How Do I Know If I Came?
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Welcome to Doing It, a column where sex educator Varuna Srinivasan explores the deep connections between sex and emotions. This month, they explore the complicated business of orgasming if you have a vulva. Have a question or story idea for Dr. Srinivasan? Submit it here.
If you ask someone with a penis what an orgasm looks like, the answer is usually straightforward: a happy ending commemorated with a squirt of semen followed by a once erect penis slowly becoming flaccid. When you ask a vulva-haver the same question, responses tend to vary—and some note that it can be hard to tell if they even had an orgasm at all.
This variation and uncertainty is something Niki Davis-Fainbloom says comes up a lot when she works with people as a sex educator. “I’ve had many people ask me how to know if they’ve had an orgasm,” she says. “Although my instinct is to say, ‘If you’re asking, you probably haven’t had one,’ the answer is much more complicated—especially because people with vulvas can experience so many types of orgasms.” The type and intensity of an orgasm is influenced by a host of different factors, including your anatomy (the distance between your clitoris and vaginal opening can be a big one), age, hormones, type of stimulation, interpersonal relationships, and sexuality.
Long before I was a sex columnist, I was once a 19-year-old virginal youngling who thought orgasms looked the way they did in the movies. You know, women screaming in pleasure two minutes into having vaginal penetrative sex.
So when my friend Sara described her first orgasm to me, I expected her experience to be similar to this. It wasn’t. As Sara described it, her orgasm involved less screaming, more tingling in the groin, sudden head rush, toes curling type of surge which apparently made her feel all warm and fuzzy. And it hadn’t come from some intense sex session, but rather making out with her boyfriend for hours.
I was absolutely gobsmacked. Not only because she had an orgasm from kissing (something I didn’t realize was possible but that a 2011 paper found had happened to 20% of the women surveyed) but because it made me realize that I had, indeed, had an orgasm before.
I had experienced the same sensations during the time I “accidentally” gave myself what I now realized was an orgasm when I dry humped a pillow in my bedroom. No penetrative sex. No screaming. Just a whole lot of tingling.
While this conversation was illuminating, the truth was that, for years after, I still struggled to figure out what my orgasms typically looked like and how to consistently have one. Every man I’ve ever been with could easily cum while I was left to figure out my orgasm. That experience is fairly common: 50% of women struggle to reach an orgasm and up to 15% of women say they’ve never experienced one before. It’s a fact I’d chalk up to the gross lack of information around women’s bodies, the policing of sexuality in many cultures, and the fact that women’s orgasms are rarely discussed with as much specificity as men’s. And if you’re not even sure what an orgasm feels like, how are you supposed to know if you came?
Well fear not, dear reader. I am here to help you figure out if you are, indeed, having an orgasm. While orgasms are variable in their presentation, the different types essentially boil down to two factors: method of stimulation and area of the body being stimulated.
What Causes an Orgasm
According to Davis-Fainbloom, the easiest orgasm to facilitate for someone hasn’t had one before is the clitoral orgasm, something she calls a “startergasm.” “A clitoral orgasm results from external stimulation,” she explains. “Vaginal orgasm, which is felt inside the vagina and is a result of internal stimulation.” Of course, as my friend and her makeout session confirmed, the clitoris and vagina aren’t the only parts of the body that can lead to an orgasm. “Essentially, any erogenous zone can lead to an orgasm and orgasms aren’t confined to one type,” Davis-Fainbloom says. “For instance, the blended orgasm—a classic—combines stimulation of more than one erogenous zone.”
Remember that scene in Friends where Monica describes the sex erogenous zones when Chandler comes to her for help making his girlfriend cum? I love this scene for many reasons, but primarily because it’s an accurate portrayal of the human body. We have many different erogenous zones apart from the clitoris and the vagina, including feet, ears, anus, mouth, nipple, and cervix. That means you can have an orgasm in one, two, or three places if you know which notes to hit.
An orgasm can also happen as a result of non-erotic stimulation, like an exercise induced orgasm, or with no stimulation at all, like during one’s sleep, which is referred to as a wet dream. However you are looking to get stimulated, Davis-Fainbloom recommends starting out with a clitoral toy or using your hands to play around with different types of pressure, motion, and areas of the body to figure out what works best for you.
