This post was written with Darien Thira, Ph.D.

(Note: Gendered terms are used for simplicity to refer to gender scripts)

“I feel so great when she has an orgasm with me!” Mike, a 27-year-old engineer, declared with pride. “But it hardly ever happens.” He hesitated and looked down, “What does that say about me?” Mike and Amanda had come to therapy to help ‘fix’ her orgasm problem. Amanda described how she was able to orgasm in masturbation, but was struggling in partnered sex, “I think there’s something wrong with me. I just can’t get there with him.”

This is not an uncommon problem in heterosexual couples. In fact, up to 60% of women (and 9% of men) have been found to struggle to orgasm during partnered sex in long-term relationships (Mahar et al., 2020).

So, what is the secret to having an orgasm with your partner? Instead of looking at what goes wrong with orgasm in couples, we decided to go straight to the source–those women and men who orgasm easily with their partner. We asked over 13,000 women and men to share how they cracked the orgasm code.

What brings us “over the edge” can be called an orgasm pattern. An orgasm pattern is a specific set of sensations and experiences that our bodies and minds associate with reaching orgasm. Each of us has a unique orgasm pattern,........

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