Why Don't I Orgasm With My Partner?

Orgasm - it’s what most of us see as the peak experience of sex. For some it is the measurement of a ‘successful’ sex session, for some it is an illusive feeling that only happens on special occasion and for some they aren’t really sure if they’ve had one.

In this article I will be speaking to those who can have orgasms by themselves but can’t orgasm with a partner (or their partner doesn’t orgasm with them), or when there are certain sex acts which someone may struggle to orgasm from.

Why I am writing about this topic is because last week I did a successful online workshop about cock worship. It was for a Norwegian colleague and 40 women from her membership showed up wanting to know how they could be better lovers.

I shared the positive feedback from my colleague on my Instagram stories with a link to my in-person cock worship workshop that’s coming up. Off the back of that share I got an email from a woman in Australia. I’m in the UK and this woman was asking if I had anything online that was similar.

The thing is with emails and messages is that everything is so much more deeper than the initial sentence. It’s never just about ‘wanting to be better at a technique’ or ‘being confident in the bedroom’ - there is always so much more to sex, what it says about our relationship to ourselves and also our relationship to others.

As we dug deeper I asked her what her challenges were and she shared that she’s become much more confident when it comes to oral sex - things like eye contact, enthusiasm and being present but she still feels very unsure about the actual technique. She’s rarely been able to bring a man to orgasm through oral sex and it’s something she’d genuinely love to become better at. She feels the same about using her hands. She’s never really figured out how to make that work for a man either. For her, it’s really about wanting to understand the practical side of it and develop the skills and confidence to give her partner a more pleasurable experience.

So… what we need to understand about orgasm and pleasure, it’s a two-way communication thing. Like Chad Nielson, a Men’s Intimacy Coach shares in my Unravel Her course - ‘I had these amazing techniques that worked amazingly on women until one day I met a woman they didn’t work on.”

Because you can be the master of all things sex, know all the moves to get your lover there - but, if you don’t know what they like or if their body is new to you and you have never spoken to them about what they like, how are you ever going to get them there?

So, it’s a two way thing - the person doing the touching needs to know what touch they need to be doing and if willing and able, they do it. The person receiving the touch needs to encourage the touch when it’s good, give alternatives for when they need something different.

The questions I then sent back to this women were:

‘Did the men who came from oral sex did they always come previously or just not with you?

The men you have given handjobs too, same question - have they come from someone else doing it?

Did all of them communicate what they wanted and how they wanted it?

Was THEIR desire to orgasm from the handjob or BJ? Or was that YOUR desire?’

So… let’s take a look at these…

If someone generally doesn’t orgasm from a particular sex act whether that is oral sex, penetration, manual or anything else, that could be that either they haven’t found what works for them yet or they potentially have a block to surrendering.

As an example some women orgasm really easily from oral sex, some women find it difficult to orgasm from oral sex because they feel shame about their bodies, their smell and end up stuck in their head.

Some men don’t orgasm from Blowjobs because they may have had a bad experience in the past from an ex partner that gagged when he ejaculated in her mouth or her reaction put him in the head space of it not being safe to ejaculate in a woman’s mouth.

Some men don’t see anything other than penetration as ‘proper sex’ so they don’t want to orgasm before the ‘real stuff’ happens.

How much also did the men share what they wanted and how? Did he share that maybe he likes his balls being scratched? Or did he share that his balls are super sensitive and he does’t really like them being touched unless with light fingertips? Did he share that from a Blowjob he needs a finger in his ass at the same time? There may have been things that you were doing that impacted his ability to orgasm or there may have been something extra you could have done to help him orgasm but if he didn’t tell you, how were you to know?

And the thing is with orgasm, we often make it mean something about us. How much of a good lover we are. We want the other person to think we are good so they stick around. We don’t like to disappoint. We compare ourselves to their past experiences. We compare them to our past experiences.

We place judgements on ourselves, them and our connection. And those judgements are perfect for killing the mood.

