Nobody Owes Anyone Anything In Bed

But the orgasm gap is real and so are feelings of entitlement

One time, in a swinger’s club, I had been flirting all night with this guy. He and his wife were hanging out with a couple that they apparently played with regularly, but he was clearly into me and giving me a lot of his attention. I guess I was hoping that they would invite us back to their room, but it just wasn’t happening. I ended up giving him a very public blowjob — for a while anyway, but I was sitting on a bench, bending over and it was starting to hurt my neck. Plus, the number of on-lookers was getting to be a bit more than I had bargained for, so I just stopped mid-way.

To me, this was a prelude as well as the signal to move things to a more comfortable, more private spot, but he didn’t get the message, and after that night, he never talked to me again, treating me like I’d done something really terrible by not finishing him off right then and there, no matter how uncomfortable that was for me. Miscommunication? Probably, but also a bit of entitlement as well, I think.

Some men seem to believe that they are owed an orgasm. If you have any sexual contact with them, it’s “not fair” if it doesn’t end with them coming. If they’ve gotten aroused, they feel that they are owed a “happy ending” right then and there.

To those guys I say, “You have a hand — use it.” I don’t owe you anything.

And no, that does not make me a tease, or whatever other antiquated term you want to pull out of the 1950s. They’ve just been taught that they are entitled to an orgasm, even though the guys most likely to feel that way are probably the ones most responsible for the female orgasm gap.

According to a 2016 study from the Archives of Sexual Behavior that looked at over 52,500 adults in the U.S. — including those who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual — 95 percent of heterosexual men reported they usually or always orgasmed during sex, compared to 65 percent of heterosexual women, who were the least likely.

“The number-one reason for the orgasm gap — and it’s not the only one — is our cultural ignorance of the clitoris.”

Women are also more likely to orgasm if they receive oral sex (in addition to other activities like deep kissing and intercourse), according to the Archives of Sexual Behavior study, but some studies show they are less likely to receive oral sex than they are to give it.

I’m not saying that lovers should intentionally leave each other hanging. I also think it’s really important for men who sleep with women to understand that there is an orgasm gap and try not to contribute to it further. But I’m also saying that A) there’s more to good sex than orgasms and B) that making that the main pursuit of a sexual encounter is probably going to lead to a less satisfying one. Still, as Shannon Ashley pointed out in her story, Men Contribute to The Orgasm Gap.

The fact that more women can climax without a partner than with a man suggests that most men need to pay more attention.

So, helping our sex partners have orgasms is a good thing, no matter their gender, but it’s still not owed to anyone. When James and I have a playdate with one or more of our lovers, we usually meet up for around 4 hours at a time. This gives us plenty of time to have a 30–45 minute chat before we even take our clothes off. We then play for a while, switching positions and the focus of things, fairly often. If Lane starts fucking me, he’s not necessarily going to continue until he climaxes. If Tamara is sitting on my face, I might need to switch up positions before she comes. And that’s all totally fine because we’ll all eventually get there — something that we are mindful of but not honed in on.

The more important thing is that we are all comfortable and enjoying ourselves. Of course, if someone is right on the edge, we try to help tip them over, but in general, there’s no pressure to make something happen. Every 30 or 40 minutes we stop and rest and get a snack or refresh our drinks anyhow. It’s a play-date and we are there to play, not just to get off. This makes for sex that is a whole lot of fun and has a lot of freedom to it, rather than just using each other as living sex toys to achieve orgasm. My preference is to have all sex be more in that same vein, and if one person is having an orgasm, then the other person/people are as well.

When it’s just me and James, we don’t typically have 4 hours at time to just play together. We do have quickies, probably more often than we’d ideally like to, but it’s often a necessity unless we’ve really made arrangements to not be disturbed (as in a more formal play date). If we’re mid-way and our son knocks on the door, or a package gets delivered that we have to sign for, or some other unexpected interruption, one or both of us may not have “finished.”

Depending on the circumstances, we may not be able to reconvene very readily, and it’s simply understood that this is just the breaks. Our outlook is, if you’re so worked up that you really need that release right now, you’re on your own, and that’s just the way things go sometimes. There’s no obligation to make sure the other one comes. You have to take ownership of your own happiness and sometimes of your own happy endings. Welcome to life, although when we aren’t interrupted, we share and share alike.

There were times in my life before I met James where I really wanted to kiss and pet with someone but I didn’t really want to fuck them. On more than one of those occasions, I ended up doing it anyway because the guy acted like it was impossible for him to stop now that we’d gone that far. I was shamed and coerced into doing something that I didn’t really want to do. That’s a part of rape culture.

I’m not saying that I was raped in those instances, but that sort of entitlement to a woman’s body and insistence on her giving you an orgasm, is a part of that dynamic. Needless to say, I did not have an orgasm on those occasions. Their poor “blue balls” were much more important than my sexual frustration due to long-standing narratives that men just need sex and women don’t in the same way.

One of the main reasons that I didn’t want to fuck these guys is they just weren’t really doing it for me. I was getting sub-par effort from them, but somehow I still owed them an orgasm. Yeah, no! I’m old enough and wise enough now to no longer let myself get coerced into anything that I don’t truly want to do.

Repeat after me — “I have a hand.”

The flip-side of this is the man who isn’t happy until you’ve had an orgasm, not because he cares about your pleasure, but because it’s his particular badge of honor. I had a lover like this for a while, and despite the fact that he was a nurse, he just didn’t seem to understand how to approach a clitoris. “The clitoris and the glans each contain some 7,000 sensory nerve endings, a greater concentration of touch-sensitive nerves than any other part of the body. But the clitoris packs them into a volume only about one-tenth the size of the glans, so touch for touch, this concentration of nerves makes the clitoris more sensitive than the glans.”

As one person put it, you can’t rub a clit as if you’re rubbing two sticks together to start a fire. Particularly, not right at the beginning. You have to work up to it. This guy thought that more pressure was always better. To compound the issue, I can’t come with someone that I don’t feel completely comfortable with and totally trust. I liked this guy, but we weren’t at that place. The fact that he was making it his personal mission to bring me to orgasm even though I told him that I need to really know someone well first, meant it wasn’t sweet, I was his project. This just made things worse because it was all about him and his prowess.

The last time we got together, I brought a toy, and although every other man I’ve ever had sex with has found it really exciting to watch me pleasure myself with a vibrator, this guy was insulted. He made it about him, and we never slept together again. Just as well. Nobody owes someone else anything in bed. Much better to go into it with the idea of being giving and loving and playful and just see what happens. Everyone is much more likely to have a truly enjoyable experience that way.

It’s great to have your partner’s pleasure in mind, particularly if you are a man having sex with a woman. But in truth, the journey should be more important than the destination, and if it isn’t, that may be a part of the issue. Believing that you are owed an orgasm or that you are owed anything at all in bed, is dysfunctional and most likely an aspect of rape culture. It’s not sexy.

Despite the orgasm gap, women aren’t owed an orgasm either. But it’s nice for everyone to be a warm and generous lover, who cares about their partner’s pleasure while still looking out for their own needs. This is a large part of what it means to be “a good lover.”

© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.

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