For some, it might help to approach the process almost scientifically. Kamakshi, a 22-year-old student, decided to run an experiment when it came to her first orgasm. She heard a theory that postulated the positive relationship between coffee ingestion and intensity of an orgasm.
“I chugged a cup of black coffee before bed and masturbated in order to test out this theory,” Kamakshi recalls. “It was the peak of self discovery and I felt so good about myself.” She notes that the possibly coffee-induced orgasm felt like a head-to-toe chill, “with shivers in my legs after which I couldn’t touch myself anymore. Despite chugging coffee, I slept so well that night.”
Since that day, Kamakshi has continued her experiments and collected more data into what gives her the best orgasm. “I’ve found that my orgasm varies depending on whether I’m having sex with my partner, masturbating using a vibrator or my fingers, and if I’m watching porn,” she says of her findings. Damn, I love a woman in STEM.
What an Orgasm Feels Like
An orgasm can be experienced on many different levels. It can be a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual experience. You may cry, laugh maniacally, see colors, thank god, scream, or sweat. Some people may even squirt at the end of their orgasm, a phenomenon described as the emission of fluid from the Skene’s glands in response to sexual stimulation. One widely-cited study found that over 50% of people with vaginas have had this experience; a 2017 study found that it was closer to 70%. An orgasm can also have physiological effects: You might experience a mood boost as a result of the release of dopamine and oxytocin. Basically, you might have the most multi-sensorial experience of your life.
Coming down to brass tacks, the signs of an orgasm are easy to spot (and very similar to the experiences my friend and I had back in college). “In a classic sense, an orgasm can include an emotional and physical feeling of release—a buildup of tension that is then let go,” Davis-Fainbloom says. “Physically, it’s often accompanied by signs like a rapid heart rate, rhythmic muscle contractions in the pelvic area, flushed skin, and a warm, tingling sensation.”
But maybe one of the reasons there’s so much confusion around what an orgasm feels like is that words cannot adequately encapsulate the experience that is the orgasm. Twenty-two-year-old sex educator Sriha agrees. “I almost feel like the English language can't capture what is such a distinctly human experience that connects us all. It feels like a wind up, a rising crest, a building momentum, moving into a release, creating an immediate glow of fireworks.”
Akshaya, a 29-year-old psychology professor, described her first orgasm as a multidimensional encounter that lasted over a period of 20 seconds.”Mentally, I could see a thermal map of colours for a brief period of time until I lost all focus of everything in and around me,” she recalls. “Emotionally, I felt as though I had unlocked a new depth of self-awareness and a deeper connection with my body that day.” In general, Akshaya says her orgasms exist on two levels. “I feel a clitoral orgasm, which feels like a sweet fuzzy tingle or a pleasurable tickle underneath my vulva spreading to my toes,” she says. “On another level, my vaginal orgasms feel like a series of deep waves which start in my vaginal canal and spread through my entire body in succession.” When she experiences both simultaneously, which she says is most common for her, even her facial muscles get involved.
The Pressure to Orgasm
It’s important for me to emphasize here that one does need to have an orgasm to experience physical bliss and psychosexual growth. A big part of the renewed self-exploration that Akshaya was referring to has more to do with the journey (having sex or masturbating) and less to do with the outcome (orgasm).
But given all the narratives around sex needing to have a happy ending, we can often feel all this pressure to orgasm. It’s common to feel shame when we “fail” to get there during an intimate encounter. As Vera, a 23-year-old student, puts it: “I felt burdened with the need to experience an orgasm to keep up my partner's enthusiasm.”
If this sounds like you, Davis-Fainbloom encourages people to focus less on the orgasm and more on the journey. “The body does not respond well to pressure (just ask the millions of people with ED!)” she says.
Reframing the narrative this way has been helpful for Vera, who’s also struggled with body image issues in the past. “It finally feels great to just have a safe and secure touch on my body even if it doesn't lead to an orgasm,” Vera says. “The acceptance of the body being desirable and satisfied matters more than archetypal climax.”
Read more from Doing It:
We Should All Try Having More Mirror Sex
Originally Appeared on Allure