The thing we need to also ask is - do they want to orgasm? Sometimes during a handjob or oral sex, it may not be the man’s desire to orgasm then. Maybe he’s waiting for your orgasm first because many men once they have ejaculated find it difficult to be motivated to continue with sexual interaction - their desire drops and some as we know can get sleepy and roll over.

And all of this is valid for men touching women too.

One of the biggest struggles women have is orgasm. And one of the most popular things I hear from women is about them faking it. I’ve written about it here and here.

When we fake an orgasm when someone is doing something that doesn’t get us off, guess what happens - they continue to do it! So, don’t fake your orgasms.

If you are in a relationship where you can’t be open and honest about your pleasure and touch what sort of relationship is that? No judgement here, but if there isn’t the safety to be able to express a need or to hold space for a need without one of you shutting down, withdrawing, getting defensive or something else - how safe and good are you actually feeling in that relationship? It’s an important question to consider.

Feeling safe and relaxed isn’t just for women, it’s for men too. There’s an increase of young men medicating their erections, not because they have actual erection issues but they are so worried about not being able to get hard or stay hard consistently for a period of time they take drugs for it. This anxiety can be for different reasons - erection medication adverts constantly promoting their products bringing an awareness of a man’s ‘ability to perform’, an unkind or unthoughtful comment from a woman, a desire to please the woman they are with and create in themselves so much stress and uncertainty that this impacts their arousal and erection and so much more…

So men can feel unsafe with a partner too - an example regarding comments made - they can be anything from saying something unkind like laughing about them losing their erection, it could be from her getting upset and taking his flaccid penis personally that it means something about her/her attractiveness/her technique… something else. Which then means he feels bad and has to manage her emotions.

And this can go the other way with men too. If a woman doesn’t orgasm the man can make it mean something about him, how good he is in bed and to ‘protect’ him she withdraws or next time decides to fake it.

A past person’s response to our orgasm can influence our relationship to our own orgasm - if a woman choked with ejaculate in can have a negative impact on him and him not wanting to do that to a woman which is why receiving head can be difficult. If she was criticised for being loud then she doesn’t feel safe to let go…

How in the moment we are can impact if we are able to orgasm with a partner. Are we in the here and now feeling the touch, being present? Or are we thinking about the to-do list, or how long it’s taking, or if they like what they’re doing, or what does he think of my thighs, or is she enjoying this I can’t tell…

Both need to feel relaxed. Breathe into the sensation, breathe together - connect. Sex is about connection, playfulness, curiosity - let go of the goals and targets - how can you bring more pleasure and fun into your time together in the bedroom?

And then orgasm is pretty vulnerable for both men and women. It’s a surrender, a letting go, a willingness to be seen. Some men can find it difficult to orgasm with a woman or can take a long time because they find it difficult to relax into it - the same for women.

How we touch our own bodies is also how we train them to receive touch. We create neural pathways to pleasure, so if you self-pleasure every time in exactly the same way, your body expects that and begins to rely on it for orgasm. Needing to cross your legs and squeeze? Your body will need that to get off. Using a tight grip while watching porn? Your body will need the tight stimulation and visuals to let go.

Variety in how you experience pleasure will open up more opportunities and possibilities in the bedroom with another person.

Getting someone to come is a joint process of communication but also when we put pressure on the other person to get there it can shut them down. Asking them if they are close, saying ‘I want you to come’ when they often struggle to orgasm and any other words or actions that indicate your desire or expectation of their body’s responses puts the other person in their head and then they feel responsible to make you happy through their own orgasm.

So when you are touching someone you need to know if it’s for their pleasure and enjoyment, asking and checking in with them so that they get the touch that they need to get there. And when we’re doing that we also need to be doing something we enjoy.

So if you go down on someone and give them head to make them come because you want to be able to do that but don’t really enjoy being there, the other person can feel the difference between someone focusing on technique and going through the motions and someone who absolutely loves being there. how can you choose from a full heart and tap into your own pleasure in touching?

