I Didn't Have My First Orgasm Until I Was Over 30

Orgasms don’t come easily to everyone. My first one happened last weekend, after years of fucking the same person. Before that, I fucked different people with disappointing results. Maybe this one’s magic, or maybe there’s a better explanation.

It’s not like I’ve dated beneath me, either. I’ve shared beds with super seriously attractive, smart, cultured, and successful people. This fact may shock you, but I’ve learned something from loads of breakups. The overall attractiveness of your partner may not play the key role in your sexual health, or the strength of your relationship.

You might date plenty of smart, attractive, successful people you get along with. Sadly, for some reason maybe you just can’t open up to them. You date them and date them, and you just can’t let yourself go when they’re around. It actually isn’t them. Or you. It’s somewhere in the middle.

The essential ingredients to my orgasm include mutual respect, trust, honesty, comfort, and acceptance. I’ve learned that if you can’t let your guard down, then your sex will remain an illusion. Maybe a fun illusion. But still a work of imagination. A fantasy without substance.

The person who can make you orgasm is the person who doesn’t run away after seeing your nightmare self. For me, that didn’t happen until a few years ago. In truth, I’ve got a lot of inner twisted. He’s seen it, and chosen to stay. The person who runs? That person can’t give you an orgasm. Unless you’ve had a different experience. If so, let me know.

I’m over 30. I’ve had plenty of sex, just a late bloomer in terms of the petite mort. What changed? I had to let out all my ugly insides. That took a little while. For some people, it takes a long time to open everything up.

Before you ask, yes. I’ve been dumped for my lack of bedroom sass. So I watched some porn and learned how to act like I was enjoying sex. But you can only keep that up for so long.

It’s not like I didn’t enjoy sex. I mean, I’ve always liked the idea. I’m liberal, not prudish. But your biochemistry lies at a less conscious level. Sometimes, I’ve felt like my brain didn’t even have access to my desires. As much as I’d like it to be true, sex is not an intellectual process. It’s the opposite.

Some people equate sex and dancing. No, not even close. Trust me, you can fake good dancing. You can take dance lessons. Sex lessons? Harder to come by. But simulating sex was never my problem.

Feeling it? Completely different.

Sex always felt nice, and sometimes I could even fool my partners into thinking I’d lost myself in the moment. Maybe normal people don’t have to teach themselves how to enjoy sex, to lose themselves.

Most animals just slide right into the nasty. But I’m fucked up. So I had to figure myself out first.

Vulnerability. I’ve spent my entire life hiding my feelings. In high school, I lied to my friends all the time about my mom’s mental health. Let’s say she was having an especially bad week, and decided on a whim that I couldn’t go to a friend’s party. She would smash glasses all night long, spewing nonsense about rape and venereal diseases. My dad would pull me into another room and beg, “Can’t you hang out at home?” He just wanted my mom to stop screaming, so we could sleep.

So I’d call my friends and make up a story. My parents had grounded me over bad grades. They were going to make me study all weekend.

Every week, I made up stories and excuses for my mom’s behavior. The better I got at lying, the better my friends got at believing me.

I even learned how to lie to adults. Teachers. Social workers. Myself. Someone should’ve given me an award.

Sex and lies. Years later, I saw the connection. All of my problems in relationships, especially sex, lay there. You can’t enjoy intimacy in the bedroom, if you can’t even tell your friends the truth about simple things. My skills at lying transferred easily into adulthood. Instead of talking about my feelings, or sharing details about myself, I just lied. I made up a different me with no baggage.

That different me could charm anyone. I made a great date. But fake me sucked in the bedroom. You can pretend to be anyone you want on a date. When it comes to sex, you have to be yourself. For a long time, I refused to admit that.

Throughout my 20s, I had pretend sex. I’d kiss and moan for my partner. Even when my actions felt fake, I went through the motions. But pretend sex only leads to pretend orgasms.

Pretend friends. Pretend romance. Pretend sex. Pretend orgasms.

That’s how life works.

Funny how long it took me to learn. In the end, I just got lucky. I found someone who accepted me, with all my flaws.

What flaws, you ask? Picture it, a year ago I let out a visceral scream and threw a glass against the wall. He came into the room thinking we were under a home invasion.

I looked up and pouted. “My computer’s frozen.”

That’s it, I thought. Another relationship bites the blade. But instead we had this tender moment, before the neighbors came to check on us. “We heard this blood curdling scream,” one of them said. “Everything okay?”

We convinced them nobody had died, and watched a comedy special. An hour later, I realized I hadn’t broken the glass because my computer had frozen. I’d been on edge all day after listening to my dad narrate his frustrations with the state’s mental health system. My mom’s problems were draining his retirement fund. Ah, how the mind works.

At first, I couldn’t believe someone could actually love all the bad shit about me — all the baggage, all the misdirected rage. But it happened. And for some of us, you can’t reach happiness in bed until you find someone who can help you take out all your garbage.

Either that, or a really great vibrator.

Or a shower head with advanced settings.

Plus, we developed unprecedented levels of honesty. I’m talking about my spouse now, not the shower head.

We actually had conversations about things we did and didn’t like in bed. Nobody had ever done that before. We read articles and watched videos. In some ways, it was like DIY sex therapy.

Each time got better, easier, more natural. Despite momentary setbacks, we leveled up over time, and began to edge closer to climax.

Finally, the hard work and patience paid off. My first real orgasm didn’t end with fireworks. But we felt good. I laughed out loud. Laughter from relief, that I was alive after all. Only small things changed in terms of our choreography. What mattered was the intimacy. After that, I resisted the initial urge to text all my friends and post on Facebook. No, that was the old Jessica — the one who simply wanted to prove an illusion. The new me simply reveled in the moment. Everyone has their own path to ecstasy. I’ve found mine. Hopefully, you’ll find yours. (If you haven’t.)