Why do women do this? I was thinking about my experience of faking and there were a few driving factors

The cultural sex scripts I had picked up from TV etc, taught me that sex meant quick penetration, a focus on male ejaculation and that women, without much clitoral stimulation get off on that. I faked orgasms to fit into that script.

I believed the narrative that women don’t derive as much pleasure from sex as men and it’s something to get over and done with ‘for them’

I felt greedy to need clitoral stimulation for more than 5 minutes, because that took longer than what a man needed to become aroused

Sex as something women do for men

Growing up, I received messages from the media that sex was something women did for men.

That Men were the ones with the insatiable desires.

Women were the ones for whom sex was unsatisfactory, something initially desired at the start of the relationship because of lust

But that this slowly dwindled over time, where sex was perfunctory

An item on the to-do list to keep the man happy

Years ago, one of the biggest things that I wanted to change about my sex life was my ability to have an orgasm with a partner. For years, I found it hard to relax and enjoy myself and I would get stressed about how long it took me to climax. I thought there was something wrong with me or that I was just someone who didn’t find it easy to have an orgasm with a partner.

I wanted to change this, so I began to study about female pleasure and orgasm. And not too long into that journey, my ability to have an orgasm with a partner radically shifted where it became easy for me.

I was a horny teenager growing up.

Devouring Mills & Boons and fiction where women had lots of s/ex.

I couldn’t wait to have sex and masturbated all the time.

I had this vision of it being this ecstatic, transcendental experience.

When I started to have sex though, I remember feeling profoundly disappointed.

Where was the ecstasy and pleasure that I imagined penetration would be?

Matt and I were out walking yesterday and I was talking him through some of the content for my new program, The Pleasure Upgrade.

And we naturally progressed to talking about our s/ex life.

Even though we’ve had many of these conversations, I still felt a little nervousness.

Thoughts that floated through my mind were

‘What if I say something that he misinterprets?’

Or ‘what if he says something that hurts my feelings?’

What happened instead was totally different.

A fixed masturbation style is when we masturbate the same way each time we do it, whether that’s with our own fingers, hands, bedding item, vibrator etc

The reasons why this can make it difficult to experience sexual pleasure with a partner are..

There’s a saying in Irish that goes, ‘Ní saoirse go saoirse na mban’. Which translates to that there is no freedom until the freedom of women.

I love the punch and power of these words, their left wing, anti-colonialist and feminist message.

To me, they evoke this sense of Irish women’s resistance to the status quo. Women who fought against the British Occupation. Women who stood up to the Church and its choke hold over the nation.