So, we’ve had some listeners reach out with some questions about sex, and more specifically, questions about female orgasm. For most young couples getting married you know that while sex is awesome, it takes a while to develop sexual competence.
To give you some great help, we interviewed an expert in the field of sexuality – Shannon Ethridge. She is an awesome resource, one we highly recommend, and we encourage you to reach out to her. The links to find her are at the bottom of this post.
Shannon Ethridge’s Story
I’d like to share this with you to give you hope! Even if you began your sexual history in ways you are not proud of, you can be an overcomer and be a great sex partner in your marriage.
As an adolescent, Shannon had a very promiscuous sex life. The root cause being she felt so disconnected from her Dad and brother. When Shannon was 4, her 8-year-old sister died. Her family seemed to shut down at that time, so she grew up very hungry for attention and affection.
When she turned 11-12 and started to develop hips and breasts, she had some uncles who taught her how to get attention and affection by playing inappropriate games. That groomed her until she was 14 when she gave her virginity away looking for love, as she says, “in all the wrong places” and starting her on a trajectory of promiscuity for the next 5 or 6 years.
In her early 20’s, she met a 6’7” spiritual giant of a man who was still a virgin. Assuming he wouldn’t want anything to do with a girl like her, she told him a bit about her past. He replied, “Shannon, I don’t love you because of your past, I love you for who you are now and who God created you to be and I want to help you become who God created you to be.”
Unfortunately, as Shannon noted, putting a wedding band on her finger did not transform her sexuality and fix all her problems. It was a few short years into their marriage when Shannon realized she needed to sift through and sort out all her sexual baggage. She had stopped the promiscuity, but in the process had stopped her sexuality for her husband as well.
Shannon had to find a happy medium where she was an active, interested sex partner, but only with her husband. Now, given that they just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, I’d say they are a success story!
Another neat thing I found with Shannon is that she and I are both passionate about helping others create their own success story and in this episode, we want to do just that with you, our reader/listener.
Given that part of a successful marriage is a healthy sex life, Shannon and I talked about sex and more specifically female orgasm. What I’ve written below reads more like a blog post, but credit for this great content goes to Shannon!
Question: Why is it that men are usually always ready to go, and for women, well, it takes some work to have an orgasm?
Men are usually ready at the drop of a hat to have sex, but for them, sex is also finished at the drop of a hat. Women take much longer to reach orgasm, sometimes ten times longer, but it means that she gets to enjoy the pleasure for that much longer. Sex is not a race.
Just because it takes a wife longer, does not mean that she shouldn’t expect her husband to do this for her. If your husband is a good lover, he will enjoy what he is doing for you and have all the patience in the world for you to reach that climactic point.
It takes the average couple 18 years to settle into a really smooth sexual groove together. It may feel like a headache in the first few years of marriage that you’re wired so differently and that you start so differently and that you finish so differently, but work at it and it will become smoother, more enjoyable, and more euphoric.
If you’re a young wife, in those first few years of marriage where you’re trying to find your sexual groove, here are some suggestions for helping your husband help you have an orgasm.
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Teach Him How To Touch You
Realize that even though your husband is definitely a participant, it is not his responsibility to know everything. A lot of women enter a sexual experience expecting their husband to know all the right places to push, the right amount of pressure, and for how long, but the reality is that men don’t have a vagina or a clitoris. It is unfair of us ladies to expect that he should know what he’s doing. Teach your husband what you find enjoyable!
HUSBANDS: How-to Guide
In this audio clip, Shannon speaks directly to husbands to give them tips on how to help their wife climax. We’ve confirmed that these work. 😉
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Get Comfortable
To do that you need to be comfortable in your own skin. If you’re uncomfortable with this process, your brain is going to automatically shut down. Your brain is your biggest sex organ – what happens in the brain is what triggers both engorgement and orgasm.
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Clitoral Stimulation Is Very Important
Let’s go back for a moment – when a baby boy or a baby girl is conceived in its mother’s womb, they start with the same genitalia. After the 4th month of gestation, if there is a Y chromosome, the clitoris sprouts and becomes a penis. If there is no Y chromosome, it remains a clitoris – the primary stimulated sex organ. Stimulating the clitoris will trip a women’s orgasm.
If you don’t know where the clitoris is, draw an imaginary line from the belly button straight down to the vagina. As soon as the labia split apart, the clitoris is just underneath a hood of skin. If you push the labia back a little bit, it exposes that super-sensitive area.
The clitoris is like the penis, in that, if there is no blood supply to that area, orgasm cannot happen. In fact, if you try to touch the clitoris before it is engorged it may be uneventful or even painful. She needs to be turned on before she is ever touched.
