by Ava Osbaldeston

There’s a pause after sex. The tangled sheets.  The unsatisfied silence. 

“Did you come?’’ 

A small question, casually delivered. But those three words carry the weight of something much bigger. Not just whether you orgasmed, but whether the sex itself counts. Whether the script ended properly. 

‘’It’s mentally exhausting – pretending to enjoy sex when you’re not even close,’’ said one 19-year-old girl at the University of Sheffield. 

“You’re chasing something, but you don’t know how to say it  because if you don’t spend the whole time enjoying it, how do you suddenly explain what actually felt good?” 

The version of sex we’ve been sold usually ends with him finishing. A beginning and a middle for him – and an ending that rarely includes us. Preferably mutual, ideally simultaneous, but rarely equal. 

Despite all the modern-day talk of sexual liberation, it’s surprising how we’ve inherited a script that still centres one body.

 ‘Sex positivity’ is often the glossy outer layer online, hiding the female performance underneath – one that builds towards male climax while women, are simply expected to orbit around it. 

‘’It’s not orgasm that’s the endpoint of heterosexual sex – it’s male orgasm.’’ says Dr Laurie Mintz, Emeritus Professor at the University of Florida, psychologist, Certified Sex Therapist, and Author of Becoming Cliterate, who explores the cultural causes of the orgasm gap through her work. 

“It runs so deep in patriarchal myths, and in the over‑privileging of male sexuality, that most of us accept it as simply how sex works.”

That assumption – that male pleasure defines the shape of sex itself – means the pressure to orgasm as a woman has never been greater. Not just to want it, but more importantly to show it. So we’ve learnt to perform. 

What are the sexual scripts we follow?

The sex we’ve all learned should feel instinctive. But what feels instinctive is often learned. 

Sociologists at the University of Chicago call this sexual scripts theory – the idea that sex has always been shaped by social expectations of climax rather than natural tendency. 

The unspoken guidelines of heterosexual sex, absorbed through TV, pornography, social media, and relationships that exaggerate female pleasure to match male climax. Sex now follows a linear script, and women feel the need to perform within it. 

But most women cannot orgasm from penetration alone. Dr Mintz highlights that the clitoris has more than 8000 nerve endings – twice as many as the penis – yet it’s almost entirely excluded from the penetrative model the script revolves around. Biologically, female pleasure was quite literally written out of the storyline. 

Dr Mintz described the script most women instantly recognise.

“A little foreplay to get her ready, intercourse – which we call ‘sex’ – male ejaculation, and then sex is over.

If the script worked, the outcome would be equal. It’s not. 

Why is it so hard for women to finish? The truth is, it’s not. 

The question isn’t why women struggle to orgasm, it’s why the structure of sex makes it harder.

“The current framing is completely inaccurate,” Mintz said. 

“if the problem were women’s bodies, we’d struggle in all contexts. But we don’t.” 

Studies on heterosexual casual sex reveal that around 83.7% of men report orgasming compared to just 33.3% of women.

But that same data tells a different story when the context changes. 

Around 95% of women orgasm within minutes when they’re alone. Women report higher orgasm rates with female partners, and rates increase further in relationships with better communication and variety in foreplay. 

The issue isn’t our bodies. It’s the script we’ve been following. 

Are women performing pleasure, or feeling it? 

Once orgasm becomes the ending, it stops being just a feeling – it’s becomes a responsibility. 

Physical labour, emotional labour, ego management. 

In her 2023 article “Gendered Labour and Women’s Sexual Pleasure: Assembling Desire”, sociologist Katy Pilcher describes how women’s pleasure gets treated as a job – producing proof of enjoyment even when there is none. 

Pressure shows up in small, constant ways: timing your reactions, adjusting breathing, speeding up or slowing down, pretending to finish. 

‘’You’re not just thinking about yourself – you’re thinking about how they’ll feel.” said another 19-year-old girl at the University of Sheffield. 

This is ego management. Not dishonesty, but conflict avoidance – an extension of the emotional labour of heterosexual sex for women

Once the intimacy begins, expectations follow, and women become trapped in the escalation of script that can feel easier to perform than to pausing or explain

But here’s the irony: the pressure that demands orgasm is also what prevents it.

 “You can’t have an orgasm when you’re performing,” said Mintz. 

“Orgasm requires complete immersion in your body – and performance is the opposite.” 

Psychologists pioneering sex therapy in the 70s called it spectatoring — mentally stepping outside yourself during sex and observing rather than experiencing. Am I taking too long? Do I look like I’m enjoying this? Should I be finished by now? 

This creates a feedback loop: attention drifts, pressure increases anxiety, anxiety reduces arousal, reduced arousal makes orgasm less likely.

“When you’re monitoring your reactions, your partner’s reactions, how you look or sound, you’re focused outward, not inward. And that makes orgasm virtually impossible,” Dr Mintz said. 

What does queer sex do differently?

If it were a biological problem with women, we’d see it everywhere. But we don’t. Women who have sex with women consistently orgasm more because the structure changes, not the biology. 

“One, there’s more clitoral stimulation, and two, they’re not revolving the encounter around one act: penetration. There’s more variety, more turn-taking, more communication, and more time,” Dr Mintz said. 

“There are also two different attitudes: your orgasm matters, and both partners actively pursue it.” 

When pleasure – not penetration – becomes the focus, the script changes. And when the script changes so does the outcome. 

The question is why heterosexual couples are still following a version  that leaves female pleasure out? 

So what actually count as ‘good sex’? 

The silence after sex can feel unnaturally loaded. 

No orgasm? Incomplete sex, bad sex, forgettable sex. 

orgasm should be natural, but the marker of satisfaction has quietly been replaced by the marker of completion – and that’s a problem the script created, not one that belongs to women’s bodies. 

“Sex should be a mutual, consensual experience of giving and receiving pleasure,” Dr Mintz said. 

There is no single right way to have good sex, and removing orgasm as the only endpoint doesn’t mean abandoning pleasure -it means making room for more of it. 

Heterosexual couples simply need to recognise they’ve been unconsciously learning how sex is supposed to end rather than what it’s supposed to feel like. It’s become cultural rather than natural. 

Women aren’t failing sex by not finishing. They’re following a script that was never written for them in the first place.