened to a lecture by Sonalee Rashatwar that set off a lightbulb in my brain.  In the lecture, Sonalee pointed out that in many non-Western cultures, people hold the idea that each person is born with all the knowledge they need to be happy and fulfilled, and that it’s merely a matter of accessing that knowledge.  This is different to the more western notion of a person looking outside themselves to learn what they need to know.  This statement resonated so fiercely with me because it so beautifully described how I feel about learning to orgasm.

 

I believe that for each of us, our body already knows what it needs to feel pleasure.  Think about it.  When we’re hungry, often our body will give us a signal of what kind of food we need to satiate ourselves.  If we are feeling agitated or upset, often an idea will pop up of something that will feel good or comfort us.  And I think that our bodies know what we need to bring us physical pleasure and orgasm.

 

In my experience, the times when I’ve learned a new way to orgasm, whether that be using a different sexual position, a different technique for touching myself, a new kind of toy or whatever, the orgasm has been a result of finding something that feels good and moving towards it.  In the case of my first vibrator, the way I eventually got it to work for me was when I was playing around with it one day, noticed that one of the settings felt really good against my body, and just relaxed and ran towards that feeling.  Finding that spark of “Oh, this feels nice” and then pursuing it has always been the way that I’ve achieved climax.  I’ve learned to look for the signals that my body throws up when I’m enjoying myself, or listen to those ideas that pop into my mind about different ways to move or play that might feel good.  It’s that experimentation and willingness to listen to my own body that have allowed me to learn how to have great sex, not from rigidly following the instructions in an article I read in Cosmo.

 

And that’s why I don’t feel comfortable writing articles that set out techniques that “guarantee” amazing orgasms.  Because I don’t think that approach to pleasure is helpful.  Sexuality and pleasure is intensely personal, and varies so much from person to person.  Although I can give you suggestions for things to try, or recommend toys that are great to play with, I don’t want to offer guarantees or step-by-step instructions.  Because by doing that, I’m discouraging you from being creative and playful in bed, from listening to your own body and chasing pleasure when it pops up.  I don’t ever want to write something that makes someone feel ashamed or broken.  I want to write posts that inspire you to try new things and look for the ways you can achieve pleasure that work for you.