Gaby
A new Rutgers study finds women are less likely to expect the “big O” during one-night stands. They don’t put much hope on reaching orgasm in brief encounters. Meanwhile, men tend to anticipate ejaculation every time, regardless of how long sex lasts. (The study focuses on heterosexual relationships. – Ed.)
Women reported significantly lower expectations about climaxing compared with men. They also said it was harder to orgasm with selfish partners.
Grace Wetzel, the study’s lead author, says contextual, social, and personal factors create real barriers to female orgasm. Those barriers can keep women from feeling “capable of actively achieving orgasm,” the Daily Mail reported.
What the Researchers Discovered
The team examined the so-called orgasm gap — the well-documented pattern that men report orgasm much more often than women during heterosexual sex. They wanted to see how specific situations shape women’s expectations of orgasm.
Women in the study were asked to imagine a set of hypothetical sexual scenarios that varied by how long contact lasted and by partner behavior. In some scenarios sexual contact lasted 20 minutes; in others it extended for several hours. Some partners were described as focused on the woman’s pleasure, while other partners were described as selfish.
The participants rated how strongly they would want to orgasm and how likely they thought orgasm would be in each scenario.
The results showed women were less likely to expect orgasm during short sexual encounters and when partners behaved selfishly.
Wetzel says that when orgasm matters to women and they believe it is possible, they try harder to get there. But the study found women pay close attention to environmental cues and signals from their partners when pursuing orgasm, and those signals shape their expectations.
The study suggests male partners can help by creating a sexual environment that makes female orgasm more likely.
Wetzel recommends that men show they prioritize their partner’s pleasure during sex and avoid pressuring her to climax. That shift in behavior could increase the chances that women will orgasm.
What Do Other Researchers Say?
Other researchers have uncovered related findings about sexual satisfaction. Psychologists at the University of South Florida found that women who earn more than their male partners are twice as likely to fake orgasm.
Some women fake orgasms to protect a partner’s sense of financial adequacy. Psychologists say that protective move is questionable: it doesn’t help sexual satisfaction or honest communication.
As Professor Jessica Jordan puts it, when society creates an unrealistic standard of masculinity, no one wins.
A 2005 study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found 91 percent of men report always experiencing orgasm during intercourse, while only 39 percent of women say the same.
By contrast, a 2016 study of more than 52,000 people from three U.S. universities revised those figures: it found 65 percent of heterosexual women “usually or always” experience orgasm during sex, compared with 95 percent of men.
