The secret to female pleasure starts with a “c.” Do you know what it is?

How do I make her want to have sex more often? What makes a woman have anorgasm? What do women really want in bed? As a woman, how can I really tell my partner about the secrets of my body? If your #1 resolution for the New Year is be better in bed, read on.

Partners have needed precise information about how to touch their female partner and women have needed unambiguous language to communicate their unique preferences for stimulation.  You would think a simple show-and-tell would be enough for sexual attunement but I listen daily to endless frustration from partners who say:

“I have told him what I like but he never really seems to get it.”

“I have begged her for information about her body, but she’s either too shy to say or possibly too ignorant herself – she doesn’t know what makes her come.”

On the eve of 2016, you would think that this isn’t revolutionary news but it is –                    female pleasure is about the clitoris!

Her clitoris is the center of her sexual nerve endings giving her the capacity to reach orgasm even multiple orgasms with manual, oral or vibratory stimulation. Maybe because of the media or because it is what they need, men still think that her pleasure is all about intercourse – long and hard.

A patient this week told me he thought the penis and vagina were like hand in glove – what he was feeling was what she was feeling. Not even close. The clitoris, not the vagina, is analogous to the penis.  If you’re a man, imagine having sex without having your penis touched. Right. As far as women are concerned, their clitoris is the secret of the universe!

Finally, there is a new web-based resource at OMGYES.COM(link is external) to help both men and women learn clitoral stimulation techniques and give couples a playful way to talk about what works for her.  I would also recommend this site for a woman to watch by herself if she hasn’t been able to attain orgasm.

Combining qualitative research from over 1000 women in the OMGYES Study of Women’s Sexual Pleasure (done by researchers Debby Herbenick, PhD and Brian Dodge, PhD – paper to be published soon) and technology, OMGYES(link is external) co-founders Lydia Daniller and Rob Perkins have produced a website featuring a series of women in videos openly and unabashedly telling their sexual stories – their sexual histories, the moment of orgasmic discovery, most pleasurable touch techniques and psychological insights into their relational needs for their ideal times in bed.

With rare vulnerability compared to pornography, selected interviews are available on the website. Certainly explicit, the film clips show naked vulvas and women touching themselves, but to quote one subscriber, “it’s not porny.”

No one can have a concrete playbook of moves that turn a woman on. But the website, in fact, captures the diversity of methods that women use to pleasure themselves insuring the need for conversation and intimacy.

“The anatomy is so sensitive and varies so much. A few millimeters or a slight difference in angle, pressure or rhythm can make the difference between discomfort and pleasure. And what feels best changes so much over time: over the course of arousal from warm-up through buildup and orgasm, day to day and life-stage to life stage.” – OMGYES website

OMGYES’ primary goal using the research outcome is to help couples develop curiosity about her experience and find language to translate her physical sensations into useful knowledge for her partner.  From the research:

“Women who strongly agree that they and their partner are able to talk specifically about what makes sex more pleasurable for them are 8 times more likely to be happiest in their relationships and are about 6 times as likely to be sexually satisfied.”

The research answers the question – what do women really want in bed?

91% of the women say: “A lover who takes time to find out what I like.”

6% of women want: “A large penis.”

Join me on my new iTunes podcast FOREPLAY – Radio Sex Therapy premiering Valentine’s Day, 2016 with cohost, Tony Delmedico, psychotherapist

[Laurie Watson]