HER: The house party was in full swing. I was lying in the middle of a mattress with the third person of the evening licking my pussy, doing their damnedest to make me come. There were no hard cocks around me, and I was nearly crying in frustration. Try as I might, I just could not crest the mountain. I considered faking it to make the guy feel better and end it, as I have done so many times before, but I didn’t have the energy this time. I can’t fake it anymore.

Confession: I’m shit at climaxing. There. I said it.

HIM: Hold on, sweetie, my ex-wife didn’t orgasm once during sex with me in 26 years. Not one time! That’s ‘shit at climaxing’. You have two or three orgasms every time we have sex, and you definitely have come in swinging situations. I think you’re just not that into oral.

HER: That’s not actually true. I love oral. But I have never, ever had an organs from oral sex in a lifestyle playtime. (I’m sorry to any partners reading this who now feel betrayed. It’s not personal!) And, yes, I can come from P.I.V. sex, but the conditions for success are so specific, it’s rare that it works with new partners.

HIM: You did warn me of this very early in our relationship. You told me you were ‘hard to convince’ when it came to orgasms. That didn’t worry me, though, becuase I’m the same way. I once had a girlfriend for 18 months, and we were never able to fuck to completion.

HER: Ok, that needs some explanation.

HIM: As you know, it takes me a fairly long time to come. Usually a pretty good thing, but unfortunately, she had a hip issue that meant she had about five minutes of sex in her before it became really uncomfortable. So, what we settled on was that I would masturbate beside her and then, when I was ready to come, I would stick it in at the last moment.

HER: That sounds like a strategy for 80-year-olds!

HIM: It actually sounds worse than it was. Everything else about our sex was really good. I could make her come over and over and over from oral, for example. Which is something I’ve only succeeded in doing with you a handful of times.

HER: True. But it’s not a problem that is unique to you. I never once came from oral in my first long-term relationship. For five years, I thought it was something I just couldn’t do. My second relationship was a revelation. He somehow convinced me that, no matter how long it took, no matter how hard I squeezed his head with my thighs, he would love every second of it. And I eventually started to believe him. He’d come up after 15 minutes down there, sweating and rubbed raw, still hard as a rock. So I relaxed and, what do you know? With the right combination of fingers and tongue and time, it worked. It worked so well that it became the prerequisite for every sex session with him. But I don’t have that kind of faith in many people.

HIM: I’m very willing to go down on you, but I have to admit that I don’t have the kind of stamina or enthusiasm for it that your ex seemed to have. I want to make you happy, but giving oral doesn’t exactly turn me on. Trying to get my fingers in there while also applying the correct pressure is a kind of gymnastics I’ve not yet mastered. And your thighs are very strong. When you clamp them around my head and seal off my ears, it feels like my ear drums are going to burst!

HER: You’ve made valiant efforts, but I usually end up pushing you away so we can get on to the main course. But I’m not much better with orgasms from fucking. I have a very specific recipe for that, as well.

HIM: True. For those readers out there who may be curious (take notes, future play partners!), Kate needs to lay flat on her stomach, manually applying pressure to her clit, with her head over the side of the bed to restrict her own oxygen flow with her legs squeezed tight to maximize the pressure. If I fuck her hard, deep and slow in that position, she comes easily. Unfortunately, it’s an exacting formula that few other men have mastered.

HER: And you have certainly mastered it over the years. With all those pieces in place, I can have shattering orgasms. But imagine trying to communicate all this to someone new. I do my best, but it’s confounding, I’m sure, for some men who just want to get to the missionary or doggie-style positions they know and love.

HIM: I like that I’ve figured out the puzzle that is you, but it would be great if we could discover another way for you to orgasm, just to give you more options when we’re together.

HER: I know there will be people at home saying we need to find the right toy. We’ve certainly tried. Dildos, vibrators, rabbits, bullets, hi-machines, and We Vibes: we’ve sampled them all. When I masturbate alone, I do like the We Vibe, but I use it in the same position I come from during sex. I can’t find another way to make it work. And we haven’t had success using toys together. They seem to make you a bit nervous.

HIM: Well, you know I’ve never been handy with power tools. I appreciate how particular you are, so I figure it’s best to sit back and watch you take the reigns rather than get in the way. And there are so many buttons and levels and patterns. I’m not exactly tech savvy, so I feel very out of my element.

HER: True. It takes you about a year to learn every new smart phone you’ve every gotten. Ok, enough about me. I know you have some orgasm quirks too. I’ve probably had about as much success making you come from oral as you have with me. In fact, in our first sexual encounter, I made you cum in my mouth. You seemed in awe, like it had never happened before. I figured, that’s just what guys do when you suck on their cocks long enough. It’s a biological inevitability. But, I’ve since learned that that was a rare occurrence for you. What’s the story there?

HIM: I guess I have the same relationship to oral as you have. I know other men love it like crazy, but it doesn’t do that much for me. And, like you, it takes a long time to get me there, so I get distracted worrying about the poor woman down there risking lockjaw and carpal tunnel syndrome for my benefit.

HER: The empathy piece is a big factor for both of us. Maybe we struggle to come from oral simply because it’s hard for us to sit back and greedily enjoy anything. We’re both givers by nature, not takers. Maybe we’re just too nice to be good swingers.

HIM: Awesome! I love it when we turn our performance shortcomings into evidence of moral virtue.

HER: That’s why the reassurance that my ex loved giving oral was so crucial to my success. It’s hard to have an orgasm when you’re in humanitarian mode. So, what’s the take-away here? Should we just tell people up front that the odds of either one of us having an orgasm in a lifestyle situation are infinitesimal, so we don’t get their hopes up? Or should I just keep faking it?

HIM: We’re trying to be more honest in our lifestyle journey, not less honest.

HER: But there are people (mostly men) who would take my confession that I don’t orgasm easily as a personal challenge. These are the guys who believe they have some fool-proof magic formula or secret move I’ve never seen before that will blow my mind. Don’t get me wrong: I’m open to being surprised. But these are the same kinds of people who will go on doggedly and wear out my tender bits. And, when they eventually give up, they take it personally — like they’ve failed. It’s a real downer.

HIM: Frankly, I don’t know what we can do to make it easier on ourselves, but we can take what we’ve learned and make it easier on others. I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but when I start giving oral sex, I make a bit of a speech.

HER: Oh, God.

HIM: Hear me out. First, I ask what level of pressure she likes and if she likes fingers involved.

HER: Oh, okay. I do that too.

HIM: Then I let her know that, if she gets to the point that she’s had enough, all she has to do is tap me on the head and I’ll wrap it up. I basically provide her with an ‘off’ switch. No faking required.

HER: That’s actually really good. Because there have been times when, 20 minutes into a well-intentioned guy’s efforts, I’m just dying for him to stop, but I haven’t known how, exactly, to communicate that non-violently.

HIM: Baby, if I can start with a little speech as a provider of oral, you could probably start with a little speech of your own as a receiver. If you let the girl or guy know that you’re unusually sensitive, and that you’ll let them know with a little tap on the head when you’ve had enough, I think most people would appreciate that.

HER: You’re probably right. And hey – maybe I could apply that in other areas of our life, like when we’re in the car and you leave the turn signal on 20 seconds after you’ve changed lanes. Are you saying I could just tap you on the head and you’d know to turn it off? That alone would probably erase the number one source of friction in our marriage.

HIM: Well, don’t get your hopes up.