‘What It Took for Me to Finally Have an Orgasm’ Eight women who’d struggled to “finish” in the bedroom share the moment it eventually happened.

By Laura Pitcher

Illustration: Lia Kantrowitz

It’s not exactly news that some women have trouble achieving an orgasm during sex. The so-called pleasure gap, namely between heterosexual men and women, continues to persist. One study, published in 2019, found that while 82 percent of men reported orgasming during their most recent casual sexual encounter, only 32 percent of women said the same. Six years later, in another study surveying 24,752 American adults published last June, men reported orgasming between 22 percent and 30 percent more than the women participating.

Still, for the percentage of women who have never gotten there, or the ones who aren’t satisfied by how often they are getting there, there’s no consolation in it being normalized for women just not to come. From the absence of women’s pleasure in most sexual education to the standards that pornography sets to the ways in which the male orgasm is prioritized in heterosexual dating norms, our societal expectations and biases around gender continue to make their way into the bedroom — and into the heads of women attempting to focus on themselves. The result is a sexual landscape that emphasizes how women should perform pleasure rather than experience it.

Of course it doesn’t — it shouldn’t — have to be that way. Below, eight women who previously struggled to orgasm share the moment it finally happened.

Giuliana Carella, 32, New Jersey

When I was 29, I started going to pelvic-floor therapy for reasons related to endometriosis, and we were talking about orgasms. I explained what mine felt like, and she told me that wasn’t it. I realized all I’d ever felt was it starting and then getting cut off. I remember going to the gynecologist when I started having sex and them telling me sex is supposed to be painful. That shaped how I viewed sex, so I spent most of my life up until that point thinking it was normal. At pelvic-floor therapy, they introduced me to what’s called the Pelvic Wand. I also started getting trigger-point injections in my pelvic floor and using vaginal Valium suppositories. After doing that for two years, I was finally able to orgasm. It was with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, after he started going to pelvic-floor therapy with me. When it actually happened, I realized it was so incredibly different from what I thought it was. I always thought people on TV shows were being dramatic during orgasm scenes, and then I realized they were not. It was validating for me to learn that I wasn’t imagining things — that wasn’t how life is supposed to be, and all these things I learned over the years were wrong.

Anonymous, 30, New York

I’m sorry to all of the men before my fiancé because I completely faked it. I put on a performance. I was doing women dirty — with my high-school ex, I pretended to come from nipple stimulation. When my fiancé and I first started dating, I was very forthright with him from the beginning that it was something I’d struggled with. I wanted to start from scratch. We tried foreplay, him stimulating me, but after a while, we realized it wasn’t going to happen. Knowing his eyes could be on me made my brain kick on. A year into dating, we started bringing the vibrator, but I still couldn’t get there. The way it ended up happening was him literally having to pretend to be asleep while I used a vibrator next to him. The first time it happened, during sex he was on top and I was using the vibrator, but it just wasn’t going to happen; so after he finished, he just laid on me and the vibrator was still going. While he was still in me, he turned his head away and pretended to be asleep. It took a long time, but it finally happened. I cried right afterward. It was another layer of closeness that I’ve never had with anyone else.

Loanne ii Tran, 25, Toronto, Canada

I’ve been subconsciously masturbating ever since I was 5 years old, dry humping stuffed animals. Throughout my youth, I explored the classic toothbrush as a vibrator and started doing things with my hands before, eventually, when I became of age, I bought myself my first vibrator. Still, I would get to the point where I feel like I could climax, but I couldn’t get over that hill. It was like the roller coaster that goes up, but instead of going forward and down, it just rolls backward. I was forever edging myself. Then, in March 2023, I was with a partner who I’d been with for two months. My track record has been very heteronormative, but it was one of my most serious dating queer experiences. They were fingering me and found this one spot, my A-spot, which is past the G-spot, that I responded really well to. Before I knew it, I realized I had come. My body wasn’t registering what happened, and I freaked out. It wasn’t euphoria that I felt — it was extreme confusion and anxiety. I was looking at them, and I could see them moving further away from me. It might have been a panic attack. I left and walked downstairs from their building and stopped for 30 minutes outside. I had to cry because it was too much. We stopped dating in July 2024, and I haven’t been able to make myself come anymore since, and I can’t come with other people. Knowing I can makes it even more frustrating now, and it feels like this one rare moment within the time of us dating that I haven’t been able to find again. I have a huge mental barrier and feel like, Darn, why can’t I or anyone else trigger this again?