Sometimes sex just doesn’t quite go the way you were hoping it would. Orgasm difficulties can include premature ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, and anorgasmia. I was curious about how often these challenges occur. We see numbers about erectile dysfunction (ED) all over TV while companies are promotion drugs like Viagra, Cialis, and the like, but the rest don’t really get talked about much. Also, I wanted to know how people deal with these challenges. Do they all take drugs for ED as the commercials would have us do? Do they find other creative ways to deal with difficulties, or do they sidestep the issue?
So, I put our a survey last week asking people about their experiences. 388 of our community responded, which I am extremely grateful for.
We had 388 respondents in total, 174 women, 212 men and 2 who abstained from sharing their gender (I should make that one required).
The youngest participant was 18 year old, and the eldest 76 years old with marriages ranging from brand new (one just married this November) to a 45 year marriage (this happens to be our eldest respondent as well). 76 years old, 45 years married and still filling out sex surveys…God willing I live to do the same.
Have you ever had an orgasm?
98% of respondents have had an orgasm. I’m afraid not having one is fairly rare amongst the general population. It’s even more rare among men. I’ll be honest, I was astounded to find one husband (0.5%) in our survey who admitted he’d never had an orgasm. I’d never heard of such a thing. I spoke with Bonny @ Bonny’s Oysterbed7 (who is my go-to person for anorgasmia and libido issue questions I can’t solve) and she is looking into possible pituitary gland issues that might cause this (for men and women), but I haven’t heard back yet. So, I don’t know what to say to that, other than it must be incredibly frustrating…or maybe it’s not, if it’s a pituitary gland issue, there may not be a need felt even. Basically, I don’t know anything.
Among wives it’s a bit more common. 3.5% of wives in our survey said they’ve never had an orgasm.
What about during sex?
The numbers increase a bit for this one. 39% of wives have never had an orgasm during intercourse alone. This isn’t surprising to me. Intercourse along often doesn’t provide enough clitoral stimulation to induce orgasm. 1.4% of husbands have never had an orgasm during intercourse alone. Again, I didn’t know this was occurring. However, there is increasing evidence showing that habitual masturbation can cause difficulties have an orgasm during sex.
What about during sex with additional stimulation?
Fingers, toys, whatever. 29% of wives still cannot orgasm in this situation. But, that’s a 10% improvement. So, if you have never had an orgasm during sex and have never tried a toy…maybe check out our post on sex toys.
Now, here’s the confusing one: 23.2% of men say they cannot orgasm with additional stimulation. I wonder if they mean that while they are trying to produce an orgasm in their spouse, they are too distracted to get their own, or perhaps the toy gets in the way, or … well, I don’t know.
Have you ever had an orgasm with your spouse present?
I filtered this to exclude those who said they’ve never had an orgasm. It turns out 2.4% of wives do have orgasms (or have had one) … but never with their spouse present. Ouch.
1.4% of husbands have also had an orgasm, but never with their wife present. Again, ouch.
Orgasming during sex
I’ve filtered these to only include those who have had an orgasm during sex, either with or without additional stimulation.
During intercourse, on average, wives said they orgasm about 40% of the time. Husbands said 85% of the time. If you add activities other than intercourse, wives say they orgasm about 60% of the time, husbands went up to marginally to 86% of the time.
But, the distribution is quite different between the two:
Almost half of husbands are in the 100% column, but the largest group of wives is in the 80% range.
Premature Ejaculation
30% of couples say they’ve never experienced premature ejaculation in their marriage. But, premature ejaculation is a very relative term. Some of those who said they never have on average orgasm in the 1-2 minute rate.
That means 70% of couples have experienced this challenge in their marriage. However, I should point out that some of the people who said they experience it every time, also say it takes them 20-30 minutes to orgasm on average.
Like I said, this is highly subjective.
If instead we filter for those who orgasm in 2 minutes or less (which is often considered the cutoff for premature ejaculation), then that leaves us with 9.3% of the husbands having difficulties with premature ejaculation.
Delayed Ejaculation
Now, many guys think “wow, I wish I could have THAT problem”, but it’s not quite as glamorous as it sounds. Delayed ejaculation can be a very challenging thing. Imagine having sex so long your muscles give up before you can orgasm. It’s like running a marathon, but never getting to cross the finish line.
Again, this is highly subjective.
More than half (57%) of the respondents said they’ve experienced this in their marriage. But, some of these respondents say the husband orgasms in under a minute on average.
So, if we go with a generally accepted 30 minutes or longer to orgasm we arrive at 2% of the husbands represented in our survey experiencing delayed ejaculation on a regular basis.
