authentic, marriage problems, sex, sexual intimacy, sexual intimacy struggles, sexual struggles, Uncategorized
Is Lack of Orgasm Destroying Your Marriage?
Aug
Orgasmic pleasure in a marriage can elude many couples. The causes behind the struggle can vary.
In today’s post, Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo of One Extraordinary Marriage share about the impact orgasm has not only on sexual intimacy, but marriage as a whole. The DiLorenzos’ post is part of my ongoing guest blog series on things that destroy sex in marriage.
I so appreciate them sharing as part of this series. Tony and Alisa were some of the first bloggers I met in the internet world of speaking encouragement into the lives of married couples trying to nurture their intimacy.
Is lack of orgasm destroying your marriage? The short answer is yes AND no.
Well, that cleared things up for each of you, didn’t it?
The truth is that marriages are destroyed by many things and there are two sides to this particular question.
Let’s explore this in more detail.
First, let me be very clear, I am able to have an orgasm and I do enjoy them.
I do not have an orgasm every time that I have sex.
Sometimes that is by choice and sometimes that is by circumstances.
I know that not everyone is able to have an orgasm. There can be medical reasons for lack of orgasm. There can be emotional reasons for lack of orgasm. There can even be knowledge reasons for lack of orgasm.
Let’s start with that last point — the fact that you have to know how your body works.
You have to know what feels good for you in order to be able to share that with your spouse. If you don’t know what works, how can you expect your spouse to figure it out?
Your spouse does not have ESP.
Am I referring to self-exploration? Yes! Mutual self-exploration.
When you were in school, did you have a Sex Ed class?
Well…
…now, you get to participate in the grown-up, married version, and it’s SO much better than what was in any textbook.
You have the opportunity to explore and learn with your spouse in a loving and creating environment. So what are you waiting for?
Now, back to the original question:
Is Lack of Orgasm Destroying Your Marriage? YES
For a person to experience orgasm, especially a woman, there has to be a combination of factors:
- emotional connection
- vulnerability
- trust
- communication
To fully let go in a sexual experience, to be willing to throw all caution to the wind, to be fully present in the moment, you have to let go of everything else around you.
You have to be willing to be caught up in the experiences, to surrender your body, mind, and soul to another person.
In the busyness of our world, that is a hard thing to do. It takes a combination of willpower and desire to “flip the switch” to decide to be vulnerable, to decide to be fully present.
When these factors are not present, the chances for an orgasm are greatly diminished.
It’s more than just the orgasm though.
When these particular factors are not present, there are greater problems in the marriage.
The lack of orgasm, and more likely the lack of sex, becomes a symptom of something else going on in the relationship.
So yes, if a lack of orgasm is due to the factors listed above, it could be indicative that your marriage is being destroyed.
Is Lack of Orgasm Destroying Your Marriage? NO
On the other hand, there are those times when the two of you are engaged in sexual activity with no orgasm. It happens and it’s OK, as long as the two of you are able to communicate what’s going on.
You won’t always come to orgasm when you are having a quickie or when you are in a different place.
Many times there is a medical or situational lack of orgasm, and the two of you are aware of it.
You know that something is going on with the health of your spouse. You know that you only have 5 minutes before a child is going to come and knock on the door.
It’s no surprise that due to stress, one of you might not be able to orgasm…
…and yet, the two of you are making the time to connect with one another, to be physical with each other.
To do what you can, with what you have, allows the two of you to be able to grow your marriage, no matter what the circumstances are.
The orgasm can be a barometer of what’s going on the relationship, but not the only measure.
The most important thing in your marriage is that the two of you making time for one another and making each other a priority.
If you would like to read more posts about orgasm, check out this page.
Tony & Alisa equip couples struggling with a lack of time, communication or intimacy with specific tools and strategies to create the extraordinary relationship they desire. One quick tool is their 6 Questions To Get The Conversation Started This Week (And Keep It Going).
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We have been married over 35 years and my wife has never experienced a true orgasm. It has not destroyed our marriage. My wife still enjoysome our intimate times without a big O.
