Scarleteen

Hi, I'm new here but looked through previous forum threads and none of them really addressed what I want to ask about.
I'm 22 years old, cis female, and (to my knowledge) have never orgasmed. I've had sex with a partner before, fingering and oral, and it felt good but there was never a "release." When I'm masturbating, I eventually get bored and the arousal fades away. It's not an emotional problem, I know what turns me on and I feel pleasure, I just never get all the way there. It feels like I need more stimulation but nothing actually gives me the feeling I want.
This is probably because I'm on Lexapro and SSRIs affect sex. I started taking it when I was 15, around the same time I started exploring sexual feelings (I was a late bloomer and also am on the asexual spectrum), so I've never known what sex or masturbation without it would be like. Honestly, sex is not that high of a priority for me, and I'm currently without anyone to do it with anyway. But with the way people talk about orgasms, I sometimes wonder whether it would be worth it to try lowering the dosage of my meds to maybe be able to experience it. So I guess my question is, is orgasm actually so great and worth adjusting my meds (plus awkward conversations with my psychiatrist and my mom) for? (Also, is there anything I've overlooked when masturbating or is my experience consistent with other people on SSRIs?)

Welcome to the boards, vellichor.

You know, it's impossible to say if this is because of your SSRIs. They (and Lexapro, in particular) *don't* have this impact for people as often as they do: the most recent studies show anywhere from only around 25% of people having sexual side effects to around 75% of people. And depression or anxiety themselves, especially if untreated, often have a bigger impact on this than medications for those things do.

Orgasm -- when singular -- is something that only lasts for a few seconds. Even when people have multiples, that's usually something that only spans over a handful of minutes at most. Are those often a really nice few seconds to minutes? Yes. But where the most pleasure people experience during any kind of sex comes from isn't during orgasm, but during everything leading up to and around it, all of which usually lasts a lot longer than orgasms do.

So, unless your medications don't do much for you overall, I would absolutely say that no, it is probably not at all worth it to go off of them or lower your dosage for the sake of orgasm alone, including because it sounds likely your meds aren't the issue, you not staying aroused or being all that interested in sexual activity probably is. For orgasm to happen, most of the time, people have to be very highly aroused and need to have been really enjoying themselves with the activity and headspace leading up *to* orgasm. Make sense?

If you want to know more of how to just enjoy yourself, it might be that the reason you're not feeling the kind of external stimulation you feel like you need is because of what's going on in your head. In other words, getting there with orgasm often has a lot more to do with how turned on you feel and how excited you are in your head than with external stimulation: if that first piece isn't really there, no matter what the stimulation is, it often won't get a person to orgasm.

Do you want to talk more about that? If so, it might be helpful to know how excited you feel when you first start masturbating, and how long it takes for you to feel bored with it.

Okay, kind of long reply that brings up more things:

I think I do feel decently excited when I start masturbating. The way my experience usually goes is this: I'm reading fanfiction or scrolling tumblr and come across something sexually explicit that interests me enough to keep reading. I get turned on and grind against the edge of my bed with my hand between my legs, over my pants. I've never really kept track of how long it lasts but I would guess it varies between 5-30 minutes. When the content I'm reading runs out, I have to go to the effort of finding something new, which sometimes takes me out of the mood. Or I can't find anything else that's the exact flavor I want.
Other times, I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep and start thinking of sex fantasies. The advantage of this is that what I'm imagining is perfectly tailored to what turns me on, but the disadvantage is I have to continually make it up myself. A lot of my fantasies revolve around being so overwhelmed by physical sensation that my mind can't wander away lol.
The way my asexuality works is that I'm turned on by the idea of sex and the dynamics of vulnerability, not really the actual physical sex acts or seeing a hot person. I have no interest in watching porn because I think actually seeing people's bodies would make me feel more uncomfortable than aroused. (I also live with my parents, where the wifi has very strict filters- Scarleteen itself is blocked for sexual content.)

I've had one experience that I thought at the time was maybe an orgasm, but then the more I thought about it, it seemed more consistent with experiencing subspace for the first time. My partner and I were trying out some kink stuff (them holding me down during sex and acting more dominant) and I felt floaty and afterwards wanted a lot of cuddles. Maybe this was actually both an orgasm and subspace??

I was driven to finally make my earlier post by a disappointing experience I had masturbating that night. I'm getting my first pap smear in a few weeks so I thought I'd practice putting my fingers inside myself since I haven't had anything in there in a while (half a year? a year? I forget) and don't want the speculum to hurt. I had been horny all day too, which is very unusual for me. I thought that, plus the extra stimulation of my fingers inside, would result in more pleasure, but it wasn't really any more satisfying than just grinding against my hand. Looking back, I can see how being too in my head about it is an obvious reason for that-- I was thinking too much about making sure my fingers fit instead of doing what felt natural.

