What Does An Orgasm Feel Like? 1,015 People Describe It

How would you sum up your most recent orgasm? Take a second and really think about it. Did it come easily, or was it a struggle? And if you got there, could you actually put into words how it happened?

To answer questions like these, we surveyed more than 1,000 sexually active adults about their own orgasm experiences. Along the way we discovered what gets women off compared with men, plus the biggest myths people hold about climaxing.

If you've got questions about achieving an orgasm, or you're not quite sure how to make one happen for yourself or a partner, you're in good company. Read on to find out how many people are climaxing regularly — and what's getting in the way for those who aren't.

Bridging the Orgasm Gap

Across the 1,015 sexually active adults who took part in our study, a few age-related patterns stood out. Nearly 13% of sexually active women in their 20s said they'd never had an orgasm during partner sex — only on their own while masturbating.

Encouragingly, that figure dropped with each older age bracket. Just under 10% of women in their 30s and roughly 5% of those in their 40s said a partnered orgasm still hadn't happened for them.

Men, however, were a different story. Ninety per cent reported that they always or almost always climaxed during sex, and close to 77% could reach orgasm both on their own and with a partner. A mere 0.4% of men said they'd never had an orgasm at all.

It Doesn't Come Easily for Everybody

With fewer than half a per cent of men reporting they'd never climaxed, we turned to women to ask about the hurdles standing between them and their sexual peak.

Asked why they occasionally struggled to orgasm during sex, 41.5% of women blamed a shortage of clitoral stimulation, 32.1% cited too little foreplay, and 30.3% said their partner simply wasn't giving them the kind of stimulation they needed.

Anxiety and overthinking got in the way of climaxing too, especially for younger women. Around 42% of women in their 20s and 44.2% of those in their 30s said they couldn't unwind, and 19.5% of the twenty-somethings admitted to worrying about how they looked during sex. Even when you're aroused and fully stimulated (tips for getting aroused), living in your own head can sabotage an orgasm. The good news is that regularly practising mindfulness can help you tune back into your body and stay more present during sex.

More: How to get rid of sexual anxiety.

Only about 15% of women could say they always orgasmed during sex. Some found it after the fact, though: 42.9% said they sometimes finished themselves off once sex was over, and 59.9% of women admitted to faking it on occasion.

The Most Common Routes To Orgasm

Naturally, we won't send you off without a few orgasm tips and tricks drawn from experienced men and women. You're perfectly capable of getting there; there may just be a handful of things worth considering or practising first.

When women did climax, 36.1% said it came from a mix of vaginal and clitoral stimulation. Yet while 59.5% of men reported orgasming from vaginal penetration alone, just 12.4% of women could say the same. Oral sex, hands and fingers and sex toys accounted for another 9.6%, 8.6% and 1.6% of women's orgasms, respectively.

If you're trying to work out whether your partner genuinely climaxed, psychologists recommend picturing your own orgasms rather than the theatrics you see in pornography. And as a rule of thumb, if you have to ask, your partner probably didn't get there.

We also learned there's little need to get exotic with your sex positions. Thirty per cent of women who orgasmed said the Cowgirl position (or girl on top) did the job nicely, and another 25.1% got off with Missionary. Something trickier like the Wheelbarrow sex position was the favorite of just 0.9% of the women surveyed.

Putting Your Sexual Knowledge To The Test

Reflecting on their "faked" bedroom moments, nearly half of women said they had no regrets. To them, faking an orgasm was a fair trade for making their partner feel good.

That's a deeply personal call, but honesty is usually the best policy between the sheets — not least because it helps both partners climax more often. Experts say that kind of communication and feedback can be as simple as asking "Can you use a little more pressure?" or saying "Keep doing that." The more at ease you are voicing what you want, the easier orgasms become.

Those weren't the only true-or-false questions we put to respondents, either. Thirty-five per cent of women wrongly believed men couldn't have multiple orgasms, while 42.8% of men mistakenly assumed masturbation physically desensitises a person and makes partnered orgasms harder to reach.