When we talk about having an orgasm during married couple’s sexual relationship, in most cases, it is the woman who doesn’t have an orgasm. And in most cases, men are responsible. To this end, a man whose wife most time doesn’t have an orgasm should be concerned.
That means that the wife doesn’t enjoy the sexual act and the truth is that one of the things that make you a good husband is your being able to bring your wife to the point of an orgasm during sex act.
Men who don’t bring their wives to a point of an orgasm quite often are men who are impatience as to allow their wives to get ready for them before the actual sex act. As a man, that your wife is with you on the bed doesn’t mean that she is ready for a sexual act.
So you should as a man learn how to bring your wife to a point of sexual orgasm always. When you do, you will see that both of you will be enjoying sex to the fullness. And when your wife is fully enjoying sex act, you will observe that she will always accept your request for sex.
@Vincent I must question whether in most cases, men are responsible. In fact, I think men take on this responsibility more than they should. We get ourselves in trouble when we assume responsibilities that are not ours to assume.
If the wife is trying to communicate about this and show her husband how to please her, and he refuses to make any changes, then yes, he bears responsibility. But if she has issues that make her fear intimacy, she needs to address them. He can love, encourage and support her in this effort, but he cannot fix them for her.
There seems to be an assumption that when a woman orgasms, she is also experiencing positive emotions, and that is not necessarily true.
Sir, I think you are being a bit harsh on husbands by lumping us all into the “it is the man’s fault” basket. My wife doesn’t O very often, and while I wish she did get that pleasure regularly, it isn’t for a lack of effort on either of our parts. She would like to more often as well, but for one reason or another just can’t get there. For example, foreplay for us many times goes 30-45-60 minutes of massage, clitoral stimulation, kissing, gentle touching etc…. and still after all that she doesn’t get there. But you know what? She still enjoys it! An O isn’t the ‘goal’ for her, being with me in a special way is.
So give some grace to those of us who try, but still enjoy the journey. No matter what the end result.
Some clarification is needed here:
Are we talking about either partner not having an orgasm during intercourse, or are we talking about either partner not being able to be brought to orgasm by any means? There is a big difference between the two. My understanding is that many women find it difficult to be brought to orgasm consistently, and sometimes never, through “ordinary” intercourse. Sometimes men with ED or other issues also have difficulty coming to orgasm during intercourse. Different positions sometimes help, sometimes not.
Need I point out that there are other ways that each partner could bring the other partner to orgasm? While both partners bringing to each other to orgasm during intercourse might be ideal, real life often is far from ideal, and we have to deal with with whatever life brings our way.
Julie has discussed oral sex extensively on other threads, so I won’t comment about that here. Something she has written less about, but should also be considered as a part of a couple’s lovemaking repertoire is mutual manual stimulation. This may be the best alternative for couples where one or both of them are reluctant to practice oral sex but where there one or the other or both find it difficult to achieve orgasm with intercourse. If either partner is reluctant to try mutual manual stimulation, may I gently remind them that this is just foreplay carried on all the way to climax. For a married couple, they really shouldn’t consider anything to be wrong with this. There might even be something to be said for getting to know each other’s sexual response a little better. Some might consider an orgasm achieved through their partner’s manual stimulation to not be “as good” as an orgasm achieved during intercourse; perhaps so, but surely something is better than nothing.
The difficulty American women have in achieving orgasm may be due in no small part to circumcised sex. Sadly, in the US routine infant male circumcision is the norm. The US is the exception among industrialized nations in practicing this. This rarely gets discussed, never so in Christian circles. But, when you take away what nature gave us, you are making intercourse different for both spouses than what nature intended.
Disagree with you Larry B.
I would say exactly the opposite. The usual disconnect is man gets there too quickly. Circumcision lowers sensitivity. So, man becomes able to last longer.
The disconnect on this in America is (1) clueless (o selfish and disinterested) men and (2) women who are either clueless about themselves or who believe that part of being the “man” is “he just ought to know and be able to read me.” The second one is particularly dangerous because right now there is an epidemic of wife unfaithfulness in the 25 to 40 year age range and a lot of it is lack of sexual satisfaction. AND, many women then conflate that with “if the sex isn’t right, then he must not love me (or be “the one”, etc.).