Erectile Dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction of course gets the most press.
55% of couples said they’ve dealt with erectile dysfunction. I think this is less subjective. I mean, you can either get an erection, or not. There’s not much of a grey area there.
Anorgasmia
I feel like I should have explained this one better. Anorgasmia is an inability to orgasm in general. If you just can’t orgasm one night…that’s not anorgasmia. If you’ve never had an orgasm, but have tried, then you have anorgasmia. If you used to have orgasms, but now never do…I think that’s anorgasmia as well.
Our respondents said that 41% of them have experienced anorgasmia in their marriage. I don’t think that number is worth anything, but like I said, my fault for not explaining it better.
So, instead we’ll go with the answers to the question “How regularly do you orgasm during sex”. If you look at those who said 0% of the time (as in never), we get: 7.5% for women and 1% for men experience anorgasmia. I think that’s a lot more realistic.
Time to orgasm
Alright, a few people had trouble with these questions. They didn’t know when I had started counting the minutes. I had meant once direct genital stimulation starts, be that intercourse, oral sex, manual sex, whatever. I’m hoping that’s what most of you thought as well.
The average time to orgasm for husbands is 8 minutes, for wives, 13 minutes. Not quite the gap I’ve heard of from other research. But, if you look at this another way…
We see a bit of a different picture. While it seems over 20% of spouses have learned to orgasm within a minute of each other, we still have the majority of husbands orgasming well before their wives. Luckily there seems to be absolutely no correlation between a wife’s ability to orgasm and how far apart their orgasms are, and only an extremely weak correlation (0.23) between a wife’s orgasm and how long a husband takes to orgasm.
That’s basically the numbers from the survey. I was considering sharing the comments…but there are so many of them.
So, I’m going to write four mini-posts, one on each orgasm difficulty (DE, ED, PE, anorgasmia), explore a bit more about what they are and then share the comments (if not verbatim, then the general content) in the hopes that they’ll help someone. So, stay tuned.
P.S. I drew the names for the winners of Pulling Back the Shades…if you didn’t get an email, I’m sorry, you didn’t win (but you can still buy your own copy here at Amazon). I’d list the winners, but I feel that would be a breach of privacy, particularly since all I have is email addresses. Keep checking the blog, I’ve got a few more giveaways coming up, one in particular I’m really excited about … let’s just say someone sent me a VERY nice present to give to a reader. But, I need to get some things done first, so that’s going to have to wait.
Sometimes when I read these surveys I’m really greatful for what I have. My wife has nearly no limitations, likes to be dominated, falls into the 8-9/10 orgasm times from intercourse and everytime from oral. Is it uncommon for couple to climax almost simultaneously every time during intercourse. I have great control and know her well and can keep myself on the edge until she’s had a orgasm and then I go too.
That is AWESOME…. good to hear you have a great marriage….
I feel that Erectile Dysfunction can sometimes come from viewing porn….. There for awhile I was having a pron issue and I was having problems getting and keeping an erection. Paul from the Marriage Bed wrote a post around Christmas this year and said why not give the gift of no more porn to your wife for Christmas so I quite cold turkey and told her about that post and that i wanted to do that for her. WOW does that make a difference in performance.
We just finished up the 10 day sex challenge with One Flesh Marriage and boy was that awesome.. We were able to connect all 10 day and have sex every day. We both were able to orgasm every day for 10 day but 1 day I could not orgasm and the 1 day the wife could not orgasm. All I can say it was awesome to have sex everyday for 10 day in a row…. WOW…. I sort of miss it now that it is over.
Hey JAMES, what’s the name of the site that helped you & your wife achieve such a sexual accomplishment?! It is my sexual goal to have sex with my beloved wife for at least an entire week. No appointments, no phone calls, no internet, no nothing!! Just pure, uninhibited sexual pleasure!! Any info on how it worked for you & yours will be deeply appreciated!!
I think One Extraordinary Marriage holds a 7 days of sex challenge every year, and One Flesh Marriage holds a ten day challenge every February.
@ Ricky. Do you find it takes away from the experience if you have to keep yourself on the edge?
I accidentally posted and forgot my email. Anonymous it takes zero away from the experience. I’m in complete control of the motions and moves and don’t have to hold back to keep myself in check. Her getting off just sends me over the edge and I can tell when she’s on the verge so something just happens in my head to get me in the zone. It works great for us cause my wife is a one huge O and done girl. She has the biggest O I’ve seen and I’ve had multiple partners not that I’m proud of it. Sometimes she is so sensitive I can’t even touch her leg for a good 5 minutes lol. It’s great.
