Orgasm is the icing on the sexual cake, and even if it’s not essential when it comes to feeling pleasure, we all aspire to experience it in our couplings, and all the better if it takes place in synchronization with a partner. There’s the orgasm that is faked to please another person, or even to trick oneself. The unreachable orgasm, as if our body is refusing joy. The orgasm that can be frightening, that keeps one from the self-abandon of the petite mort, the unknown, the escape from one’s control. In a certain sense, orgasm is akin to freedom. Everyone seeks it, it is portrayed as the supreme happiness; but it is not always easy to sign its contract, to accept its terms. We long to be free, but we are afraid of the steps that must be taken towards that freedom, which so often must be offered in exchange for security. So too, with the orgasm. Not all of us dare to take the plunge, even with something so idealized. What if I’m not up to it? What if it leads me to a situation I can’t handle?

Some people can’t arrive at orgasm, never have and can’t fathom its completion; others, for different reasons, interrupt stimulation and in a sense, abort their own orgasm out of fear of losing control, or because they confuse its symptoms with something negative. On one episode of Desperate Housewives, a woman confuses her climax with a heart attack.

Not being able to have an orgasm and being afraid of them are two different things. “But the result is the same,” says gynecologist and sexologist Francisca Molero, who is the director of the Iberoamerican Institute of Sexology and president of the Spanish Federation of Societies of Sexology. “Orgasm is a very vulnerable moment, in which our reasoning leaves us for a few seconds, and there is a feeling of abandonment. That’s why many people are frightened by its emotions and sensations, that necessary loss of control.”

Identifying the orgasm

As strange as it seems, it’s not always clear when we’ve had an orgasm. We’ve all heard about women who don’t know whether they’ve reached climax or not, or even, if they’ve ever experienced the little death. “Before, when that happened, it was usually understood that if they were doubting whether it was or not, it probably wasn’t; because it is a sensation that is intense enough that you’d know whether or not you have one,” says Molero. But confusion can take place: “Some people easily identify and experience the physiological changes of orgasm (arousal, genital changes, accelerated breathing, contractions), but those sensations are on a purely physical level, and the brain doesn’t interpret them as an orgasm. The body-mind connection is lacking, which is why in sexology we have the term anorgasmia, which refers to when a person arrives at the brink of arousal and sexual tension necessary for an orgasm in the mechanical sense, but they are lacking its emotion and cognition.”

There is a term in psychology called “cognitive attributions”, which refers to the explanations that we make regarding things that happen to us in a relatively unconscious way. “Orgasm also requires cognitive attribution, because someone can be very aroused, but because they do not attribute those symptoms to sexual arousal, they will not feel them in that way,” says Miren Larrazabal, clinical psychologist, sexologist and president of SISEX (International Society of Specialists in Sexology). To offer another example, panic attacks are actually an erroneous interpretation of the physical symptoms of anxiety, as Larrazabal explains: “The person identifies these signs as an alarm going off, they think they’re going to die, fear takes hold and that is when the panic attack appears, out of the fear of fear. In fact, some people who have experienced this can later interpret intense sexual arousal as the beginning of a panic attack; they override the sensation and as a result, don’t arrive at climax.”

Orgasm is a subjective perception that can also require some experience. “Pleasure is something that is built, and we all need to know what our own pleasure is like,” says Molero. On the other hand, she says, there are people who have unrealistic perspectives around climax and, when they arrive at its point of takeoff, don’t identify it as such.

These faulty ideas, perceptions and fears when it comes to the supreme pleasure are not exclusive to women. Men also fall into the trap, a calling card of an era in which sexual instincts can be seen as at odds with healthy relationships. The concept of sexocorporel refers to the study of the body, a sexological approach that was created by Jean-Yves Desjardins (1921-2011) that is based in the premise that everything physiological has its correlation in cognitive emotion. Claude Roux-Deslandes is a doctor, sexologist and student of Desjardins who lives in France, where she offers therapy based on, and teaches, the discipline’s principles. “I have one case of a male patient who avoids orgasm because he is afraid of his own strength and fears that, if he loses control, he could harm his partner or do something to which she does not consent,” says Roux-Deslandes. “Other people who have health problems could be afraid of entering into cardiac arrest; meanwhile, for many women, their worst nightmare is urinating on themselves when they have an orgasm. At the root of all these fears is a concern over losing control. In these cases, it’s necessary to work on that lack of self-knowledge, and on training the patients’ erotic and cognitive competence. There can’t be any tension-pleasure if there is bodily tension. Also, they have to learn that arriving at orgasm does not require as much effort as people think. It’s more about letting go,” says the sexologist.

The areas of the brain that register pleasure and pain are connected and, as Roux-Deslandes points out, can, like trains, sometimes get on the wrong track. “In fact, an increase in sexual tension can, in some cases, falsely create the sensation of pain; the orgasmic release can also be a release of emotions. There can be a sensation of emptiness, of sadness, withdrawal, grief or frustration that the pleasure lasts for such a short amount of time,” she says.

A bad time to lose control

Without a doubt, society, culture and shifting trends influence sexual and affective behavior. “I see a lot of people who find it hard to let go, abandon themselves to physical sensations, because we’re in our heads all the time, thinking about our ideas, our ideology and because the world that we are building is a world in which we have to be more and more alert,” says the French sexologist. “There are many women who have mechanical orgasms that lack an emotional component, because the emotional part scares them. No one wants to go too deep, which also explains the current trend of clitoral sucking vibrators, because people are seeking external, less profound sensations,” she says.

While control may be the antithesis of pleasure, instinct is also suffering low popularity ratings. “Human sexuality is becoming less and less instinctive,” says Molero. “And I would say that we are losing instinct at all levels, perhaps because we feel less threatened physically and we are instead seeking solutions in drugs (anxiolytics, antidepressants), rather than in our natural abilities.”

Maybe the answer to the problem lies in devolving, in returning to our essence, in simplifying? In Molero’s opinion, what we need to do is focus on sensations. It’s essential to recover corporal and mental consciousness, to enter into the tactile plane. “To help people to loosen up, we subject them to different controlled, gradual types of exposure, first individually and then in pairs,” she says.

For Larrazabal, it’s important that we work on certain notions that have been burned into us, like the idea that losing control is undesirable. “We have to banish that negative idea. Self-abandon can be an adaptive resource, because it leads to relaxation and acceptance. For people who do not reach orgasm, for whatever reason, the fundamental exercise is to learn to let go, to stop controlling, through successive approximations.” To do that, she suggests different behavioral experiments designed for losing control, such as shouting into empty space, dancing as if there’s no tomorrow or letting oneself be carried away by the rhythm of breath.

Rita Abundancia is a journalist, sexologist and creator of the website RitaReport.net.

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