“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.” - Wilhelm Reich
Some of my most vivid memories of my early sex life are not of the satisfying post coitus elated release, but of their opposite. It is hard to forget the many times when sex was more a path of frustration than pleasure; when I was still figuring out how my body responded and why it often didn’t. In retrospect, I think it was my strong intention to find pleasure that kept me coming back to try again—of being willing to live inside the questions I had about pleasure even without many answers. And even now, some 30 years later, I often notice that it is this same deliberate attention, the essence of wanting to want that gives me the courage to keep seeking out my own erotic truths…
Truth is, it takes a lot of time, practice, courage and resilience to find the keys that unlock our mysterious libido. Not only are we all different, but we are continuously different, even from the self we thought we just got to know. So there isn’t one easy answer, pill or toy that we can rely upon to consistently unlock the passionate sexual response we long for. Many of the questions we ask are not only a moving target but they focus our attention outwards. Where my sexual freedom really started to open up and transformed my ability to work with my ever changing libido was from developing my own curriculum of sexual education. As I began to understand my own sexual physiology and the unique relationship between clitoral stimulation and the internal explosions of the g-spot, I also discovered a whole new range of sexual positions that really worked. The more that I followed my own curiosity and learned the vocabulary for my own pleasure, the more that I was able to release the anxiety that had for so long overshadowed my orgasmic capacity.
Voltaire once said that it is the duty of all rational creatures to seek pleasure. And truly, regardless of the many painful, frustrating or embarrassing moments we experience in the seeking of it, we all long to feel the seismic shift and profound emotional and energetic releases associated with orgasm. Still, orgasm both alone and together, remains elusive for many.
The most important revelation about orgasm is that you can’t make yourself or more importantly anyone else have an orgasm. And in fact, it is often our efforts to cajole them into being that makes our orgasmic potential even more inaccessible. As soon as we set orgasm as the finish line, we unintentionally invite in the performance anxiety about whether we will be able to cross that line. This explains why so many women opt out of expecting their own pleasure, and are willing to substitute the orgasmic pleasure of their partner as enough. It also offers a window into the myopic focus that many men get lost in when it comes to their sexual behavior. They too, struggle with performance anxiety and so focus all their attention on proving that they can climax, rather than experiencing the moment they are sharing. This same performance anxiety also drives many into a sexual rut, as we easily get lost in the same old groove that we remember worked like a charm before and spend all our time trying to recreate the last time, while losing the moment we are in entirely.
The key to everyone’s orgasmic potential waiting is twofold. First is learning to surrender to the body’s erotic knowing, rather than persisting in willful attempts to control it. The second is to bring our attention to the present moment. Surrender can only happen when we are being guided by our curiosity and open to what is actually happening. Not surprisingly, the human brain cannot simultaneously process anxiety and sexual arousal. So giving up our ideas about how orgasm should happen, not to mention the fears about whether it will or not is the gate to surrendering to our erotic meanderings.
The good news is that the more orgasms you have, the more orgasms you’re likely to have in the future. So learning how to surrender also builds your trust in your sexual response and helps you let go of anxiety. Not surprisingly, many people have more success achieving orgasm alone than with their partner, but even this is a worthy practice, because the better you get at honing your own orgasmic capacity, the easier it gets to share them with someone you love. Think of developing your capacity for orgasm as a potent form of meditation—even when you don’t always achieve bliss, the practice of harnessing our attention and surrendering our will is where orgasmic potential begins.
