Faking It

When I tell people that I have, in the past, faked orgasms, their immediate response typically comes in the form of two questions:

Why? And how??

Contained within those questions are a number of assumptions, about both the way in which penis-owners express and experience pleasure, and their motivations for being physically intimate with another person. Before I talk directly about my own reasons for faking it, it might be useful to unpack and explore a few of those assumptions.

The first and most common is that if you have a penis, you can’t fake an orgasm – at least not in a way that won’t be immediately obvious to your partner. And I can completely understand why it seems so implausible to some people. Jizz is messy, after all – how on Earth can you fake a nice big load of cum without the other person noticing?? Well for starters, if you’re fucking with a condom, that mess is immediately contained; if you then remove the condom straight away and toss it in the bin, there’s no reason why the other person should ever see what is – or isn’t – inside.

If you’re not using a condom, it’s clearly a little trickier. Even then though, unless you’re a porn star orgasms aren’t typically great gushing explosions of piping-hot fluid. If your cock is deep inside someone, sliding around with lube and their juices, things are often pretty messy already; it would take a particularly confident – and/or anatomically forensic – person to say definitively that there was no semen mixed up in there, especially if you’ve twitched your cock a few times for effect.

(Look I didn’t say I was proud of any of this. I’m just trying to explain it…)

Context also plays a part. If you’re both drunk, or it’s the middle of the night, detecting specific physical symptoms/reactions is likely to be more difficult. On the other hand, faking it only really works with the kind of partner who doesn’t climb off your cock after you’ve come and immediately start sucking it clean, which rules out plenty of the women I’ve encountered over the years.

But yeah, it’s both possible and easier to sell than you’d think, not least because so many people have clearly never considered the possibility that anyone with a penis would do it. Which I guess takes us from the ‘how’ to the ‘why’. What reason could someone like me possibly have to fake an orgasm? As a friend told me a while back, when I discussed it with her: “I only do it because I find it really hard to come during sex. Surely guys don’t have that problem?”

I don’t want to spend too long on this one, partly because it feels like it could be a whole post in itself, but YES, YES they do indeed have that problem. Or some do anyway. Leaving aside those with clinically diagnosed anorgasmia, there are all sorts of reasons why someone might have occasional difficulty climaxing, ranging from prescription medication and alcohol to anxiety, stress, fatigue, trauma and illness. Some of those have more serious long-term implications than others, but for the purpose of this post I think it’s worth focusing briefly on one that feels, on the surface at least, like it ought to be easier to address – namely anxiety.

I suspect there are very few people who have not, at some point, felt anxious before, during, or immediately after sex. For some, that’s because they carry around with them such high levels of general anxiety that it’s an unavoidable companion to even the most immersive of physical activities. For others, it’s specific to the sex itself, and can take various forms. They might worry that they’re not ‘good enough’ in bed; that they can’t ‘make’ their partner orgasm; that they’ll come too quickly, or not be able to sustain an erection, or that their penis is too small/big/ugly/curved/etc. None of those feelings – general or specific – are conducive to enjoying sex, or to being able to relax during it.

And surprise surprise, if you’re tense and unhappy when you fuck, that can make it significantly harder to climax. Worse still, it can become a really vicious circle: it takes you a long time to zero in on your orgasm because you’re anxious, which just increases your anxiety about whether you’ll be able to come at all, which just makes it even more difficult the next time you fuck, etc etc. One attractive solution in that case might be to fake your orgasm, just to relieve the pressure you’re putting on yourself (however temporarily).

That pressure is often exacerbated by the way society views the male orgasm. My friend isn’t the only person to assume that penis-owners simply ‘don’t have that problem’, and actually premature ejaculation is only considered fair game for jokes and mockery because the default assumption is that their orgasm is an inevitability – the challenge is preventing it from happening too quickly, rather than ensuring it happens at all.

As a result, the prospect of telling someone that you might not come can feel pretty daunting. There’s often a sense that it will be followed by one of two questions: either what’s wrong with you, or what’s wrong with me? If that sounds crazy, ask yourself how often fear and rationality march in perfect lockstep. Even those of us who know that sex doesn’t have to be goal-orientated are pretty hard-coded to associate any encounter involving a cock with ejaculation. Should we be shocked if those of us with a penis view the prospect of deviating from that norm with a degree of apprehension, particularly if we’re not doing so by choice?

Consider as well whether those questions are actually that unreasonable. In the abstract, perhaps, but for a lot of people sex is a time of extreme emotional vulnerability. Insecurities can be triggered and magnified very easily, and I completely understand why someone might feel hurt or confused by their male partner not having an orgasm. If we’re constantly told that of course guys always come, it doesn’t take much of a logical leap to assume that something must be wrong – with them or with you – if they don’t.

As ever, the solution to that particular problem lies in good (or even basic) communication. And here’s where I start talking a bit more about my own experiences with faking it – it’s only taken us 1,000 words to get to this point.

