Orgasming from oral sex survey results

A couple of weeks ago, I started running a survey to answer the question of one of the people in my Uncovering Intimacy Champions group.  Namely “How many men can’t orgasm from oral sex”.  Well, I expanded it a bit to answer a few more questions.  Now, last time I did a survey, I said I was going to hold out until we had 600 responses.  After seven months, I gave up at 490 and decided I was not going to do that again.

Well, this time I was pleasantly surprised to get over 600 responses in less than two weeks!  So, here are your results.

Basic stats

Gender

• 72.3% – Male
• 27.7% – Female

This always happens.  For some reason, fewer women are willing to fill out their surveys.  In fact, just to get this many, I have to send female specific messages by Facebook and email urging them to fill it out so that they won’t be grossly underrepresented.

How often do you have sex?

The average is twice a week.  However, my female readers say 2.4 times per week, and my male reasons say 1.8 times per week.  I think this is because more often than not, women tend to be the defacto gatekeepers of sex in a marriage, and so if they’re reading this blog, many have learned not to do so.

That said, I also seem to attract a lot of women readers whose husbands are the gatekeepers, because not many other Christian marriage bloggers are willing to admit that that actually happens as often as it does.  Most prefer to stick with the stereotypical narrative.

Do you engage in oral sex in your marriage?

People who engage in oral sex are far more likely to fill out a survey with “oral sex” in the title.  So, frankly,  I’m not going to say the results because this metric shouldn’t be trusted.  I really only put the question there to be able to disqualify those who don’t engage in oral sex from polluting the other numbers and I don’t want anyone quoting it in a debate or argument anywhere.

Moving forward, assume that all the subsequent questions only pertain to the group that does engage in oral sex.

Actually, let me recheck the previous ones while we’re here.  With that group filtered out, the women consist of 28.5% of the respondents, however the frequency of sex hasn’t changed significantly.

How often do you perform oral sex on your spouse?

• 3.9% of women and 3.1% of men said “never”.
• 9.0% of women and 12.6% of men said “every time”.
• On average, both men and women responded with a bit more than half the time
• Men are more likely to fall closer to “never” or always” where women are more likely to be closer to the 50% category.

How often does your spouse perform oral sex on you?

• 6.5% of woman and 9.8% of men say “never”.
• 12.3% of woman and 5.4% of men say “every time”.
• On average, men said about half of the time, whereas women said 43% of the time.

So, interestingly 12.6% of men say they give their wife oral sex every time, and 12.3% of women say their husband gives them oral sex every time.  It’s nice when things match up like that.  However, oral sex on men doesn’t seem to line up quite so nicely.  While 9.0% of women say they give their husbands oral sex “every time”, only 5.4% of men say they do.

So, this begs the question: Why are the numbers so different depending on which spouse you ask?

Well, I think there are two simple reasons.

Firstly, this blog tends to attract people in unhappy marriages.  Not all our readers, by any means.  We have a lot of readers with really excellent sex lives.  Some of whom report that their sex lives have vastly improved since finding our blog.  I love to hear those testimonies.

That said, there is a substantial group who haven’t yet seen improvement in their marriage.  So, it stands to reason that at least a group of these people are more likely to be giving oral sex rather than receiving.  And if you look at the group of responses where they’re having sex once a week or less, half of the men say they get oral sex 20% of the time or less.

But, as expected, even when a couple isn’t having regular sex, the women still seem to get a fair bit of oral sex.  17.9% said they get oral sex every time they have sex.  It just seems to be that, on average, men are more interested in all types of sex than women.  Not always, but on average.

The second reason had to do with the fact that we tend to re-write our memories to make us look better to ourselves.  We like to believe that we’re more generous that we actually are.  I hear all the time from couples who are having sexual frequency arguments of the lower drive spouse arguing that they’re having sex far more than they actually are.  Typically, I suggest they start to keep track.  That way you can stop arguing about whose memory is correct, and you can start having a conversation about the real issue: the relationship.

And then, in those marriages that are not as healthy, spouses tend to treat the each other as enemy combatants rather than as a team partner, and part of that includes demonizing their spouse to make them look bad.  And so on both sides, you typically have a spouse inflating their own generousity while downplaying their husband or wife’s generousity.  Incidentally, one of the ways to start improving your marriage is to start acting like a team again, instead of opponents.

