When was the last time you thought about your own pleasure? Not in a passing, guilty-flash-of-a-thought kind of way. Really thought about it – what you enjoy, what you want more of, and maybe what you've never quite had the courage to ask for. For most of us, the honest answer is, “Not often enough.” And that's not a personal failing! It's the entirely predictable result of growing up in a world that never really asked us (and especially never really asked women).
Sex education, almost everywhere in the world, is built around one topic: Risk. Unwanted pregnancy, STIs, what not to do and why. It is not, as a rule, built around what feels good, what you want, or the fact that you are a person who deserves to enjoy sex.
Pleasure is arguably the main reason people have sex, yet it has been largely absent from sex education for generations. In a study of 12 to 13-year-olds across 50 schools in England, fewer than 30% said that sexual pleasure had been well covered in their relationships and sex education classes. That, unfortunately, is a global norm rather than the quirk of one country's curriculum.
So what fills the gap? For most people, it's a combination of internet porn, trial and error, and the awkward hope that someone, someday, figures out what you like (and preferably likes the same things you do). The problem with that approach is that porn was not made to educate you about your body. It was made to entertain, and largely to entertain men. Using it as a reference point for what sex should look like, or what you should want, or how your body should respond, is a bit like using a Hollywood action film car chase to learn how to drive.
In a study of more than 50,000 people, 95% of heterosexual men said they usually or always orgasm during sex. For heterosexual women, that number was 65%. And research suggests that when women orgasm less, they learn to expect and desire less, a cycle shaped by culture rather than anatomy. Women aren't harder to please, but they've been taught, in a thousand subtle ways, that their pleasure is secondary.
And then… Yeah, we're going to talk about faking. Studies suggest that between 53% and 85% of women have faked an orgasm, most often to protect a partner's feelings. Which tells you something pretty revealing about whose comfort tends to take up the most space in the room. Sometimes it happens to get things over with, or because whatever is happening isn't going to get them there, so they quietly opt out and swallow the disappointment.
The faking isn't the problem, exactly. It's the symptom that points to something deeper: A long-standing habit of managing other people's experiences at the expense of your own, in a space where you really shouldn't have to. Sounds like typical women’s work, huh?
The knock-on effects of a lifetime of deprioritized pleasure show up in real, everyday ways. Do you feel comfortable speaking up during sex? Do you know what actually works for your body and what turns you on? Have you ever really given yourself permission to find out, or have you spent years letting media and porn tell you what you should like, and quietly wondering if something is wrong with you?
It shows up in how we were raised, too. For many people, sex was either not discussed at home at all, or it was framed as something to be cautious about, ashamed of, or saved for the right circumstances (traditonally, marriage). The idea that your pleasure might simply be worth exploring, for its own sake, rarely made it into those conversations, if ever. So you arrived at your adult sex life without much of a map, and quietly figured it out as you went, or didn't, and told yourself that was just how things were.
Thinking about your own pleasure isn't selfish or frivolous. It's not something to squeeze in around everything else, or to feel vaguely embarrassed about wanting. Knowing what you want, being able to say it, and actually experiencing it are all part of a full, healthy life, and that includes your sexuality.
So here's somewhere to start. Get curious about yourself without any pressure to perform or produce an outcome (not even an orgasm). Think about what you actually enjoy, not what you think you should enjoy or what someone else seemed to want you to enjoy. Notice what gets in the way, whether that's stress, habit, not knowing your own body well enough yet, or simply never having been given permission to prioritize this.
If you have a partner, consider what it might look like to have one honest conversation about what you actually want. Not a big confrontation, just a moment of saying the thing out loud. Most people find it less terrifying than they expected, and the payoff is usually worth it.
And if you're still figuring out what you want before you can even say it to someone else, that's not a problem to fix. That's just where you are, and it's a perfectly reasonable place to be. Self-knowledge takes time, and pleasure is one of the better ways to build it. Maybe check out HUD App's My Bedroom™ feature if that helps you to identify some of the things you’re interested in.
Your pleasure matters. It always did. The only thing that's changed is that now you know you're allowed to say so.
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