My partner can't orgasm and I feel like a failure as a man. Can you help?

Hi Mark,

I have been in a relationship with a woman whom I love and care about dearly for just over four years now, but the spark has gone.

More specifically, she doesn't get pleasure from sex anymore. She has never had an orgasm before and when she has really begun to feel pleasure to the point that's really good, it sabotages itself. She says it just feels like "It's like she's getting there, then it stops, and then she just feels really rubbish," then cries.

She hates talking about it, as I found out first-hand by asking her what's wrong when this all first started a couple of years ago. She's never been abused; however, her father made her feel really guilty about having sex in the first place and she failed university and she partly blamed it on our relationship.

I feel I can't talk to her about it anymore, as it created performance anxiety for her when I asked her what's wrong and now she's conscious of it all the time. My logical mind was telling me to talk and communicate with my partner, but clearly in this context that's not the best. Sex isn't something to be analyzed.

I felt like I was treading on eggshells all the time, so I gave the sex quite a long rest. I have never cheated and never will, I have morals... However, I can't keep doing this forever, as I'm sick of feeling like I don't do anything right. Her frustration is leading to my feeling of failure as a man who wants nothing more than to please his woman, who doesn't want to be pleased (subconsciously/partly).

Help?

Anonymous

This question was submitted by 'Anonymous'

Mark says...

Hi and thank you for writing in.

Sex can be spontaneous, loving, deeply intimate, amazingly enjoyable, delightful passion that transports us to shared heights of ecstasy in which two seem to meld as one, loving moments in which time seems to have vanished along with all else other than the person we are with. Or it can be dull, like a chore, or full of angst, self-consciousness, and performance anxiety. How can one activity feel so different? Because, of course, sex is never just physical.

When it is great, the moment is all that matters, not the 'result'. Like anything in which we can go into flow and time feels to disappear, it is the process and not the 'outcome' that feels real to us.

The state of flow is like a trance state that needs to be 'pure' and uncontaminated by self-consciousness, fear, anxiety, or wanting to perform well. When we are in the right state of mind, every other part of the experience follows on from that. You might be the most gifted lover the world has known, but it is about her and you together. Both of you need to, in a sense, enter the same state of mind in order to really share the experience so it can be all it can potentially be.

When an area is sore, we often don't like to 'go there'. She doesn't want to talk about it and it becomes a 'problem'. A 'problem' feels like something one 'has' or, worse, 'is'. No wonder people fear having problems.

Her frustration has been making you feel like a failure as a man and it sounds like she feels like a failure as a woman.

When people try to do anything consciously that really needs to be left to the unconscious mind, then that interrupts spontaneity. A friend of mine won an award at college and I recall he felt so self-conscious walking up in front of hundreds to collect his award that he had to consciously walk and he said it actually felt weirdly difficult to walk up to that stage because the conscious mind was butting into the field of expertise of the unconscious mind. This is why we use hypnosis to improve sex – not as a way of overcoming blocks necessarily, but to help the unconscious mind shine during lovemaking.

I think you need to tell her you love her, that you love her body, and you love being with her. You can suggest you just be together naturally, naked, without anything having to happen. In fact, you could even suggest that 'for a while' you just lie together naked and get used to the close contact and nothing else needs to happen. That you can both let go of any expectations.

Performance anxiety is only given oxygen when a person feels something is expected of them. You could suggest that, if she's happy to do this, you could just be together for a while and if anything happens, that's fine. But perhaps it's best that for now you just lie next to each other. Tell her that, indeed, you shouldn't take it 'too far'. That she and you may not end up at any destination that everyone else expects, but you can enjoy walking someway along the path sometimes.

This can help take the pressure off her and paradoxically may make her feel and be more sexual.

Her being tense can transfer a feeling of tenseness to you. Likewise, you feeling relaxed can subliminally help her feel more relaxed, too. So she may not be open to direct help, but you could listen to 'Last Longer - Male Sexual Enhancement' as a way of indirectly helping her. I suspect what she needs is reassurance, but that can come in the way you are with her and how you yourself are, not by talking too directly with her, as that's when the defences come up.

I hope this is useful in some way and all the very best to the both of you,

Mark