Moving on…

How often would you like to perform oral sex on your spouse?

• Men, on average, would prefer to perform oral sex on their wives twice as often as they currently are. None of them want to cut back on how much oral sex they are giving.
• 32% of wives would prefer to give their husbands more oral sex.  80% more on average, almost twice as much as they currently are.  However, 19% would prefer to perform oral sex on average half as often as they currently are.  The rest either don’t perform oral sex, or would prefer to keep the status-quo.

How often would you like your spouse to perform oral sex on you?

• 37.4% of women want their husbands to stick with the current frequency or oral sex.
• 49.7% of women want more oral sex (2.5x more on average).  Now, this is surprising, I thought.  I mean that’s not a small increase.  That’s pretty huge!  Note: this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re unhappy with what they’re getting.  Just that they’d prefer more.  Only one wife in this group seemed irritated by the lack of oral sex in their marriage according to the comments.  Most just expressed their appreciation of oral sex.  A few flat out said, “I love oral sex”.
• 12.9% of woman want less oral sex.  On average about 41.8% less than they’re getting now, or just under half.  Unfortunately, there’s not much of an indication as to why.  The comments didn’t reveal anything and on average, these wives orgasm about 50% of the time from oral sex.  Some never, but some always.  Nearly half mentioned a mental block when giving reasons why they sometimes can’t orgasm from oral sex.  So, for that group, it might just be some hangups regarding oral sex that make them want it less.
• For the men, only 1.3% of men said they wanted less oral sex.  Even then, on average, it wasn’t much less, just 23.3% less.
• 15.9% of men preferred their wife to stick with the current frequency.
• 82.8% of men want more oral sex.  A lot more.  3.3x times as much.  That’s … well, a big increase.  And they’re not all just being greedy and answering “every time”.  Only 28.6% of them 🙂  However, when men don’t get much oral sex, it’s easy to want a lot more.  It’s a bit like a hungry person saying “I could eat a horse”.  And the comments from men who don’t get much oral sex are sad:
  • I love giving. Sadly, wife just doesn’t seem real excited about performing it on me. Makes me feel a bit…less than; rejected.
  • Wish my wife would do more, it is a very rare occasion when it happens. Biggest disappointment in our Sex life is the lack of oral sex from her.
  • I love it, my wife doesn’t like it. I mentioned my passion for oral sex two weeks into our relationship. I wish she had been as honest!
  • She thinks it’s not important
  • I love everything about giving her oral. I just wish she did. I would love for her to give me oral but I don’t push.
  • She is pretty open about her disinterest in giving … On the other hand, she loves receiving especially as a way to orgasm. I resent the lack of reciprocation.
  • I would love more oral sex, but my wife doesn’t like to perform it on me, so I stopped asking for it.
  • wife says she does not overly enjoy giving oral. reminds her of porn movies.

How often does your spouse orgasm when you perform oral sex on them?

• If you ask wives, they say their husband orgasms 64.0% of the time from oral sex, on average.  However, if you ask the men, they say only about 38.8% of the time.
• According to the men, their wives orgasm 45.4% of the time on average from their skill at oral sex.  The wives say it’s actually 53.8% of the time.

And again, this is fairly typical of our audience.  Our readers tend to be more sex positive and sexually engaged in their marriages (or working hard to be), and unfortunately, the stereotype, while not always trust, does have some basis in truth for much of the population: that men are more interested in sex than woman.  So, on average, when men are less interested in sex, they’re often still interested in sex, just less so.  But, when women aren’t interested in sex, then they’re really not interested in sex.  And that applies to oral sex as well.  Wives that are readers here are far more likely to not only be willing to receive, but also give oral sex, even to the point of orgasm.  Not all, by any means, but more than the general Christian population.

And, of course, we have the whole “I’m better than my spouse” bias I mentioned earlier.

Now we have a partial answer to the question of “How many men can’t orgasm from oral sex?”  26.0% of men don’t orgasm from oral sex, ever.  This is after filtering out those men who don’t receive oral sex at all. But, the problem with this answer is that we don’t know if it’s because they can’t, or because their spouse won’t let them.  I’m hoping the answers to the next question will help narrow that down.

Reasons why spouses might not orgasm from oral sex

So, why don’t spouses orgasm from oral sex?  Let’s look at the men first.