Your advice about not changing my meds is very sound, and I'm glad to have someone confirm that it wouldn't be worth it. (My mental health is stable now and has been for years (barring one outside circumstance) so I don't think that's affecting my ability to orgasm, but if I went off my meds and my anxiety got worse, that wouldn't help with orgasming.) The only other thing I worry about sometimes is whether future partners will feel bad if they can't make me come. With my previous partner, I enjoyed most of what we did and reassured them that I got a lot of pleasure even though I didn't come, but I know they sometimes felt a little bad about it. And it was always awkward figuring out when to stop doing things because no one wants to say or hear "this isn't going anywhere and I'm kind of bored, let's clean up."

Sorry this brought up several more topics in response to your pretty simple question! I've only talked to like one person ever about this so I have a lot to say lol.

It's totally fine to add on, and honestly, often it's helpful. The more context we have, the better we can usually help.

Per the masturbation stuff, I wonder how it might go to try and kind of continue the thread of what you are reading in your imagination so that you don't have that thing happen where you basically run out of tape mid-session and have to find something new? If you really get into your own head about ideas you're getting from somewhere else and kind of shift from scripted fantasy to your own fantasy inspired by that, not only might you get more into the headspace you're in, it could solve for that gap. It sounds like your own fantasy has worked better for you, so maybe more practice at that will stop making it up from feeling like a disadvantage and make it more of a perk?

When it comes to that experience with your partner, both of these things -- orgasm and subspace -- are pretty relative and pretty individual, so it's really hard to say as an outsider. However, orgasm will usually feel like some kind of central nervous system event when it happens (save super mild ones, which can feel a little more vague): things like your heart rate increasing, some throbbing/spasming sensations in your body, and kind of a wave of sensation. If nothing else though, this experience with your partner sounds like something you really enjoyed, and that's really the whole point of orgasm in the first place, pleasure. So, whether it was orgasm or not, what it was is what most folks are looking for *from* orgasm: pleasure and a sense of satisfaction. This is a good example of what sex educators mean when we'll say that with really good sexual experiences, orgasm often doesn't really matter all that much.

When it comes to what it felt like to put your fingers inside, sure, some of that might have been that you were focused on something besides pleasure, but a lot of it will likely have been because the vagina all by itself doesn't have a lot of sensory nerve endings, and doesn't tend to be responsive to fine touch like the external clitoris, lips, nipples, or fingertips are. Instead, because so much of the sensation of the vagina actually comes from the internal clitoris that surrounds it, the vagina tends to feel more sensation from fullness and pressure, and deeper in than the first inch or so, which is usually about as far as most people's own fingers can reach.

I also want to talk about your concerns with partners if you don't orgasm.

If we're to be a good sexual partner to someone, our focus needs to be on their pleasure not their orgasm. Too, someone else's orgasms are not mostly for their partner, they are for that person, and orgasm is an involuntary nervous system response, so putting any pressure on partners to reach orgasm not only is usually not helpful, since it isn't in their control, it often does the opposite: it makes orgasm less likely. After all, pressure to do anything sexually, including orgasm, generally isn't something people experience as sexy. Pressure tends to make arousal wilt. Might we get some of our own sexual self-esteem wrapped up in if a partner comes? Yep, it happens all the time. But the answer to that isn't a partner coming. The answer to that is learning to take our sense of self out of the equation when it comes to a partner's physical and emotional responses. We can feel as good as we want to if and when a partner comes -- just like we hopefully feel good helping them feel good on the whole -- and we even get to feel disappointed if they don't simply because it is something we enjoy. But all of that is on us, and again, it's really best not to get invested in a partner's orgasm, especially since it often tends to then override investment in their pleasure and comfort and well-being, which is what we SHOULD be invested in.

I framed all of that the way I did because I think that it can be easier to accept when we're hearing about what we'd need to do to be a good partner than to hear about our partners. Suffice it to say, though, this is all true of any partner, and if any partner of yours felt that way, that's just how they feel. Your sexual responses both can't and shouldn't be meant to control someone's feelings. If someone is going to feel bad about a partner not reaching orgasm, they are, and that's on them to work through and, hopefully, recognize they need to work on to approach all of this better.

I also think you do yourself a disservice with this:

And it was always awkward figuring out when to stop doing things because no one wants to say or hear "this isn't going anywhere and I'm kind of bored, let's clean up."

That's not a way you need to say that, so that feels like kind of a set-up for yourself there. People absolutely, all the time, tell partners that they are feeling finished with sex, and, just because someone has had an orgasm doesn't mean they are! the idea that finished = orgasm is, was and will always be busted. When sex is over for people is *always* because one or both people wind down what they are doing or say that they feel finished in some way (unless one or both people just assume one or both people having an orgasm means it's over, which again, isn't ever a great assumption to make). By all means, telling someone you are bored would probably not be the most thoughtful way to do that, but you don't have to say that. Instead you can say something like, "I feel done/finished/good for now. Want breakfast?"

How does any or all of that land with you?

There is always hope Vellichor. Others have recovered from this type of situation. You can too. Don't give up!

vellichor, let us know if you need anything else or have any other questions.