Is it okay if he enjoys sex more than you?
Maybe you’ve just started seeing one another. Maybe he doesn’t know you well enough yet to push the right buttons.
Or maybe you’ve been together for so long that sex is routine. You don’t think too much about it.
Or maybe, just maybe, you’ve never prioritized your OWN pleasure. Maybe it’s always been about him rather than you, and you’re not sure why.
In this week’s YBTV interview, we talk with licensed professional counselor Terah Harrison about what to do when sex is better for him than for you.
Terah specializes in helping couples have a happy, healthy sex life and fight less. You’ll learn about the orgasm gap, the importance of asking for what you want, and what it means to become clitorate.
This interview contains some explicit language. Viewer discretion is advised.
Relationship Counseling with Terah Harrison
What You’ll Learn
Whenever you’re allowing him to truly please you, then you’re giving him the gift of giving to you.”
What do you do if you don’t like what your man is doing during sex?
Do you say nothing, because you don’t want to hurt his feelings?
Do you say something and risk ruining the mood?
Or do you take a page from Terah Harrison’s book and say, “Oh honey, you know that feels SO good, but let me show you something that I REALLY like”?
Terah believes we need to speak up in the bedroom.
Not to tell our men they’re making a mistake or doing something wrong…
But rather to show them how they can please us better.
Our partners “truly do want to please us,” Terah says. “It’s worth the risk to bring those things up, because in the end he’s going feel better, because he is going to find out how to please you, and you’re going to get more orgasms.”
As women, we haven’t always been taught to value our own pleasure.
“That comes from years and years of us hearing that sex is mainly for men,” Terah explains. We can end up believing that it’s more important to look and act sexy than to feel sexual. Our sexuality feels like it’s for his benefit, not our own.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
When you take ownership of your sexual experience and actively instruct your partner in how to please you better, it takes your relationship to a higher level. You’re allowing him to give to you, and you’re allowing yourself to receive.
This can feel frightening. It makes you vulnerable. But the reward is a deeper, more intimate and fulfilling connection.
Men can tell when you’re going along with something that doesn’t feel all that great. “Is he really happy if you’re not being pleased during sex?” Terah asks. It might seem easier to fake an orgasm, but not being honest leads you away from real connection.
Sometimes women fake it because they don’t feel they have a choice. They’re not able to achieve orgasm during sex.
Dr. Laurie Mintz studies what she calls the “orgasm gap,” the difference in how often men experience orgasms compared to women. She found that 39% of female university students always or regularly experience orgasms during sex, compared to 91% of men. About two-thirds of women have regular orgasms in relationships. But hookup sex is dismal, with just 4% of women achieving orgasm.
This wide gap suggests that, even today, women’s orgasms aren’t valued equally to men’s.
“When it comes down to it,” Terah says, “we both want pleasure for each other, but some of us are confused about what that looks like.”
We can start to close the orgasm gap by adopting this principle:
You have a right to say yes to the kind of sex you want—any kind of sex that you want—and no to any sex that you don’t want.“
Terah adds, “That’s for both men and women.”
In the #MeToo climate, both men and women have a responsibility to check in with one another AND check in with themselves.
Men should be asking, “Are you having fun? Is this okay with you?” Women should be asking themselves, “Am I really having fun, or do I just want him to think I’m having fun?”
Learning to set kind boundaries helps women feel safer during sex. They don’t have to go ahead with something that makes them feel uncomfortable. They can guide their partners back to what they want.
Terah helps educate couples through her one-on-one coaching as well as her podcast, “Make More Love Not War.” She helps women figure out what kind of sex they want, and she helps men understand how to connect with and understand the women in their lives.
Jump to Topics of Interest
3:26 Getting up the courage to talk to him about sex
5:50 Is your pleasure that important?
7:14 Pretending you love what he’s doing to avoid offending him
9:05 What if you’re not in the mood but you know it’s important to him?
10:32 Orgasm equality and the orgasm gap
12:32 Speaking up about what you want
14:31 How to get a guy to stop when you feel uncomfortable – without wrecking the date
15:47 Terah’s podcast “Make More Love Not War”
16:59 Understanding your anatomy down there
18:52 How you can work with Terah
Terah Harrison
Terah is a licensed professional counselor and host of the podcast Make More Love Not War. Her goal is to help people have more sex and fight less. She discovered the need for her podcast through working with male clients at her private practice in Fort Worth, Texas. Most of these men were striving to be better partners, but their strategies to achieve this only made things worse. She wondered what would happen if men had a free, easily-accessible resource to help them understand women better—and her podcast Make More Love Not War was born. Find out how you can work with Terah.
Let us know what you think!