Many women think that faking orgasms, or telling their husband they enjoyed sex when they didn’t, is a good way to make him happy and doesn’t hurt anyone. This is extremely wrong. Every lie about your sexual satisfaction, needs, preferences, or experiences is another nail in the coffin of your relationship. Why is this seemingly “nice,” “tactful” practice actually harmful to your partner and your relationship?
When you lie to your partner about your orgasm, or any other facet of your experience in bed with them, you are stopping them from knowing the real you and learning how to be a better partner to you. Practically speaking, if you lie about your orgasm, your partner will assume that whatever they did immediately prior to your fake orgasm was great sex and very exciting to you. They will keep on doing whatever this was forever, because they think that it worked. It didn’t work, so this means your partner will continue to do the wrong thing indefinitely, which is going to make you more and more resentful over time.
If you ever want to tell your partner that what he is doing isn’t working (I’m going to use he as the majority of my clients in this situation are women married to men, but change gender accordingly), later in your relationship when your frustration has reached a breaking point, he is going to understandably feel hurt, confused, and embarrassed. He will also feel patronized that you thought he wasn’t enough of an adult to deal with feedback in a healthy way. He will find it harder to learn the right ways to touch you after so long practicing the wrong ways. And finally, he will find it harder to trust your feedback moving forward if he learns or intuits eventually that you’ve been faking. The only way to avoid all of these later issues is to be sure that you are honest every time about your experience.
Here are four of the most common situations where people frequently fake:
- To end a sexual encounter
- To avoid hurting their partner’s feelings
- To avoid having to talk about sex
- To avoid discussing the fact that they have zero desire
First, let me say very clearly that if the only way you can end a sexual encounter is by faking spontaneous vaginal muscular contractions then there are some deeper issues within your relationship. Likely, you are a people-pleaser coupled with a man who started out pretty easily offended and became more sensitive over time as you coddled him and protected him from feedback. You can always end a sexual encounter. If you want to be a sport and end it by giving him an orgasm, that is a nice thing to do within a loving relationship. But do not lie and say you had an orgasm when you didn’t. Lies of all kinds erode closeness over time.
Second, your partner is not a tiny little baby bird. He is an adult and deserves to be treated like one. Acting like he is going to crumple up and die because you didn’t have an orgasm or you need to give him direct instruction on how you like to be touched is patronizing and likely wrong. Sure, his feelings may be hurt initially, as yours might also be if he told you he needed you to move differently during sex, but if you can’t tolerate this hurt feelings, that is likely your own issue with people pleasing.
If you tell me that in fact your husband IS a whiny little child, then stop having sex with him ASAP because you feel contempt towards him and he likely feels it in bed and out of bed alike. Get to a couples counselor immediately and also read this post. The more crappy sexual encounters you have with him when you are secretly disliking him, the likelier you are to eventually just get fed up and leave.
Third, many people find it awkward to talk about sex because sex was a taboo subject in their home growing up. You can power through this and develop and grow as an unapologetic and empowered sexual entity. You deserve this and you deserve to model this for your kids, if applicable. The book Come As You Are helps many of my clients learn language to discuss sex openly and directly, as well as helps them feel more normal about what they have previously thought of as weird hangups about sex. Going to a therapist can also help with this. Sex-positive therapists like myself talk freely and openly about sex, and this can help you learn to do the same. With direct and honest feedback, your partner can learn to give you an orgasm when you want to have one.
Fourth, if you are faking to hide from your partner and/or yourself that you have zero sexual desire, you are doing yourself a disservice. You will end up hating sex and even fearing it, because you are completely inauthentic during the entire experience. You will unfairly even end up hating your partner for not somehow knowing that you hate it, despite you putting on a show that you enjoy it. If you have no sex drive, and this bothers you, seek professional help. A lot can be done with hormones, and tweaking of medications (SSRI’s and birth control pills are common culprits for lower sex drive or being unable to reach orgasm). Sometimes the issue is due to past sexual trauma. Either way, hiding any problem is never the answer.
If you want to have a genuine, connected and close relationship, do not lie about your orgasm or any other aspect of your sexual needs, desires, or experience. The majority of men in loving relationships want direct instruction, and the ones who start out sensitive about receiving it can grow and learn (just like any adult needs to in any relationship) and become enthusiastic learners. I see this all the time in my work with couples. Mr. Sensitive About Feedback turns into Mr. Show Me How To Please You after a couple of weeks of work on “Do you really want your wife to have to lie to you about sex or do you want to actually turn into her personal Sex God?”
Do not do yourself or your partner the disservice of lying about something as intimate and important as your sexual satisfaction. Don’t do it frequently, don’t do it ever. I mean maybe an exception is if you are in some Black Mirror episode and you know your partner is going to die tomorrow. Then you can fake. But in Black Mirror it would end up that ironically you only get to bring your partner back to life if you commit to reliving that last sex act everyday forever or something, and it sucks so much that eventually you kill him yourself. Twist ending! And until we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Man, I Should Write For TV.