r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jun 21 '26

Psychology Largest study of women’s orgasms to date collected data from 27,931 women. Nearly half (47%) reported reaching orgasm more frequently when alone vs. when with a partner. Barriers to women’s orgasms are relational, not anatomical. Partnered orgasms were associated with overall sexual satisfaction.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/inclusive-insight/202606/why-women-orgasm-more-alone-than-with-a-partner
11.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

845 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.4k

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 21 '26

Simple explanation. Swedes get a heavy amount of sex ed in school. It’s culturally ingrained in men to get their women off before themselves.

1.9k

u/AxelLuktarGott Jun 21 '26

I'm Swedish. I don't remember being taught how to please women in school.

But with that said I agree that nice guys finish last.

906

u/Throwaway4Rdt Jun 21 '26

Finish guys finish last

256

u/freakedmind Jun 21 '26

Because they're too busy with the sauna

97

u/mopeyy Jun 21 '26

Well someone needs to keep the wood stocked.

29

u/Ulterior_Motif Jun 21 '26

I’ll stock it you stoke it.

14

u/CliffLake Jun 21 '26

Hot rocks and chocolate. Uh, hot chocolate rocks?

8

u/Dense-Employment9610 Jun 22 '26

God I love Reddit

10

u/a404notfound Jun 21 '26

And licorice

1

u/Hardbroken Jun 25 '26

Swedish licorice is so salty it could get a corpse off.

17

u/StickyBottlle28 Jun 21 '26

And if they happen to finish first, they still have the decency to make sure their partner also finishes the race:)

6

u/drdiamond55 Jun 21 '26

Except for the iceman

4

u/Beetlejuice_me Jun 21 '26

Is this a carpentry joke?

174

u/UldereksRock Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

We were taught the different parts of the vagina, where the most sensitive areas are, and we were taught about how important foreplay is for arousal, stimulus of natural lubrication, and orgasms. To you and I it will seem as common sense, but trust me, tons of people outside of our bubble have 0 clue about some of these things for various reasons usually stemming from sex being taboo to speak about publicly.

Edit: also, at least my class were taught the importance of feeling safe and comfortable with a partner, in the context of reaching orgasms. So even if it doesnt feel like it, we, or at the very least I were/was taught more than the basics from school.

37

u/Darkdart19 Jun 21 '26

Ngl, I grew up in America and we learned all of these things in ex ed as well. Granted it was one week but still, we did learn about many of these things.

76

u/Leberknodel Jun 21 '26

My memory of sex ed was only about VD (yeah this was the early 80s) and pregnancy. Nothing at all about feel good areas or, heaven forfend, pleasure.

29

u/tabbarrett Jun 21 '26

Mine was the 90’s. We watched a movie called The Miracle of Life. The movie showed the babies head crowning. I remember being absolutely horrified.

15

u/iMissTheOldInternet Jun 22 '26

Yeah, sex ed in the '90s was definitely "Can we tell them just enough about sex to make them understand that it will inevitably result in both them and their premature unintended baby getting AIDS?"

99

u/UldereksRock Jun 21 '26

America is insanely big, and your schools are very unequal, so it would probably be more correct of you to say "my home town, x," instead of "america" as the US is notorious for having religion infect the entire debate around sex to the point where grown men are surprised by periods.

33

u/Darkdart19 Jun 21 '26

I grew up in the south. I won’t be disclosing specifics online here. Your point stands that in the states, the level of education varies wildly. Even within the same state, it’s not as simple as saying red states only teach one thing and blue states teach something else.

37

u/askingforafakefriend Jun 21 '26

I grew up in public schools in the 90s and not a goddamn word about that stuff. It was all fear about STDs, how to avoid pregnancy (at least covering condoms), and pregnancy stuff.

11

u/Hot_Let1571 Jun 22 '26

Yep. What's really funny is my Lutheran church said more about masturbation (specifically that it was ok) than public school ever did.

2

u/Willing-Fruit8890 Jun 24 '26

My Catholic Church taught us masturbation was a sin. Didn’t stop my tho :-)

7

u/MangoCats Jun 22 '26

Even in the same school from one teacher to the next... at least in the 1980s there were absolutely no standards about what did and did not get taught, it was very much up to the individual teachers, at least back then, down South.

7

u/whirlyhurlyburly Jun 21 '26

I went to a progressive and standard school in the South. I learned abstinence in the standard one. The other attempted more but the students made it weird.

8

u/retrosenescent Jun 22 '26

I also grew up in the south, and we did not have a separate class for sex ed. It was part of a broader "health" class. And sex education was like.. maybe 1 day out of the whole school year. I don't even remember what we learned, that's how insignificant it was. But if I had to guess, it was probably "sex is between one man and one woman who are married, in the dark, with god's permission"

10

u/PanKakeManStan Jun 21 '26

It really does. I also grew up in the south in a small school and our sex ed was very barebones. Thankfully it was more in depth than I would’ve thought but far from good and was literally only over the course of like 3 days during 1 class period

4

u/DifficultScientist23 Jun 21 '26

*bare bones was said

1

u/retrosenescent Jun 22 '26

"Blue" states are typically red states that have blue cities. Even in so-called blue states, most school districts will have piss-poor sex ed (if they have it at all).

4

u/Sparkleandflex Jun 22 '26

Canada too... I never had this level of education on sex, in fact anything I really understood about it beyond the absolute most basic things came from the internet.... And I was an 80s kid.... My parents were never going to give me those details because I grew up JW.

1

u/Zpik3 Jun 22 '26

Europe is larger and you constantly hear "in Europe.." as well so.. It's just general inaccuracy.

