Why Fake?

I understand why professionals fake orgasm, but why do women in committed relationships do it?  Isn’t that kind of counterproductive?  Wouldn’t it be better to be truthful and tell the partner what would get them off?

Sometimes I wish the myth that men don’t give a shit whether their partners climax or not were true.  Maybe it was at some time in the past, but in the present day most men I’ve been with (and that’s a very large number, as you can probably guess) care very much about it.  Now, that may be because many men feel they have “failed” at sex if they can’t get a woman to climax, due to copious messaging that men are “selfish” or incompetent or both in that department.  In other words, for some (many? most?) men it may not be about whether a woman is actually enjoying the experience, but rather about coddling his insecurities (such as worrying that she’ll run off with some other dude who can “do it better” or whatever); in other words, for these men (however common or rare they may be) a woman not orgasming during sex may poke the same emotional vulnerabilities as having a penis he believes (correctly or otherwise) is “too small”.  However, even men who are genuinely concerned for their partner’s satisfaction for reasons that couldn’t be called “selfish” without considerable logical contortion, generally labor under the delusion (cultivated by popular media) that most women are able to climax dependably if only their partner does everything “right”, as though a woman’s body were a video game which spits out the prize called “orgasm” once the player reaches a high enough total of points.  I once explained it this way:

The competitive, result-oriented male mind sees female orgasm as the target, the goal, the finish line of the “game” of sex, so his sexual pleasure is greatly enhanced if he can “score” it.  However…it isn’t that simple.  For many women orgasm is more like hunting than it is like football; it’s not just a matter of aiming a shot with proper force and accuracy into a static area, but rather of hitting a moving target which may or may not elect to show itself on that occasion…But…the average man…just can’t comprehend that the right combination of moves and techniques could through no fault of his own somehow fail to achieve what it was intended to achieve…

Because of this, men will annoyingly delay their own climax or even pepper a woman with questions about what they “did wrong”; a fake therefore acts as permission to the man to orgasm himself (rather than forcing his partner to endure tens of minutes of pistoning because he thinks that’s what women want and won’t listen if told otherwise), and fends off pointless questions and the need to perform emotional labor by explaining that it isn’t his fault and he’s not a caricature.  But before my lesbian readers get too smug (as so many do every time some report says lesbians climax more frequently than straight women do):  female partners can be just as annoying for women like me who A) simply aren’t very orgasmic; and B) dislike whatever it is that the female partner wants to do to her (often cunnilingus).  In other words, a lot (though by no means all) of fake orgasms (outside of work) are motivated by a desire to spare the partner’s feelings and circumvent the common but erroneous perception that a woman not orgasming is always due to some failure on the part of her partner, when often that may have little or nothing to do with it.
(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)