Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Why Do Women Fake Their Orgasms?

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

OK, let’s be honest. How many of you have faked or known someone who regularly fakes orgasms?  If you’re in this boat, I get it. There are plenty of reasons women fake it, and I’m shedding some light on these motivators in today’s Language of Love Bite. Whether it’s a presumed act of mercy, you haven’t had an orgasm before, or you’re unsure how to replicate the orgasm you experience on your own, I want to help you reach a point where you can be honest with your partner.  In this Bite, I’m explaining: The mercy fake The stages of an orgasm  How to tackle shame as the secret orgasm killer  Why some women don’t advocate for their pleasure Ideal ingredients for sexual pleasure How best to tackle it with your partner if you’ve been faking it!  Remember that orgasms and arousal depend on several different factors. If you’re not reaching an orgasm every time you have sex, that’s completely normal! But pleasure is your birthright. Let go of those expectations and enjoy the process! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Bites, where I tackle your most asked questions and requested topics. These episodes are designed to be fun, quick, and to the point. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. The big question, why do women fake orgasms? Statistics show that over 70% of women have faked or regularly fake orgasms. So why is that and what can we do about it? That's what I'm

going to be getting into in this episode. So first of all, why do women fake? Well, there's really four main reasons. First, the mercy fake, right? So she either can't reach orgasm or has a hard time reaching orgasm. And her partner is trying so hard and is really invested in her reaching orgasm, or she somehow has adopted this story, which let's just face it, society promotes that she's supposed to have an orgasm every time. So her partner expects that. And if she has a male partner, for him, orgasm is sort of the punctuation mark on sex, right? Like most guys who are sexually functional can't imagine sex being satisfying without an orgasm. But the truth is only 30% of women reach orgasm with intercourse.

And a lot of women don't reach orgasm at all, at all, at all, or even with a partner. And some women only through foreplay. But the mercy fake is basically my partner is trying so hard. I know it's not going to happen. And I'm just going to fake it so that they'll feel good. And this event will come to its conclusion, basically. Now, the problem with mercy faking is that eventually, especially if you stay in that relationship, then you start to resent it. You start to want to work on things either stimulation wise or within yourself to be able to reach orgasm because every time you're now faking it and your partner's rolling over all pleased with themselves, you know, and you're thinking, oh, and then when you finally

do want to tell them the truth, they freak out because they feel so bamboozled, right? And you were such a good liar. What else are you lying about? So when couples come in to see me and the partner's been mercy faking, we have to like rebuild trust first before we can even get to the orgasm piece, right? The other reason why,

and I would say this is probably the second reason why women fake, separate video I'm gonna make on why we don't reach orgasm, but the reason women fake is because they don't really know what an orgasm is supposed to feel like. It may seem surprising if you're someone who's orgasmic, but I can tell you as someone who works with thousands and thousands of women that many, many, many, many women of all ages

ask me about what an orgasm feels like because they're not sure they've ever had one. And there is some truth to that saying of like, if you're not sure whether you've had an orgasm or not, you probably haven't. but it's also true that maybe you're having a variety of sensations. And if you're not super embodied or attuned to your body, maybe you're missing it. Basically what an orgasm is physically is an intense contraction and release of muscle tension in your pelvic floor and around your genitals that feels super pleasurable. And, you know, one of the best ways I've heard it explained is like heightened arousal. So what happens is that you move through arousal,

then you move into a phase called the plateau where the arousal kind of evens off. And then you get to orgasm, which is like this big peak. And then you go down into resolution, right? And if you're multi-orgasmic, you just go a little bit into resolution and then you go into arousal, plateau and orgasm again. So the best way to explain it is that the arousal and especially the plateau feels is the equivalent, it doesn't feel this way, of like having a sneeze coming, you know, when you really have to sneeze and it's right on the edge and you feel it coming. And then the orgasm is the release, is the sneeze. Of course, the sneeze feels even better than a sneeze that's been building up and it's around your genitals and pelvic floor. So it's very

pleasurable. But a lot of women fake it because they're not sure what an orgasm is and if they've ever had one. And so the best way to really figure that out for yourself beyond this description I just gave you is to try it on your own through self-stimulation, either with a toy or manual stimulation, move through the process of figuring out what orgasm feels like on your own, and then you will be able to figure it out with a partner. The other reason women fake is because they don't really know how to, they don't feel comfortable kind of directing a partner and they need certain kinds of stimulation in order to reach orgasm or they can reach orgasm when they're by themselves and doing this in this particular position or some sort of using a stuffed animal or a toy or

whatever else. And they can't really figure out how to replicate that with a partner and rather, or they're with a partner who's just not getting the instruction, or they do need certain kinds of stimulation or more foreplay or more of that and less of this. And they don't feel comfortable telling any of this to their partner or directing their partner. Not that you should be like a movie director directing them the whole time. But you should be able, ideally, to articulate what turns you on, what you like, what you want more of, what you're not as into. You can say in a gentle way, just focusing on what you'd like more of in order to enjoy sex and have an orgasm. And so if you're unable to do that or too embarrassed to do that, then I find a lot of women will just fake orgasm

