Give the Gift of Simultaneous Orgasm This Valentine’s Day

For heterosexualcouples, just making sure that both partners reach orgasm during vaginal intercourse can be difficult. Achieving orgasm at the exact same moment (i.e., “simultaneous orgasm”)? That’s even more of a challenge. Why? Because the typical motion of penile thrusting does not seem to provide adequate sexual stimulation for many women. In fact, only about half of women report being able to climax from penile movements alone during sex and, even among those women, many of them report that they do not experience orgasm reliably.¹ As a result, many women find that adding clitoral stimulation to intercourse (e.g., with the use of one’s hand or a vibrator) or attempting different sexual activities is necessary to help them climax. However, it turns out that you may not need to do these other things if you can better align your own and your partner’s genitals during sex.

In the 1980s, a few sex researchers proposed something known as the Coital Alignment Technique (CAT)² as a way of remedying the difficulty so many heterosexual couples have when it comes to not only achieving female orgasm, but timing it to co-occur with the male orgasm. The CAT is a method of providing the female partner with more sexual stimulation during intercourse by aligning the male and female genitals with the goal of producing a “no hands required” orgasm. Here’s how the CAT works:

“The positioning for coital alignment requires a shift forward by the male partner from the standard missionary position to the male ‘pelvic-override’ position, in which the base of the penis makes direct contact with the woman’s clitoris. This makes vaginal penetration with constant clitoral contact possible in coitus, completing a fundamental genital ‘circuitry.’ The genital contact is maintained by a coordinated form of sexual movement in which the woman leads the upward stroke and the man the downward stroke. The partner moving his or her pelvis backward exerts a slight but firm counterpressure. The penile-clitoral connection is held together by pressure and counterpressure simultaneously exerted genitally by both partners in a rocking motion rather than the familiar ‘in and out’ pattern of coital thrusting.”³

To put it more simply, the CAT is a modified missionary style position (i.e., man-on-top) in which he angles his body forward such that the base of the penis touches the clitoris. The partners then “grind” or rock their pelvises back and forth so that his penis and her clitoris stay in constant contact. The goal is to counteract the common tendency for the man to simply thrust aggressively while the woman plays a relatively passive role, a style of sex many therapists believe is a recipe for male premature ejaculation and female anorgasmia (i.e., lack of female orgasm).³ The CAT recognizes that both partners must work together to achieve mutual pleasure.

To master the CAT, it takes a bit of practice and it requires partners to break the mentality that sex is all about the man pretending he is a high-powered piston. Thus, the CAT looks like nothing you’ve ever seen in porn. However, research finds that coital alignment significantly increases the likelihood of female orgasm during intercourse above and beyond just adding manual clitoral stimulation with the hands, plus it has the added benefit of increasing the odds of simultaneous orgasm.³ So, if you’re looking to make your Valentine’s Day extra special this year, you and your partner might want to consider rethinking the way that you typically have sex.

Faking Orgasms: Who Benefits More From a False Finish?

According to Meg Ryan’s character in WhenHarry Met Sally, “Most women at one time or another have faked it.” By “it” she was, of course, referring to the seemingly elusivefemale orgasm. And she’s right—studies consistently show that somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of women have faked a climax at some point in their lives.¹ This probably does not come as a shock to most of you, given the frequency with which female feigning comes up in the popular media, from relatively tame TV shows like Seinfeld to the more adventurous Sex and the City.
 


What may surprise you is that men fake orgasms at least some of the time too. In fact, a recent study found that one in four male college students admitted pretending to orgasm at least once.² It makes sense that men fake it less often than women, given that men are much more likely to achieve orgasm in the first place and because, well, men produce more physical “evidence” when it happens, making it harder to fool a sexual partner.

So why would someone pretend to climax? People report a variety of reasons for faking it, from the understandable (e.g., lack of sexual experience) to the unfortunate (e.g., lack of attraction to one’s partner). However, we must take gender into account when discussing motivations for faking because men and women are similar in some ways, but very different in others.²
 


For instance, the sexes are equally likely to report having had a false finish because they felt an actual orgasm was unlikely to happen (e.g., they were overly intoxicated or it was just taking too long). In comparison, men are more inclined to say they faked it because they just wanted sex to end (e.g., they were tired), whereas women are more inclined to say they did so because they wanted to avoid hurting their partner’s feelings or because they wanted to improve their partner’s self-esteem. In other words, women are more likely than men to have “sympathy orgasms.”

To sum it up, both men and women fake it, but women do it more often and frequently see it as a way to protect their partners’ feelings. When men fake it, they are more likely to see it as a way to exit an undesirable or uncomfortable situation. Thus, no matter who fakes it, the resulting “show” would appear to benefit men (or their egos) more than it does women.

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¹Wiederman, M. W. (1997). Pretending orgasm during sexual intercourse: Correlates in a sample of young adult women. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 23, 131–135.

 ²Muehlenhard, C. L., & Shippee, S. K. (2010). Men’s and women’s reports of pretending orgasm. Journal of Sex Research, 47, 552-567.