• 2.6% of women believe that it’s just the way their husband is.  That nothing can be done about it.  3.3% of husbands agree.
• 46.5% of women say their husbands would rather orgasm from sex, and 30.1% of husbands agree.  That’s a bit of a gap, but I have no problem believing that the difference is those men who say they’d rather have sex just to make their wives feel better.
• 20.7% of wives say their husband always orgasms from oral sex.  16.2% of the men say the same.
• 5.8% of wives believe their husband has a mental block that stops them from having an orgasm.  8.2% of men agree.  Now, that’s higher than I’d think.  And this gets us the answer to the question posed by our Champion mentioned at the beginning of the post.  Because while I think it’s quite possible that some men might just tell their wives “oh, it’s not you, it’s me” in order not to hurt them, 11.5% of men anonymously reported that they cannot orgasm either because they just aren’t built that way, or because they have a mental block.  11.5%!  That’s more than one in ten.  I had guessed half of that.

For women:

• 8.0% of men think their wives “Are just build that way”.  Meaning, it’s no one’s fault, it’s just the way it is.  7.7% of wives agree.
• 27.5% of men answered that their wife prefers to orgasm from sex rather than oral, and 23.2% of wives agree.
• 27.5% of husbands say their wife always orgasms from oral sex and 20.6% of wives agree.  Now, that puts a fairly large damper on a lot of sex bloggers out there who tote cunnilingus (oral sex on a female) as a sure-fire way to an orgasm that all women want more of.
• 27.3% of husbands believe their wife has a mental block that stops them from having an orgasm from oral sex.   And you know what?  The women agree at 29.7%.  Pretty close.  And that means, just for comparison, that 37.4% of wives cannot orgasm due to a mental block, or just believing they aren’t built that way.  And again, this is som pretty damning evidence for cunnilingus not being a “cure all” for orgasms.

And here’s the one I’m really interested in: How many spouses believe it’s a lack of skill that’s stopping their spouse from having an orgasm?

• 6.5% of women and 15.2% of men believe that the wife just doesn’t have the necessary skills to bring them over the edge.  I honestly thought that would be reversed.  I fully expected women to be harder on themselves.
• 9.0% of men and 12.9% of women believe the husband isn’t skilled enough to bring her to orgasm.  And again, I’m a bit surprised for the same reason.  I sort of expected to see a lot of guilt from spouses over their belief that it’s their level of skill that’s the issue.

Why do I run surveys like this?

Well, for one, my goal here is to increase conversation about sex in Christian circles.  First, in marriages, but also in the larger context of community and church.  Surveys are a great way to get people to at least start talking, even if it’s anonymously and only shared in aggregate.  It’s a baby step.

Second, people like to talk about sex, so long as they know there’s no risk.  I think people want to have a safe space to do that, and surveys, again, are an easy entry.

Third, because I get comments like this:

Largely due to the articles on this site, and other trustworthy Christian marriage books, this week my wife and I began talking about trying oral, mostly due to great difficulty in getting her to orgasm. She has gone months in between times she knows she orgasmed, even though we spend a good deal of time in foreplay with manual stimulation with my hand. I think it’s largely due to the stress of children and concerns for an adult friend we have living in our home who needs constant watching. This week, we tried cunnilingus for the first time, and have done it twice, and both times she has had fantastic orgasms, such as we’ve only seen maybe 2-3 times in our [nearly] 6 years of marriage. She’s not morally opposed to fellatio, but is squeemish about it, and since I have such an easy time orgasming in normal PIV, I’m in no hurry. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it when she’s ready, but I’ve told her I’m in no hurry, and she should only do it when she truly wants to.

We have both just recently made oral a more ordinary part of our love making because we have grow greatly in our communication thanks to yours and similar sites. THANKS! 47 years for us and both the only sexual partners and still thrilled to be learning and growing.

In short, because articles and surveys like this can help marriages simply by asking the questions.  It gives a conversation starter for you and your spouse without too much risk.  I know there are many couples who broach some of these questions by saying “Look what Jay Dee is asking.  How would you answer?”  Others read the results together (like this one) and discuss them.  Maybe something to try in your marriage?

Any questions you didn’t see answered?  Have an idea for another survey?  Comment below.  Want to make sure you don’t miss any future surveys?  Don’t forget to subscribe.