It’s Saturday night, at 2:00 in the morning, and you and your girlfriend are far from asleep. You’ve been kissing in bed, then you start to have oral sex. Soon she’s moaning with pleasure and you can tell she’s close to reaching climax. When she does orgasm, you don’t doubt for a second that it was the real deal.
Or was it? Most women fake orgasms some of the time, according to the latest research, and they tend to be pretty convincing when they do – men often have no clue whether their partner’s mind-blowing orgasm was real or not.
Pretending
This of course is the point, at least some of the time. Not surprisingly, one of the reasons women pretend to climax is to make their partner feel good about himself in bed and to avoid hurting his feelings if they’re not aroused, according to the US study which set out to create the first ever scale to record the reasons why women fake orgasms.
In the study, two separate surveys were given to about 350 and 400 female university students who said they’d faked an orgasm, which researchers defined as, “acting or pretending as if you have had an orgasm when you have not, through vocal confirmation and/or muscular contraction, regardless of the reason”. The women checked off all their motives for faking climax during vaginal intercourse or oral sex.
Pleasure boost
Some of the time faking it isn’t about a woman’s partner at all, it’s about herself, the results showed. Women moan and move in ways that seem like they’re reaching orgasm to turn themselves on and increase their own arousal.
Orgasmic sounds and actions can be pretty exciting and help get both him and her in the mood, the research confirms. This argues against the commonly held belief that women only fake orgasms because they feel pressure to climax to please their partners.
Avoiding fear and anxiety
But it’s not all good news. Women also pretend they’ve had an orgasm because of negative emotions like fear, shame, and embarrassment about not being able to climax. Yet research shows that not having an orgasm during vaginal intercourse is pretty common – as many as 80 percent of women don’t usually reach orgasm in this way.
Other times it’s simply about wanting to put an end to intercourse, whether it’s because a woman isn’t enjoying herself, just wants to go to sleep, or feels it’ll help to avoid awkward feelings with her partner in the future.
These reasons can be a sign that there’s not enough communication between a woman and her partner during sex. Letting each other know when you’re really enjoying something, when you’re not, and when you’re ready to take a break is important for a healthy sex life. And that’s true for both men and women – it’s a lesser known fact that men can fake orgasms too!
Go on, confess - have you ever faked an orgasm? What made you do it? Leave an anonymous comment below or be brave and tell us on Facebook.