I received this question from our anonymous Have A Question page about a week ago:
Do all women take a long time to have an orgasm? I feel like I am weird or something because it doesn’t take much time for me to have to have an orgasm. I would say the longest time it takes for to reach orgasm is maybe 5 minutes I think. I surely don’t think it has take me 20 minutes or longer. I get scared when I read that it takes other women a long time to orgasm. Is this something that is inevitable for all women? Does difficulty to orgasm come with age? I am 33 years old. When I’m fifty will this happen to me. What is the demographic?
There’s a part two of the question, but I feel that would be better handled in another post. For today, let’s handle this one. So, what’s the deal with orgasms and age?
So, I did some checking into some of our surveys, particularly our orgasm difficulties survey, which you can still fill out here. Here’s what I learned:
Average time to orgasm for our female readers is 13 minutes
Now, all the stats out in the world, and the accepted number is that women orgasm in the 20-40 minute range. However, in our surveys, that number is far lower. 13 minutes on average, as I said. I’m not sure why the discrepancy. Perhaps the readers here are more sex positive, and that reduces stress about sex, and thus makes orgasming easier. Perhaps it’s just that most of our readers are in committed, monogamous marriages, and that means their husband becomes a better student of their body, and so they help bring an orgasm about quicker. I don’t know. Those are just some plausible reasons.
As for this specific reader who is a woman, aged 30-35, who orgasms in under 5 minutes, you’re not alone. About 10% of the women in your age range, who filled out our survey, orgasm in the 2-5 minute range.
Time to orgasm does change with age
For men, there’s a pretty linear correlation. As they get older, it takes longer to orgasm.
For women, it’s a bit more complicated. There seem to be three peaks:
- Age 20-25
- Age 30-35
- Age 45-60
So, here’s my guess as to what is happening:
- When you are newlywed (ages 20-25), you are still figuring sex out, you are new to your spouse and it takes a bit to get a handle on orgasms. So, it takes a bit longer.
- When you have young children (ages 30-35), you are exhausted, stressed, breastfeeding and everything together makes orgasm hard to achieve. So, it peaks again.
- When you are going through menopause (45-60), your hormones are in flux, a lot of women have trouble with lubrication, and again, orgasm is harder to get. This is the largest peak in our data. It’s also the widest, but I think that’s because women can have menopause anywhere in that range.
But, between these peaks, it is consistently dropping. Right before menopause, the average given for women is 10 minutes, and it drops even lower after menopause. So, yeah, there are going to be some struggles when it might take longer, but even in the menopausal ages, we’re talking about only a 17 minute on average time. If you’re having orgasms in under 5 minutes, it probably won’t be that high.
I’d says, stop worrying, and just enjoy where you are now. When orgasm times stretch out a bit … enjoy the increased attention. Don’t get stressed, just have fun finding new ways to get there. Have fun with longer foreplay sessions. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I like the longer foreplay idea!!.
I’m 43 and my wife is 42. We’ve been married for 16 years and together for 20. Maybe this is unusual but orgasm comes much more easily for both of us now than it did 10-20 years ago. When I was in my mid-20s, it could occasionally take a long time for orgasm. And by a long time I mean over a half hour. Sometimes it never happened and that was always disappointing. My wife’s orgasms when she was in her 20s were erratic–sometimes they happened, but sometimes they didn’t. Nowadays, we both orgasm 100% of the time and usually within 10-15 minutes for both of us. Maybe this is because we’re now very comfortable sexually with each other? Or maybe this is because we’ve found ways to spice things up (a lot compared to how things were in the early days)? Or maybe aging is a factor? I also think a huge factor is the fact that I got snipped a few years ago, meaning we now have total freedom to do as we please without any concerns (she can’t take the pill so before being snipped we had to use condoms).
I agree that hormones and kids are a huge factor. (Christina is dealing with this a little bit right now, isn’t she, Jay?) When I am pregnant, for example, I could reach orgasm in less than two minutes. Once it was 30 seconds. (It actually wasn’t as fun as it sounds because afterwards I was too sensitive to keep going. I felt like I had premature ejaculation, lol.) But after each kid was born, thanks to hormones and exhaustion, orgasm was elusive if not impossible. I did not orgasm once for the first 10 months or so after my third was born, and trust me, it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Now I’m back to “normal” at about 10-15 minutes of actively trying for orgasm, depending on how much foreplay before that, so more than that if you count foreplay. I’m 31 with three small kids. (Ages 2-7.)
I guess I feel like this is part of God’s design to have such a fluctuating sex life. It stays pretty straight forward for most men with only very gradual changes for the most part, whereas time to orgasm can change even based on the time of month for many women! I reach orgasm much faster when I am approaching ovulation, and it takes a lot longer immediately after ovulation, but then gets easier as I approach my period. It keeps our sex life interesting. Even if you struggle to incorporate variety, God has this kind of variety built in! I think that’s kind of cool. A man will never have sex with the same woman twice. ?
Yeah, we had similar experiences with the last pregnancy in particular. During pregnancy, orgasms came at the drop of a hat it seemed. After the birth, it was months before the first one, and even now, she generally don’t have one two sessions in a row. So, it’s often about a week between orgasms. Part of that is probably breastfeeding hormones, and part lack of sleep.
Wow, that’s so completely different than my wife” Her hormones go completely the opposite direction and has little desire for sex. It’s funny. I was told (and I read) that when my wife got pregnant, she would be a different person in bed-and I guess that was true, just not in the way those folks thought it would.
My wife hasn’t orgasmed in 6 months, since she’s been pregnant. She has no desire to pursue one now, an probably won’t for another year.
It has changed with different pregnancies. One of the pregnancies, we didn’t have any sexual activities at all for 9 months, and barely any before or after that.
Been the same for all 4 pregnancies for us. And gotten “worse” with each successive one because of the end-of-day exhaustion from raising 3 (soon to be 4) kids 5 and under.
My wife is 59 and I am 58. I orgasm pretty quick, but she takes a little longer and uses a vibrator after plenty of tongue action. We both enjoy sex and the schedule method works well for us.