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Men orgasm far more often than women during heterosexual sex. A new study suggests a key reason: men tend to focus on their own orgasm and feel supported in that pursuit by their partners, while women are more focused on their partner’s pleasure. This difference in sexual focus, termed an “orgasm pursuit gap,” helps explain why women experience fewer orgasms and less sexual satisfaction in mixed-gender relationships. The findings were published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
The “orgasm gap” is a well-documented difference in orgasm frequency between men and women during heterosexual sexual encounters. But the orgasm gap is notably absent when women are with other women or when they are masturbating. This suggests that the issue isn’t solely about women’s bodies or responses, but rather about the dynamics within heterosexual relationships.
To understand this relational aspect, the researchers behind the new study investigated the concept of “orgasm goal pursuit.” They were interested in exploring not just an individual’s desire to orgasm, but also how partners influence each other’s sexual experiences. The researchers based their work on an idea called interdependence theory, which suggests that in close relationships, partners deeply affect each other’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.
In a healthy relationship, partners ideally move from only focusing on their own needs to also valuing and supporting their partner’s needs. The researchers proposed that the orgasm gap might be explained by an imbalance in how men and women pursue orgasms in their relationships. They wanted to examine if men and women differ in how much they prioritize their own orgasm, how much they prioritize their partner’s orgasm, and how much they believe their partner is prioritizing their orgasm.
“Amidst the growing scientific and media attention on the orgasm gap, I couldn’t help but notice that most data and advice were focused on women, and the steps women could or should take to orgasm more,” explained study author Carly Wolfer, a PhD candidate at the City University of New York and instructor at Hunter College and Teachers College, Columbia University.
“While well-intentioned and symbolic of attempts to center women’s sexual agency, this framing puts the burden on women and treats the orgasm gap like a ‘women’s issue’ when in fact the orgasm gap exists only when women have sex with men, not when women masturbate or have sex with other women. This shows it’s not inherently about women—it’s about the interpersonal dynamic when men and women are together. I was interested in bringing men into the conversation, and exploring how, if at all, the orgasm gap is a relational issue rather than solely a woman’s issue.”
The researchers conducted a 21-day online diary study. They recruited 127 heterosexual adults in monogamous relationships. Participants, roughly half men and half women, were aged 18 to 40 and had been with their partners for at least three months but no more than five years. Participants were asked to complete a brief online survey every evening for 21 days, reflecting on their romantic and sexual experiences from the past 24 hours. If they had engaged in sexual activity, they were asked about various aspects of the encounter, including whether they or their partner had an orgasm, and how satisfied they were with the experience.
Importantly, the researchers developed a new tool to measure “interdependent orgasm pursuit.” This tool had three parts. First, it measured “personal orgasm goal pursuit,” assessing how much individuals themselves were trying to orgasm during sex. Example questions included how much they valued having an orgasm and how actively they pursued it. Second, it measured “partner orgasm goal pursuit,” assessing how much individuals were trying to help their partner orgasm. Questions here focused on their motivation to ensure their partner reached orgasm.
Finally, it measured “perceived partner orgasm goal pursuit,” capturing how much individuals felt their partner was prioritizing their orgasm. This part asked about how supported and prioritized they felt in their own orgasm goals by their partner during sex. Participants rated these aspects for each sexual encounter they reported in their daily diaries. The researchers then used statistical models to analyze the data, looking for patterns and relationships between gender, orgasm goal pursuit, orgasm occurrence, and sexual satisfaction.
The results confirmed the existence of the orgasm gap in this sample. Men reported experiencing orgasms in 90% of their sexual encounters, while women reported orgasms in only 54% of their encounters. Men also reported significantly higher levels of overall sexual satisfaction and satisfaction with their orgasms compared to women.
Regarding orgasm goal pursuit, Wolfer and her colleagues found that men reported higher levels of personal orgasm goal pursuit than women, meaning men were more focused on achieving their own orgasm. Men also reported higher levels of perceived partner orgasm goal pursuit, indicating they felt their partners were strongly supporting their orgasm goals.
On the other hand, women reported higher levels of partner orgasm goal pursuit, demonstrating they were more focused on their male partner’s orgasm than men were on their female partner’s orgasm. In essence, men were more focused on their own orgasm and felt supported in this, while women were more focused on their partner’s orgasm.