I just wanted to tell you I”ve really appreciated your blog. My husband and I have been married almost 10 years, and our story is a lot like yours, the ED based on my husband’s history with porn and masturbation, the first half of our marriage was pretty rough, I had a lot of sorrow over repeated refusals from him. He was never secretive about his issues with me and Jesus has done a lot of healing in our marriage, we are now very close and we have gotten to the point were we both enjoy making love. Because of weariness and the stress of being parents to little children we only ended up having sex 1-2 a month. A few weeks ago I experienced a surge in desire like I had never had before, so much so that any time he walked in the room my heart would race and I’d feel butterflies all over, I thought about having sex with him all the time, it really felt quite ridiculous, like a I was a teenager or something! I came across your blog and compared to all of the secular sex articles and also the Christian ones, what you and your wife have to say really struck a cord with me. I really really appreciate the techniques and physical conversations laid out next to the spiritual and biblical philosophies, it just makes so much sense in what a personal and thoughtful Creator we have! I particularly loved what your wife had to say about how she feels about the light bondage. I feel the love of the Lord for me as He’s lead my body and mind up to this point, where I can see how really intimate, vulnerable sex can effect so many areas of my life. I often feel overwhelmed with caring for the children and house, having to sacrifice all the dreams I’ve had for my life, I was considering getting a prescription for an antidepressant, but since we’ve had frequent sex and I’ve allowed my self to let go of even more walls, I no longer have that sense of discontentment now that I can see love-making with my husband as such an instrument of rejuvenation. Even my sugar cravings have lessoned! I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs together and I really feel the confirmation of the Lord in this gift. When sex comes up in conversation with groups of my female friends, its almost always eye rolling and commenting about how its too much work and they don’t care if they never had sex again, I’m always afraid to chime in about my desires and thoughts, but a strong sadness over their feelings on the matter has really stuck with me. I’m hoping for future opportunities to talk thoughtfully with them about what God has done in my sex life, usually I end up getting teased mercilessly about being so horny hahaha. Anyways, I can start to see God also working in my husband even more and his leading over me, I pray I can wisely keep this wonderful thing a blessing with out sin and use it to love my husband and others around me. Tell your wife I would love to hear more from her and and how she feels about what happens in bed, its really encouraging and helpful!!
Hey JD! Thank you for the survey & thank you for letting me be a part of it! It was a real pleasure! About premature ejaculation, yeah thats me! Nothing to be embarrassed about here! I can be honest. But it just that after years of porn addiction ( JAMES WITTER, you are not alone), now that I have a beautiful sexy wife, its very hard to be able to control myself when we really get into it. I find I have to try very hard to hold on and when it gets real intense, I release too quickly. A well known local sexologist in my country of Trinidad told me years ago it is due to my long hours of working and not getting enough rest as a security guard (, I’ve been a security officer for over 17 years now). And quite frankly I tend to concur with his findings along with my personal difficulty of being a chronic masturbator for almost my entire life. At least I don’t quit too quickly when my wife starts to really get into sex & I move with her rhythm until we climax together!! As difficult as keeping an erection is, it is still very blow mind when we orgasm together!!
Do didn’t mention that we are STILL having sex, that;s important. When we were younger we wondered if our parents were still “Doing it?” And we thought probably not “They are too old!” I feel it’s important that the younger folks know sex does NOT end when you tun 40, 50. 60 or 70 !!! It won’t be as energetic as that young 18 year old couple but it’s still there as an important part of our lives, we had a dry potion of 4 months when I took care of my own desires due to her being in constant pain and I not wanting to create MORE pain for fer . She informed me she missed me and we started the process again, so for the past three weeks it’s been once a week, it’s still fun and enjoyable for us. And as for her getting pregnant NO CHANCE I had a vasectomy 33 years ago right after our youngest was conceived. I was going to do that after the second one,had it scheduled and she said “I’m not quit ready for you to do that so we cancelled and i waited for her agreement.. Later that year she said “Lets do the vas.” after we did that she said “I think I’m pregnant” God wanted us to have one more son.
Thanks John for adding that. Yes, sex can still be awesome later in life.
(This is my post for this weeks challenge.) My doctor diagnosed me with hypogonadism. I started on testosterone. It helped a bit with libido, but not erections. A few years later Viagra and Cialis gave hope for a normal sex life. I began Cialis a little while ago and it allows me to have an erection. I am still learning about dosage, timing, co-ordination with my wife, stimulation, orgasm, giving an orgasm, etc. It is quite a learning experience. It is not an automatic response.
At least you know the issue. That way you can address the problems. Sadly many men won’t get tested, and so they just suffer in silence. Good for you for having the courage to ask.