Bad Orgasm?

Orgasms are great. Except when they aren’t.

I have sometimes heard people say there’s no such thing as a bad orgasm—but that just isn’t true.

There ARE bad orgasms.

And a woman’s orgasm doesn’t mean she enjoyed sex, either.

Many women know just what I mean.

A good orgasm can be amazing and profound. A good orgasm is all-encompassing experience. A good orgasm happens when your body and your mind are in sync with each other. Your sexual interest is high, and your body is responding well. You’re present in the moment, and you are enjoying your sexual encounter.

What Makes an Orgasm Bad?

A bad orgasm happens when your body responds to sexual stimulation but your mind doesn’t sync up with what your body is doing. When women experience orgasm during sexual assault, it is because their bodies are doing what God designed them to do, even they are not thinking of enjoyment or pleasure.

Yet even when the sex is consensual, you might have a bad orgasm. That’s what I want to talk about today: bad orgasms that are part of consensual sex.

A study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior* lays out three situations in which your body might have an orgasm that you experience negatively.

1. When sex is coerced. This refers not to assault, but to sex you consent to because you are coerced through guilt trips, constant groping, etc. Your body shows up, but your mind is probably pretty irritated.
2. During compliant sex. Compliant sex is what we sometimes think of as duty sex or mercy sex: you don’t want to have sex but you agree to do it anyway. If your motivation is positive, such as wanting to make your husband feel loved, you might be pleasantly surprised by a good orgasm. If your motivation is negative, though, a surprise orgasm might not be so good. For instance, if you have sex because you want to avoid yet another argument about sex, because you think if you give him sex he won’t look at porn, or because you want to get it over with so you can get back to your pile of laundry, a surprise orgasm is likely to be a bad one that isn’t enjoyable.
3. When you are pressured to have an orgasm. Plenty of husbands love it when their wives orgasm with them. Sometimes, though, a husband is so focused on his wife having an orgasm that he pressures her. For lots of us, that pressure is going to be a major turn-off and may well result in no orgasm at all. If we do have an orgasm that we were pressured to have, it will probably be a bad one.

I want to add one more example of a bad orgasm.

• When an orgasm is painful or leads to pain. Years ago when I had fibroid tumors in my uterus, an orgasm would lead to horrible pain that lasted several days. I tried to avoid orgasm and I hated when it happened. I remember saying out loud, “I hate orgasms so much.” (I know, I know. What was I thinking?)

When our minds and bodies are both completely on board with a sexual encounter, we tend to associate the orgasm with positive and warm feelings. When our bodies show up but our minds are distracted or we are feeling resentful or hurt, an orgasm will be associated with negative things.

How Do Bad Orgasms Affect Us?

Bad orgasms can cause a variety of problems.

• You feel betrayed by your own body. It’s already hard when your body doesn’t look like you want it to or do the things you’d like it to be able to do. When you have a bad orgasm, you might feel like your body has betrayed you.
• You feel distant from your husband rather than connected to him. If you felt coerced to have sex or pressured to have an orgasm, you may feel resentment toward him. He didn’t honor what you wanted. Furthermore, if he thinks Orgasm=Sexual Enjoyment and if the orgasm resulted from a type of sexual stimulation that you oppose, you might be concerned about whether he is going to do it again despite your wishes.
• You avoid sex. You don’t want to risk having a bad orgasm again, so you may avoid sex in order to avoid the bad orgasm.
• You have a negative view of the sexual encounter. Instead of having warm afterglow, you just want to put the whole thing behind you.

Good orgasms can help you feel closer and more connected to your husband.

Bad orgasms can make you feel further away from him.

A bad orgasm isn’t just the absence of a good orgasm. It is one that leaves you with a negative view or feeling.

What Can You Do About Bad Orgasms?

Fortunately, you may be able to do something about bad orgasms.

Address your own issues.

If orgasm is painful, seek help from your doctor. If you struggle to want to have sex, learn to nurture your sexual desire and interest. (See When You Need Help Getting in the Mood: 3 Ways to Nurture Your Desire Throughout the Day and 6 Ways to Nurture Your Sexual Desire.) If you carry resentment toward your husband, get rid of your bitterness. If you believe sex is mostly for your husband or that it isn’t important, work on absorbing the truth of God’s design for sex in marriage.

Communicate with your husband.

Let your husband know if your orgasms have been bad. He may be shocked, in which case you might refer him to this post about what a woman’s orgasm says about whether she enjoyed sex. If your husband is like mine, he may not even be able to understand how the words “bad” and “orgasm” belong in the same sentence. When I mentioned to my husband that I was writing a post about bad orgasms, he got a very confused look on his face and said, “Huh? What’s that? There are bad orgasms?” If your husband has been under the impression that your orgasms are good just because they’re orgasms, he needs to be given the knowledge about what does help you enjoy sex and orgasms.

Ask for his help.

If your husband likes to try to fix things and solve your problems, put that tendency to good use and ask him to help you have good orgasms rather than bad ones. “Honey, I want to more fully enjoy our sex together. Here’s a problem I have. Do you have any thoughts about what we might do?” Ask him to accompany you to the doctor. Suggest that he use wording that is encouraging rather than pressuring when he tries to give you an orgasm. Let him know what he can do to clear up some of your mental space so you can make a fuller transition from laundry to sex.

Good Orgasms Are Great!

Good orgasms are wonderful. Profound. Spiritual. Uniting. Pleasurable.

In the Song of Songs, intimacy is portrayed as so wonderful that it brings goodness and life.

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. Song of Songs 2: 11-12

Put bad orgasms behind you so you can enjoy the fullness of God’s gift of sex to you.

*Chadwick, S. B., Francisco, M., & Anders, S. M. van. (2019). When Orgasms Do Not Equal Pleasure: Accounts of “Bad” Orgasm Experiences During Consensual Sexual Encounters. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(8), 2435–2459. doi:10.1007/s10508-019-01527-7

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