Larry B: I don’t wish to get into a flame war here, but your comments just don’t seem to ring true. The presence or lack of a foreskin would seem to have, little, if anything, to do with the stimulation of the clitoris during intercourse. It is well-established that the circumcised male penis tends to be less sensitive than the uncircumcised one, and that circumcised males tend to “last longer” than uncircumcised. This would tend to suggest that to the extent that women need more time for more stimulation in order to achieve orgasm, being circumcised would be an advantage.
Sometimes the woman just does not want orgasm. That simple. My bride will push me off if I keep going when she gets close. I have had to pray long to get me to accept this. But I need to take her at her word she enjoys going through the motions. She knows my feelings about it and that I’m always ready to go that extra mile if she wants.
Perhaps she will change some day.
The scriptures don’t say “Thou shalt climax.”
@HopefullyHelpful Kudos for respecting and honoring your wife this way. Sometimes we need to feel safe saying “no” before we can feel safe saying “yes.”
My Lord and Savior was circumcised and His Father ordered it among His chosen people. If circumcision is so sexually bad, then why did God order for it to happen? The same God who created sex! My DH is circumcised and has absolutely no complaints. He prefers it so much that he had our sons circumcised, too. The anti-circ movement has a facet that is really anti religion and anti Jewish.
@ libl — I’m not a biblical scholar but I’ve been a childbirth educator for almost 25 years and I can say that how circumcision is performed nowadays, which I have read is far different from how it was done in Abraham’s day, is horrifying to say the least! God ordered Abraham and all his male descendants to be circumcised (which BTW included cutting a piece of the foreskin off, not as much as is done in our society these days) as an outward sign of their acceptance of God’s covenant. It was a daily reminder to them of this covenant. There were different markers to indicate the witness to God’s covenant — for Jacob it was the stone markers left; Noah was the rainbow; Abraham circumcision; and for us in the modern world it is baptism, the outward expression of our acceptance of God’s covenant with us.
But being circumcised or uncircumcised has nothing to do with our relationship with Jesus Christ — “Neither circumcision or uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.” Gal 6:15
My first son is circumcised but my second son isn’t, and perfectly healthy and happy.
To say your husband prefers being circumcised is honestly pretty silly unless he just recently was and has something to compare it to…and having no complaints, well, again if that is all he’s ever known why would he complain?? and most men will have their sons circumcised because they are.
But having said all that, I do not believe that a woman could orgasm better due to an uncircumcised penis since for most women orgasm has more to do with stimulation of the clitoris.
And to respond to the post — unless there is something drastically wrong within the marriage I do not believe a lack of orgasm would destroy it, BUT I think it’s important for both spouses to communicate their needs and wants and if one spouse has a harder time reaching orgasm or is more often than not, not reaching orgasm, it needs to be addressed. Because although orgasm shouldn’t necessarily be the ultimate goal of sex within a marriage, it certainly is a wonderful end to lovemaking and should be reached by both partners on a regular basis as wanted.
Julie, perhaps you would consider a post on “Is pressure to orgasm destroying your marriage?”
Orgasm is “letting go”. A surrendering of your complete self so as to become ONE with your spouse. It can be difficult for the woman……and for some men. My life’s experiences and a reading of psychological studies convinces me it is usually a mind thing, not a physical thing. Note I DID NOT say ALWAYS. But studies reveal the most likely causes are psychological. If a female really believes sex is something bad deep down then she will have a tough time surrendering to such intense pleasure and the love God meant for it to enhance. On REBA’s “pressure to orgasm” I would say YES. The more pressure to place on a spouse to orgasm I believe you are making it less likely and hurting your marital relationship. John R
Reba also mentioned on 8/17/15:
“There seems to be an assumption that when a woman orgasms, she is experiencing positive emotions, and that is not necessarily true.”
I totally agree with that statement.
Contrary to what “anyone” thinks about a woman not having an orgasm; it’s all about the CONNECTION. But then; I’ve always been “different”. I don’t care if I have an orgasm or not. If I’ve experienced TRUE INTIMACY with my partner (which I do; every time); then that is all that matters. *TWIN FLAMES*….