because they're like, oh, no, like I can't tell this person I know how I could reach orgasm, but I can't bring myself to tell them what I need to do that in this situation. So I'm just going to fake it so they don't feel bad. And then the final reason I find that women fake orgasm is shame that they're not orgasmic. Right. And part of that, quite frankly, is society and guys faults. You know, as I was saying earlier, guys often it's hard for them until they get educated. And so consider this your education. It's hard for them to envision sex being super pleasurable without an orgasm occurring because that's how it is for them. And it's like I said, the punctuation mark, like how can sex be finished if we both don't reach orgasm? And God bless them. Like 50 years ago, that would not have been the case, especially with male partners. They didn't care whether women reached orgasm or not. So this is a great development, but we just don't want that pressure to go too far. And also I find that for many partners, male, female, and in between who are with women,

they kind of take it personally when their partner doesn't reach orgasm. And sometimes it is personal that they don't know what they're doing or they don't understand a woman's anatomy. So if that's the case, make sure to watch the videos I made on the G-spot, the clitoris. But a lot of the times, it's just what men need to understand about women is that we don't, even the most orgasmic women, do not reach orgasm every time they have sex. They don't. And our orgasms and our arousal is so dependent on our hormonal cycle, on our mood, on our stress levels, on our distractions. We're so much more sensitive to all of those things.

So there are some times when it's really easy if a woman is assuming she's already orgasmic and sometimes when it's not easy and women often feel ashamed, especially if they're not able to reach orgasm. They imagine that it makes them a less desirable partner or they've had prior partners who were really emotionally immature and didn't understand this and said, I can't be with someone who can't reach orgasm, who I can't get off and, you know, dumped them. and now they have some trauma around that. So they're too ashamed to just say in the moment, I'm not someone who reaches orgasm, but I really enjoy the sensual and sexual experience. And I would just love to be intimate with you without focusing on orgasm.

Or if they are orgasmic, but they just know it's not gonna happen because most women kind of sense that once things get started, they just say, look, it's not gonna happen this time. Let's just enjoy ourselves because here's what you have to understand. I did a huge national study, this was several years ago, on what the most sexually satisfied

women have in common. So I did a national survey with Rand about looking at the women who objectively experienced the most pleasure sexually. And then we looked at all these different variables and wanted to understand what variables correlated most with that woman's sexual satisfaction. And guess what? It was not the orgasms she had that predicted for her sexual satisfaction. It was the emotional intimacy and connection she felt with the person she was having sex

with. That is what predicts most for sexual satisfaction. Once again, because orgasms, while a very worthy goal and not something to be shied away from and something to be worked toward, is not the end-all be-all of a woman's sexual satisfaction. So hopefully that gives you some insight. My advice is learn about your body. Learn about your sexual response on your own if you're a female and get yourself to the

place, even if it involves sex therapy or education, but really get yourself to the place where you learn your own body, learn how to reach orgasm on your own, and then start practicing teaching your partner, whatever partner that is, whether it's a one-night stand or a long-term relationship, start teaching your partner what to do, even if it means having their hand on your hand while you self-stimulate or their hand on your hand while you use a vibrator or direction during sex, but help them help you and don't get caught up on when it doesn't happen because sometimes it doesn't happen. And that's not a sign that anything is wrong. It could just be a sign that you're in a funky place in your hormonal cycle or you're too stressed about

something going on at work. So don't stress out about it. The main thing is to remember that faking is, you know, it's technically a form of dishonesty and it's a withhold. And especially if you're in a long-term relationship, you know, my advice is if you have been mercy faking or just faking in your relationship and you haven't told your partner and you want to, there's two ways to go about it. One is to come clean and say, guess what? For the past X number of months or years that we've been in this relationship, I've been faking orgasm. That is going to be a bit of a mess and it's going to be a really big deal to them. And you're probably going to want, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but you are going to probably want the help of a couples

therapist, sex therapist to sort of set all this straight and get you guys going on the honesty realm again and get your sex life going in a way that's really authentic and pleasurable to both of you. There is another way that I'll just share with you, which is to go to your partner and say, listen, I am noticing that my sexual response is changing. So you're not telling him that you've been faking this whole time, but you say, look, I'm noticing that my response is changing. I'm finding it is just a lot harder to get aroused. It's harder to reach orgasm. And I've figured out experimenting with myself that certain things help. And so I'm wondering if you'd be open to playing with that and practicing that and switching it up a little in terms of the stimulation

so that I can get there. If you want a simpler solution, then that is it. But I'm not telling you to lie. If you want to tell the truth, just get support when you do that. And the main thing is to know that faking it doesn't serve anyone. First of all, you're giving credit to someone

where credit isn't due. But more importantly, you are cheating yourself of something really beautiful and you aren't honoring yourself, right? And you're sort of taking the easy way out to avoid the pressure or to avoid rejection when what's really required in every moment of our lives, if we can aspire to that, I'm not expecting us to achieve it, but if we can aspire to it, when we live in authenticity and claim the truth, that's when the magic in our life can really happen.

If we aren't willing to be honest with ourselves, much less with our partners, then how can you create positive change for the better. And a good relationship is always changing for the better. So let me know if you have any questions about this or anything else. I will make another episode for you about why women can't reach orgasm and what you can do about it. But in the meantime, just stop faking. Until the doctor said I'm crazy for your look Wrote me a prescription but there's no...