On the whole, both genders proved fairly clueless, each falling short on average. Once we tallied the correct answers to our orgasm quiz, men averaged 38% right and women just 37%.

The Words People Reach For

As promised, the next part of the study captures how respondents described their own orgasms. Free to write in their own answers, participants offered a window into all sorts of climax experiences. Scan the list below for a sense of how orgasms make people feel — at least as far as they could put it into words for us:

• Good (top men's word): 151 mentions
• Amazing: 148 mentions
• Intense (top women's word): 147 mentions
• Great: 100 mentions
• Relaxing: 93 mentions
• Release: 92 mentions
• Euphoric: 86 mentions
• Explosive: 81 mentions
• Pleasurable: 68 mentions
• Relief: 66 mentions
• Exciting: 65 mentions
• Happy: 58 mentions
• Satisfying: 50 mentions
• Pleasure: 50 mentions
• Warm: 45 mentions
• Powerful: 45 mentions
• Awesome: 45 mentions
• Fun: 43 mentions
• Tingly: 42 mentions

Unsurprisingly, most of the words people attached to orgasms skewed positive. "Euphoric" showed up 86 times, "explosive" 81 times and "pleasure" 50. We'll go ahead and assume that even "overwhelming," which came up 28 times, was meant in a good way.

Across both genders, "release" (92 uses), "relief" (66 uses) and "relieving" (51 uses) surfaced often when describing what an orgasm does to the body. That relief may have pointed to a physical or emotional letting-go, since both are believed to go hand in hand with orgasms. One scientific study found that sexual activity and orgasm can ease severe headaches, and frequent orgasms may also help manage stress and anxiety.

Coming To A Close

We're glad our study ultimately showed that both men and women still have plenty to learn about sex. Women in particular seem to figure out how to have better, more frequent orgasms as they age. If only we could go back and tell our younger selves there's no point fretting over how we look or whether we're doing everything "right" in bed. Just be honest.

At Love Curi, you and your partners can pick up the know-how to get more out of life in the bedroom (or wherever the mood happens to strike). Visit Lovecuri.com for more intense sex, bigger orgasms and deeply passionate relationships.

Methodology

For this study, we surveyed 501 sexually active people who identified as women and 514 who identified as men, using a separate questionnaire for each. Everyone had to be 18 or older and currently sexually active. Among the women, roughly 88% were straight, 4% were gay, 7% were bisexual and about 1% were asexual. Among the men, 88% were straight, 7% were gay and 5% were bisexual. The women ranged in age from 18 to 87 (mean of 36.2, standard deviation of 10.8), and the men from 18 to 77 (mean of 36.2, standard deviation of 10.9).

We asked every participant to pick the three words or phrases that best captured orgasms in their view. We also invited them to write a phrase they'd use to describe an orgasm to someone who'd never had one.

Respondents also worked through a series of true/false questions, and we measured their answers against the correct ones to calculate the percentage each person got right out of 7.

Sources for Quiz Answers

• Most women cannot orgasm from vaginal intercourse alone:
  • ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5087699/
• Women can ejaculate during sex:
  • ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23634659%20
• Masturbation does not reduce sensation:
  • jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(15)32585-6/fulltext
• Some men are capable of having multiple orgasms:
  • ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27872023
• On average, it takes women more than five minutes to reach an orgasm:
  • sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609520300308
• Some women are capable of multiple orgasms:
  • ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1768220

Limitations

This survey doesn't capture every person's experience of sex and orgasms. It rests on means alone, is purely exploratory and is meant for entertainment purposes only. Because respondents were predominantly cisgender, further research is needed to explore the experiences of other populations. The data were neither weighted nor statistically tested.

Fair Use Statement

Love Curi is glad to share what we've learned in the name of sexual health and pleasure. You're welcome to pass along the findings of this study — just be sure any use is noncommercial and you link back to this page.

February 18, 2022