How To Close The Pleasure Gap

So your partner had an orgasm. But did she actually enjoy having sex?

- Mark Hay

Are you close? Are you there? Christine was hooking up with a guy from the club who was determined not to come unless she did – so determined, in fact, that he repeatedly asked how close she was to orgasm. For Christine, who often has trouble getting off with new partners, the sex wasn’t anywhere close to enjoyable. It was stressful.

“It was like he’d watched a whole series of pornos and compiled a list of positions,” she recalls. “He kept asking me, ‘How much do you like this? Tell me exactly how much!’ I was like, ‘What do you want me to say, 8.34 out of 10?’ ” As he tracked Christine’s progress – or lack thereof – he called for five-minute breaks in the action, lest he climax before fulfilling his duty.

The man was on a mission. And it didn’t matter that Christine was miserable.

It’s easy to see why some men approach sex this way, says sex educator Lawrence A. Siegel. “It’s what we teach men to do: be goal-oriented, conquest focused. Everything has to have a clear, winning goal.”