Sufficient foreplay of kissing, hugging, massaging, breast fondling, touching other parts of the body is going to create that oxytocin flow prompting the blood flow (engorgement) to the clitoris. At this point when the clitoris is touched, it feels really good.
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Go With the Flow
Wife, the most important thing that you need to realize is to let yourself cooperate with the process by engaging sexy thoughts! If you don’t, the pituitary gland is not triggered to send blood flow to the clitoris to make the process easier.
Should a woman expect to have an orgasm every time they have sex?
A woman should not put pressure on herself that she needs to perform – this is not a performance – but she has the right to reach orgasm. Sometimes women get hung up on the fact that it takes so much longer for her to reach climax than him, and she can’t expect him to put out that much energy especially late at night.
No, if you want an orgasm, you are entitled to an orgasm, but you need to be a full participant in the process. You need to be mentally and physically engaged to go where you want to go. You cannot reach orgasm when thinking about the grocery list, or the remodeling project or the kids – you must be fully present and engaged in sexy thoughts.
Do not be intimidated by wanting both of you to reach orgasm. It is helpful though, for a couple to prioritize HER orgasm first. After a man has an orgasm, there are hormones released in his brain, which make him very tired and sleepy. For a woman, it is the opposite. When she has an orgasm, and her hormones are released, she wants to mount the man that just made her feel that way.
Is the inability to have only a vaginal orgasm something to be ashamed of?
Nothing could be further from the truth than thinking a woman should be able to have an orgasm through only vaginal intercourse. The research shows that only 17-30% of woman are able to have an orgasm that way.
Women Can Experience 3 Types of Orgasm
Clitoral Orgasm – as we’ve touched on already, where the clitoris is stimulated.
G-Spot Orgasm – if a wife is laying on her back and her husband has his finger inside of her (middle finger, being the longest, works best) with his palm facing the ceiling. The pad of his finger can then make a hook motion and stroke the anterior portion of her vaginal canal (the portion closest to where the nerves run down thru the clitoris).
If he does that long enough and just right, he will trigger an orgasmic response that will “freak them both out” (thanks, Shannon!). A g-spot orgasm releases certain glands inside the vaginal canal and expresses a significant amount of fluid (up to ¼ cup or even ½ cup). This is not the urine, but vaginal secretions. A towel will not soak up this fluid, so a waterproof crib pad is recommended as no one likes to sleep in the wet spot.
Blended orgasm – he has his finger stroking the anterior portion of her vaginal canal, stimulating a g-spot orgasm, at the same time as he is rubbing her clitoris with his tongue, finger or marital aid. This will create a very intense orgasm which Shannon says “may have her hanging from the ceiling with her fingernails dug into the ceiling texture”!
This does take practice. Don’t feel like you’ll hit it out of the park on your first try, but it is something that works.
And a random-but-interesting fact for you: the male penis has 4000 nerve endings, but the female clitoris has 8000 nerve endings!
How do you get around the anxiety or shame that affects sexual performance? Some people may come into their marriage with a sexual history. Is it possible to get past that, and how?
Yes, it is absolutely 100% possible.
Some people like to read a book and try to work through things on their own.
Coaching is also a great option.
Shannon offers quite a few options herself. She has a plethora of books on her website, www.shannonethridge.com. Two that she specifically mentioned in the podcast are The Passion Principles
and The Sexually Confident Wife
. She also offers Coaching to women or couples and has a really neat workshop for women struggling with any kind of sexual hang-up, called Women At the Well. There she works with women to unpack the most significant experiences in the first 20 years or so of their life.
Shannon also co-hosts Sexy Marriage Radio with Dr. Corey Allan – a great listen!
If you don’t already have the encouragement you need to work on your sexuality, here’s another fact for you: The best preventative medicine against degenerative diseases, specifically Alzheimer’s, is frequent orgasm. It lights up different parts of the brain simultaneously that no other activity accomplishes.
There are so many physical, medical, spiritual, emotional, mental, sexual, relational reasons to get in touch with your sexuality and become the sexually confident wife you deserve to be.
No matter how long you’ve been married, there are still many years ahead to experience the pleasure and joy of a healthy sexual relationship with your spouse. Don’t think of sex as a woman’s marital duty but rather her marital delight!
I just want to add, that there is no one recipe for great sex. If you approach female orgasm as a recipe (touch here > get this response) or as a job to be completed, things may not work out great for you. It’s called making love and physical intimacy for a reason! Try it and see what works for the two of you.
HUSBANDS: How-to Guide
In this audio clip, Shannon speaks directly to husbands to give them tips on how to help their wife climax. We’ve confirmed that these work. 😉
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:58 — 34.7MB)