Without exception, I can trace every time I faked an orgasm back to one central problem: a fundamental lack of open, honest communication with my partner, driven in many cases by fear on my part. Fear of looking foolish; fear of disappointing someone; fear of having to have an awkward conversation about it afterwards; fear of that being their abiding memory of fucking me (“OMG it was so weird, he didn’t come”).

I should probably clarify at this point that it was never a regular occurrence, which is why I didn’t also suffer from maybe the biggest fear of all in that situation: the fear of never being able to come. I’ve been lucky enough to find reaching orgasm relatively easy most of the time, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been days, nights, or even whole weeks when, for whatever reason, things just haven’t worked as smoothly. The one-offs have usually been alcohol-related – like most people, when I’m drunk I find it harder to come – and whenever the problem has persisted for slightly longer, I’ve always been able to trace it back to something relatively specific and fixable. So on that front I’m very fortunate.

In the past though, that infrequency just made it more tempting to take the easy way out and fake it. It was such a low-level issue that the price of confronting it during sex often felt very high, especially when it came with no obvious benefits in terms of my ability to come in the future. That’s a terribly cold way to think about sex, of course, but it made sense in my head back then. Don’t rock the boat, don’t ruin things, and most of all don’t turn this perfectly nice time we’re having into something difficult and stressful – not when I know everything will be fine next time anyway.  

Actually, that’s a point worth making. With maybe the odd exception here and there, I never faked it because I was having a bad time. I know I’m not alone in saying that sex can feel really fucking good whether it involves an orgasm or not: it just took me a long time to reach the point where I could confidently say it to another person! On so many occasions, I’d have felt much happier (and less guilty) after sex if I’d just told my partner that even though I wasn’t going to get there, I was having a really good time anyway. That’s the benefit of hindsight, I guess, but it also shows exactly why those reductive/toxic misconceptions about the male orgasm can be so damaging to all parties.

To some extent, I think I justified it by telling myself that my partner also benefited from the minor deceit. Not only were they spared any sudden self-doubt when it came to their sexual prowess, they also generally got another shag when I was miraculously hard again 15 minutes later. The idea that we could just…stop at a certain point, and ALSO have more sex a short time later, didn’t really pass through my brain back then.

Over time, I’ve got better at telling someone that I’m not going to come, though I rarely frame it in exactly those terms. Instead I’ll just suggest that we take a break, or focus on them for a while. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that often acts as a bit of a reset, and makes it more likely that I will come if/when we circle back round to me again – partly because I get a chance to take a breath, compose myself, and stop bloody thinking about it, but I think it’s also something to do with the additional trust and security that come with feeling able to reframe my orgasm as something that isn’t inevitable.

When I was first thinking about this post, I asked Twitter whether there was anything people particularly wanted me to address. I think I’ve probably covered off most of the responses already, but just to round things off I’m going to do a bit of a Q&A with the rest of them.

Do you regret it and would you do it again now?

I do regret faking orgasms: not because I think it’s morally wrong or anything, but for the reasons I gave above – namely that I think I’d have had better sex sooner (and felt better about the sex too) if instead of pretending to come I’d actually talked to my partners about why it wasn’t going to happen at that point. By the same token, I wouldn’t do it again now, as I don’t feel it would benefit me or the people I fuck.

Does it change how you feel about a partner of yours faking their orgasm?

This is a really good and relevant question, but also a hard one to answer, mainly because it’s so long since I first faked an orgasm (maybe 15 years?) that I can’t really remember how I felt about other people doing so before that point! I’d say I’m relatively relaxed about it – of course I want my partners to have a good time, and I’d be concerned/sad if I felt like I was the reason they were faking it, but I also know from experience that it’s likely to be far more about them than it is about me. I guess maybe it does mean I’m more likely to ask questions like “do you want to come?” and “will you show me what feels good?”, as a way of communicating both that I want to be guided by them where their pleasure is concerned, and that I don’t have any set expectations on that front.

Are there circumstances where faking an orgasm might not be bad/could be valid?

I think there are, yes! I’m just not sure any of them really apply to the times when I did it. For sure there’s a safety consideration, especially for women in abusive relationships or situations that might be dangerous – if you’re fucking someone and you know they’ll be angry if you don’t come, of course it’s valid to fake it! Similarly I can see a case for doing it as a way of building up someone’s confidence, if it’s done in tandem with the kind of guidance and advice – and improvement in communication – that will render faking it unnecessary in future. I’m sure there’s also a performative case for doing it, though this maybe applies more to casual relationships; if your partner gets off from hearing you come, and you want to push them over the edge, then do the benefits of a few overly porny noises and a fake orgasm outweigh the costs? Maybe. Either way, I definitely don’t think it’s always bad or wrong.

This is a long-ass post, but I’m sure there are important points I haven’t covered, as well as follow-up question in response to the ones I have! If you want to ask me about anything I’ve written here, please either leave me a note in the comments or hit me up on Twitter, and maybe I’ll add some follow-up thoughts in a week or two.