Something that I have been exploring personally recently - it’s like a spiral, different layers unfold - how can you learn to fully receive? So many of us were taught from a young age that receiving wasn’t good. Maybe you were taught transaction - if I receive this, then I have to give you that, and I don’t want to so I will just not give - a transactional reciprocity that feels icky. Some of us allow people to give to us but it’s not in the way we want because we don’t know how to ask for it differently so it becomes easier to just say no. Some of us feel guilty for receiving because we are worried about being selfish. Some of us don’t want to receive because we are so used to giving and managing everyone else. Some of us don’t feel worthy or deserving of receiving… whatever the story is, to lie back and be fully receptive to another person’s touch can bring up a lot if we are not aware of it and this can look like avoiding receiving altogether, avoiding receiving by giving to them instead, by not speaking up for what we want, by talking and chattering away to avoid feeling and being in the moment… so in the inability to receive, we can struggle to surrender and let go.

A difficulty in orgasming during specific types of sexual acts can be linked to a myriad of cultural conditioning, past experiences, shame, body image… such a wide variety of factors. The man who finds it difficult to come from a handjob because how an ex reacted to his ejaculate. The woman who struggles from giving head because she doesn’t know if her vulva looks or tastes ‘normal’. For some people anything other than penetration isn’t considered ‘real sex’ and they have such a restricted view of what sex actually is that they don’t feel they have had sex unless there has been penis in vagina sex and they orgasm together - for some this just doesn’t count and so they don’t come until there are certain specific conditions that they feel need to be met.

When it comes to handjobs and blowjobs there are some men who are very much in their idea of what masculinity looks like. They put themselves in what some call a ‘man box’ - a container of how a ‘real man’ acts, behaves and speaks. So they subscribe to this idea of masculinity and don’t do anything that’s outside of it for fear of being called ‘gay’ or similar. So they worry they are less of a man if they orgasm outside of penetration, they worry they are less of a man if they lie back and receive a relaxing handjob, they worry they are less of a man if they have to go down on a woman - there are so many scripts that can fly around in people’s head that can limit their opportunity for connection and intimacy.

We can make someone else’s orgasm mean something about us, our worth, our value, our attractiveness, our lover status… reflecting back to us the parts of us that don’t feel good enough and putting pressure on the other person to orgasm to make us feel better. What are you making their orgasm (or not) mean about you?

Have they been able to orgasm in the past from what you are doing… oral, manual, penetration? If so, often or a handful of times? What works for them and what doesn’t? Are they wanting to orgasm from that act?

We can get into our own heads and create a story about what our bodies can and can’t do - so something does or doesn’t happen the once and we make it mean that this is who we are or what our bodies are capable of - self-limiting beliefs.

Our bodies can also be highlighting something happening within us, the other person or the relationship. When we can’t get an erection - is it because we aren’t turned on yet or because we don’t feel safe with this person? Is the fact that sex is painful because you aren’t listening to your boundaries of being ready or because you haven’t let go of past transgressions? How our bodies do or don’t respond, even around orgasm can be an indication of something that’s happening deeper within the body at an unconscious level - at a somatic or ‘body’ level - outside of our cognitive awareness.

So why are you (or they) reaching orgasm isn’t a one size fits all. It’s nuanced, it’s individual to the person and individual to the dynamic.

Carla Crivaro is a trauma-informed and certified Sex, Love & Relationship Coach, she works with men and women internationally to reach their goals in delicious sex, profound love and authentic relationships. Carla helps men and women understand themselves and each other, sexually and relationally, in and out of the bedroom. You can reach her at hello@carlacrivaro.com. 

Did this bring up something that’s happening in your life? What next…

There’s The Liberation Lounge, a monthly subscription with practices for you or to do in a couple with message support from me.

Unravelling - Tantric massage courses for him and her in a bundle

Letters of Erotic Devotion where I share my own journey with giving head to a guy from hating it and feeling diminished to it being a source of empowerment.

Head with Devotion, a course for women who want to step into the part of them that gets off from giving head and can approach it with confidence and desire.

If you think what you need might be deeper than those offerings, I also support women, men and couples in diving deeper into their relationship with orgasm with their partner and really understand what is holding them back in 1-1 coaching sessions.