Why Do Women Still Fake It?

By Anna Davies

Like Botox, Girls, and the artistic merits of books with cotton-candy covers, your opinion on faking it has become one more issue that says something about whether or not you're a feminist. Do it, and you're pandering to the patriarchy. Hold out, and you're wondering if you're missing out-instead of following the action with a low-key cuddle session, you end up feeling both physical and emotional friction from the guy who just wants to get you off, even if all signals from your body show it's nowhere near happening.

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Recently, The Journal of Sex Research published a study that found that men do take it personally when women don't orgasm. Of course, a study wasn't necessary, all the researchers really needed to do was ask any woman who's been in a situation where an orgasm hasn't happened. As a woman who doesn't orgasm easily I spent most of my twenties faking it. I didn't fake it because I was actively denying myself pleasure, I faked it because I didn't want to get into a whole post-sex moratorium, discussing what worked and what didn't when I didn't even know myself. My brain was always on board, loving every second of whatever we ended up doing, but it felt like my body took longer to get up to speed. Sometimes, the rush of physical sensations was so intense I needed a break to parse through my own feelings. Of course, once I got serious with a guy, I'd end up telling the truth: That orgasms weren't always easy for me. We'd both politely ignore the fact that orgasms had seemed extremely easy for me during our last encounter and continue on to science-experiment type type sexual positions. Invariably, I'd feel even more pressure for something to happen, and my brain would switch away from how I was feeling to wondering whether it might be easier to simply keep on misleading him. I'd let my moans get louder, I'd watch his face light up in anticipation, and even though I knew I needed to be honest, I always ended up faking it. Not for him. But for me. Because pretending was so much easier than not knowing whether it was going to happen.

I asked Emily Morse, a sex educator and host of the podcast Sex With Emily, how she feels about faking it and why pretending to get off is something sexually liberated women both feel tempted to do-and guilty about hiding. "Female sexuality has always been a feminist issue in the sense that women have been socialized to fear their sexuality. Many women learn to deny their own amazing capacity for sexual pleasure," she explains. Fair enough, but my circle of friends aren't exactly denying our capacity for sexual pleasure. We've seen porn, we've purchased vibrators, we know what we want … and when it still doesn't happen, it feels like our bodies are betraying us.

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Kate, 25, explains that while she doesn't fake it, she doesn't expect an orgasm every time-even when she was in a five-year relationship. Now that she's single, she's finding the men she hooks up with expect it to happen, and are determined to take her over the edge. "I think the sentiment is sweet, but the more pressure he places on it happening, the less likely it is to happen, which is annoying."

Adds Calla, 23, "I've slept with guys who haven't turned me on. I know that's a whole other issue, but in those cases, I really don't care. If I am attracted to a guy, then I do expect that they'll make a point to make me orgasm … and I'm turned off if they don't try, especially after they've finished and I haven't."

And, as Morse explains, the orgasm gap is real-according to research, 40% of college-aged women have had an orgasm in their last hookup situation compared to 80% of men. Part of the problem, Morse feels, may lie in communication. "I always say communication is lubrication. If women don't communicate what they need, even if it's simply to take a break for awhile, then how will guys know what to do?" Think about it: Stroking a guy's egos isn't doing his future partners any favors, either. "Most men are walking around thinking that every woman they've ever slept with has experienced mind-blowing orgasms. Just ask them. I've done it on my podcast, then had to break the news that half of those women were probably faking it." But, at least in my experience, I think the communication issue has less to do with how comfortable we feel talking to the men in our lives (and our beds) and more to do with how we feel being honest with ourselves. After all, speaking for my circle of friends, we do occasionally find ourselves hooking up with men who, for one reason or another, we're not that attracted to. We sometimes want to put on a show and prove to a guy we're even better than any actress in a porn movie. We sometimes want to cut through the sex and get straight to the cuddling. In other words, we're as complicated as our anatomy, and our orgasm is connected to how we feel about our dates, our bodies...ourselves. And while it's easy to tell a guy that you want to try a vibrator or need him to move and keep his fingers right there until further notice, it's not so easy to admit that we're still trying to figure out the way we're wired.

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Eventually, due to a combination of feeling more comfortable in my own skin and having more compatible partners, I began getting the hang of my orgasms, but I don't feel bad that I spent a fair amount of my early 20s faking it. After all, I faked a lot of things back then: sophistication on first dates, administrative competence at the office, wine preferences at the bar. Fake it 'til you make it, cliché though it may be, is said for a reason: It's because, at least for me, acting as if I was the girl who had a heart-pounding, toe-curling orgasm turned me into a far more sexually confident women. Back then, I was still figuring out what worked and what didn't, and faking it gave me time for my body to catch up to my brain, to allow myself to get swept up in what felt right instead of an aftermath of pillowtalk discussing what went wrong. Even now, I wouldn't go back in time so I could stop faking it. My sex life may not have been as pleasure-packed and feminist-approved as it could have been, but at least it was authentic.

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