“We found that men were 15x more likely to orgasm, and were far more satisfied, than women during partnered sex,” Wolfer told PsyPost. “Moreover, our research exposes a new kind of orgasm gap that contributes to women’s reduced (and men’s increased) sexual pleasure: an orgasm pursuit gap, whereby men’s support of women’s orgasm is lacking relative to women’s support of men’s.”
“Typically, when men and women have sex together, men’s orgasm is the primary goal and women’s becomes secondary. This has a lot to do with how we treat intercourse or penetration (men’s most reliable route to orgasm) as the ‘main event,’ but clitoral stimulation (women’s most reliable route to orgasm) as optional ‘foreplay.'”
“Instead of sticking to that default script, partners can try to collaborate and support each other’s sexual needs in a more balanced way. Try to explore a range of sexual positions and techniques that stimulate the clitoris, and communicate with each other about what feels good, whether that includes orgasm or not.”
The researchers also discovered that both personal orgasm goal pursuit and perceived partner orgasm goal pursuit were linked to a greater likelihood of orgasm and higher sexual satisfaction for both genders. Interestingly, perceived partner orgasm goal pursuit appeared to be an even stronger predictor of orgasm and sexual satisfaction than personal orgasm goal pursuit alone. This suggests that feeling supported and prioritized by a partner in one’s orgasm goals is particularly important for a satisfying sexual experience.
In fact, when considering other factors like relationship closeness and responsiveness, the researchers found that the positive link between personal orgasm goal pursuit and orgasm satisfaction disappeared, while the link between perceived partner orgasm goal pursuit and orgasm satisfaction remained strong. This highlights the powerful influence of feeling supported by a partner in achieving sexual pleasure.
Perhaps most importantly, the study uncovered an interaction between personal and perceived partner orgasm goal pursuit. The researchers found that a person’s own efforts to orgasm were much more likely to lead to sexual satisfaction and orgasm satisfaction when they also felt their partner was prioritizing their orgasm. When perceived partner orgasm goal pursuit was low, a person’s own orgasm efforts were not strongly linked to satisfaction.
“Our data show that personal efforts to orgasm yield satisfying sex and orgasms only when accompanied by perceived support or collaboration from a partner,” Wolfer explained. “In other words, if you want to and try to orgasm when you’re having sex with a partner, in order for the orgasm and sex to be pleasurable, it’s important you feel that your partner wants to and tries to help you orgasm too. However, this mutual or shared support is precisely what’s missing when men and women have sex with each other.”
The researchers acknowledge a limitation of their study: they only surveyed one person from each couple. Their future research will involve surveying both partners to compare their reports. “We are excited for our follow up research which will recruit both members of the couple so we can cross-reference partners’ reports and see how perceptions of a partner’s support line up with the partner’s intended or self-reported support,” Wolfer said.
“It’s important to remember that orgasm is just one part of the puzzle—it’s not a requirement for or synonymous with sexual pleasure. When we talk about orgasm goals and pursuit, there’s a risk of creating goal or performance-oriented sex, which can increase pressure and make people feel dysfunctional like they failed if they don’t ‘achieve’ the goal.”
“This program of research is about promoting sexual pleasure equity rather than orgasm equality,” Wolfer continued. “Equality would be more about ‘fairness’ or ‘sameness’ in outcomes—for example thinking that men and women need to have the same number of orgasms. This focus on quantity of orgasms can easily make partnered sex feel tit-for-tat or transactional, rather than fun and exploratory.”
“Equity, on the other hand, is about ‘access’—for example who has access to their own personalized definitions of sexual pleasure? Who ‘gets’ to think about orgasm as part of their personal definition of pleasure? Who has access to orgasm as a goal in the first place? It’s about exploring a greater potential—greater possibilities of embodied sexual pleasure for intimate partners and particularly for women who typically lower their expectations and sacrifice their sexual needs for men’s because their sexual pleasure has not been prioritized in the past.”
“By measuring people’s orgasm goal pursuit, we get to honor whether people wanted to or even tried to orgasm—rather than just assuming everyone wants to orgasm or that the orgasm felt good,” Wolfer concluded. “This is also why we measure sexual satisfaction and orgasm satisfaction alongside orgasm frequency, so that we get to understand, not just quantity of orgasms, but the quality of the orgasm experience and sexual experience.”
The study, “Personal and perceived partner orgasm pursuit: A daily diary study about the gendered orgasm gap,” was authored by Carly Wolfer and Cheryl L. Carmichael.
