Good question

Recently I was working with some young women. We spoke of many things around sexuality and diversity. I was explaining that orgasm doesnt have to be the number one - be all end all- to sex play. As we were discussing why we have been conditioned to believe this , one of the young women asked " Well how can I tell if Ive had an orgasm, I enjoy sex but I dont know if I have ever had an orgasm"

I won't go into our discussion here but suffice it to say that if this question was asked of her friends the reponse would probably be something like " If you've had one you would know". This response is not true and is a sure way of shutting down the conversation.

Below is a response by one of my favourite bloggers ( Cory Silverberg) to the same question he received. What do you think?

If you only do one thing for your sex life, try and stop yourself whenever you are comparing your sex life to someone else’s. It’s not easy, but in the long run I promise you’ll be much happier, and think of all the time you’ll save by getting rid of all those anxious moments. Also, you never know if someone is describing something accurately, and, regardless, it doesn’t matter. Your sex life is all that matters, and possibly the sex life of the people you’re having sex with.

If you do two things for your sex life, you should make the second thing an effort to masturbate more. Sex educators don’t refer to masturbation as the “cornerstone of sexual health” for nothing. The best way to explore your sexual response, including what orgasms feel like, is to do it on your own first, before you get one or more than one person involved.

As for how to tell if you’ve had an orgasm or not, there isn’t a test you can take. After all, orgasm is not just a physical experience, it happens in your body, your mind, possibly even your spirit. And there is no single definition of orgasm. So what would the test measure? However, there are some tell tale signs of what we could call an orgasmic response:

• Increased heart rate and blood pressure
• Increased muscle tension
• A flush of your skin
• A release of tension followed sometimes by a feeling of deep relaxation

But you might experience one or several of these things and not “feel” like you had an orgasm.

So how can you tell if you’ve had an orgasm? Most people would probably respond by saying “you’ll know when you’ve had one”. This always sounds a little condescending to me though, and if you’ve never had one, how could you know?

Instead I would just ask you whether or not the sex play you’re having is pleasurable. Does it feel good? Does it feel like something you want to do more? Are there times during sex when you want to say or do something but you hold yourself back? Holding back is one way you might be reducing the pleasure you’re feeling, including orgasms.

Trying to figure out if you’ve had an orgasm can also be a dead end, because if you’ve had one, does that mean you stop exploring other ways of feeling good or having orgasms? It’s a cliché, but a true one, that sex is about the journey not the destination. Focusing on orgasm is like driving down a one way street that stops at the river. If you focus instead on sexual pleasure, on how you respond and what you can feel, you don’t have to stop at the river bank; you get to jump in the river and float with the current, and you never know where you’ll end up.