Porn and Orgasm

Q: “Hi Evguenia,

When masturbating I can climax every time, but with other people, I usually cannot.  I get too worried and doubtful to believe it’ll happen.

Also, when self pleasuring, I tend to need to create porn in my head (which excludes my face) to get myself to orgasm.  I need to live through the pleasure of “others” in my mind to climax.

If I just have my mind in the present, I usually cannot climax.  So when I’m with another person in the moment, I can’t climax.

I’m kind of  embarrassed that I can’t climax with other people, which both me and other person would prefer – I feel like I’m letting down 2 people at once.  Plus it would be nice if I could come too! Any advice you could give me? Thank you!” H. K.

A: Thank you for an awesome question H! This is a very common dilemma that many people have. I see a solution to this as a spectrum of possible approaches you can try. I will describe them below one by one starting all the way from resisting the need for porn and reprogramming your brain to allowing the energy you’re used enjoying to stay and surrendering to it.

Complete Change

Right now your orgasm – brain connection seems to depend on the visual porn imagery you play in your head in order to orgasm. You’re used to this way of feeling pleasure and it would take some time for you to reprogram yourself. If you decide to embark on that journey, a radical solution could be to:

• Not set any expectations on having to orgasm for a few weeks for yourself or with a partner (this will take the performance anxiety out of the mix)
• You can tell your partner how much you enjoy your play/sex and that regardless of whether or not you climax – they make you very happy
• Try being in the moment, breathing, focusing on all five senses and incorporating things that turn you on
• When masturbating by yourself try to again focus on visualizing your partner with you or focusing on your five senses
• Please don’t get discouraged if you don’t orgasm (as it’s not our goal for the first couple of weeks anyways) and be patient with yourself
• Perhaps edging yourself and not orgasming as often as you’re used to will create a strong enough charge that will bring a release later on along with more life-like visual stimulation

Gradual Approach Change

Another approach could be to try to gradually get used to no porn stimulation. In order to try this technique you can:

• Masturbate as you usually would with the visual porn stimulus
• As you’re feeling the orgasm approach – switching the visuals to focus on more life like events or simply going with the other sensation focus (touch, hearing, smell, taste as opposed to visual)
• First time the switch may happen very close to the orgasm
• With each new session switch the stimuli closer and closer to the beginning so you can reprogram yourself to orgasm from non-porn related input
• Please be patient with yourself and don’t get discouraged by temporary setbacks

Embracing the Energy

Last approach I would mention is to see if you can embrace the inclination you have now and include your partner into it. As with any type of energy exchange we could resist strong energy flow or allow it come through us. Do this as a suggestion on the latter.

We are all different and we get turned on by different things. Often, things that put us over the edge are our unique preferences / kinks and there’s nothing wrong with that.

• Great first step of this approach would be to understand what it is exactly that turns you on in the porn about watching others
• Perhaps, you are a voyeur and love watching others receive pleasure – in this case an interesting thing to try may be to go to a sex club by yourself or with your partner and watch others play as you enjoy your own company
• Maybe a specific scenario that turns you on is group sex etc. again – use this to your advantage by either seeing this in real life, or using during dirty talk with your partner and creating a common fantasy around it
• Perhaps, there are other elements to your fantasy that you’d love to try out in real life – please don’t hesitate to use various toys, common fantasy or even watching that type of porn together
• Once you understand exactly what your turn on is, please don’t be afraid to bring it on and ask your partner to try a few things with you.
• I have blogged about how to communicate your sexual fantasies in This Post 

I hope you find some of these approaches helpful. A personal therapy session with a sexologist may also help to go deeper into this subject.

For more in depth exploration of the topic of sexuality and play – please see some of the Services I Offer and feel free to Reach Out.