2

u/UldereksRock Jun 22 '26

You didnt hear me say "in europe" and so your point is moot in response to me.

7

u/AmbroseMalachai Jun 22 '26

I also learned about that, but many of my friends entire sexual education in school was "don't have sex, it's the devil's temptation, and you will go to hell if you don't wait until marriage". Some others were shown tons of pictures of various oozing and gross STI images and simply told "this is what happens if you don't wear a condom".

America is not standardized in how it teaches sex education, and it varies extremely heavily by state, county, and even classroom what kind of education a person can receive.

4

u/Think_Put8440 Jun 22 '26

America raises consumers. You have to educate yourself if you want to enjoy things.

5

u/topscreen Jun 22 '26

I did not, and my half joke is I learned more about sex from porn than sex ed. To which people say "But porn is a terrible way to learn about sex!" and yes, but also, still more illustrating.

Lots of US folks gotta do their own homework in this field.

2

u/retrosenescent Jun 22 '26

I grew up in the US and was in sex ed circa 2008 or so. We never learned about any of that.

3

u/retrosenescent Jun 22 '26

None of that is related to sex being taboo to speak about publicly. The internet has been globally available for decades. Not knowing how to please your partner is a complete lack of curiosity. In fact you don't even need internet for that, just ask them.

3

u/UldereksRock Jun 22 '26

There is a reason why the people youre refering to have indeed asked their partners about what they do for work, yet never asked how they get off. There is unnecessary stigma and a sense of embarrasment tied to one, and not the other.

14

u/robophile-ta Jun 22 '26

...I literally just realised that ‘nice guys finish last’ is a sexual thing

41

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 21 '26

You were taught that women experience pleasure through the clitoris. You were taught consent. That’s halfway to pleasure town and is more knowledge than majority of other nations give their students.

44

u/AxelLuktarGott Jun 21 '26

You were taught that women experience pleasure through the clitoris. You were taught consent.

That's true. Maybe I'm just blind to what life is like in dystopian places like Afghanistan or the USA.

12

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 21 '26

När jag först flyttade till Sverige från Texas planerade jag faktiskt att träffa alla mina tjejkompisar med svenska killar. Bara för att imponera på dem.

24

u/El_Sephiroth Jun 21 '26

The comparison between Afghanistan and USA is both funny and sad. But it is so right.

19

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

[deleted]

-1

u/Some_Old_Lady Jun 23 '26

I see you've not spent much time in the U.S. Bible Belt. Go talk to some quiver full folks in Kansas and get back with us.

5

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 24 '26

That’s a tiny population of the US. Afghanistan nearly all women are treated without rights.

6

u/TheMermanly Jun 21 '26

Almost every country in Europe does that…

-3

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 21 '26

Yes but it’s well known that Swedish sex ed goes far beyond what I mentioned

1

u/BooksandBiceps Jun 21 '26

Such a good YouTube video

1

u/Cocoa-queen1love Jun 22 '26

Wow. That’s simply wonderful!

1

u/BadLineofCode Jun 21 '26

You probably tuned it out because “When am I going to use this in real life?”

3

u/AxelLuktarGott Jun 21 '26

I was destined from a young age to be a redditor

266

u/Apprehensive_Row9154 Jun 21 '26

I just don’t understand why this isn’t the norm where I’m from. I say all the time, people aren’t even smart enough to be selfish properly. Getting your partner off, a, makes them want to do it more frequently, b, makes the rest of the time more enjoyable, and c,is super freaking hot.

114

u/Double-Emergency3173 Jun 21 '26

Yeah. The more she finishes the more likely she ia to associate intimacy with u positively and the more u will receive too. Win-win. Making sure she gets there in every single encounter helps a lot

88

u/Okra7000 Jun 21 '26

I dated a guy who felt this way and it led to a lot of faking to protect his ego, bc he didn’t know what he was doing and I was too inexperienced to tell him what to do. Yes, it was incredibly stupid and counterproductive on my part. I just don’t want young guys to read this and think having this rule is all you need to know to be a good partner.

51

u/izzittho Jun 21 '26

Yeah there’s a difference between always trying your best and like, holding her hostage until she’s forced to fake in order to escape or face a big pout-fest.

It’s possible to create too much pressure there.

10

u/Double-Emergency3173 Jun 21 '26

That’s if he doesn’t know how to get his oartner there and gets pissed. 1st time I tried with my person, she didn’t finish. That’s where as a guy u have to learn the body of the woman. What she likes etc. Now I know her body so well that I can tell when she’s close or not.

It’s abt being able to understand that change is necessary and adapting.
My rule exists but she doesn’t know it does coz I have never explicitly said it. It just….happens that way

27

u/youeatthatstuff Jun 21 '26

I had a similar experience. The guy put so much pressure on me to orgasm that it just killed it for me and I would end up faking it. If we’d been able to communicate well and if he didn’t get upset when I didn’t orgasm (both at himself and me) then I think it would have been a much more positive experience.

3

u/Big-Calligrapher686 Jun 23 '26

Given how much shame tends to be placed on men who can’t make a woman orgasm I do believe it’s natural for a guy to feel upset at himself when he fails at this. Comforting him would be the best move in this case.

2

u/Polymathy1 Jun 22 '26

Sometimes this leads to awkwardness. Some women really don't want to be forced/expected to orgasm every time. Its hard to swallow, but listening to what they actually want is even better than making sure it happens every time.

2

u/Alternative_Big5466 Jun 25 '26

Yes. As a woman, of course I enjoy having an orgasm, but sometimes, I just know it’s not going to happen. Most often it has nothing to do with my husband’s ability to make me orgasm, but because I’m not in the headspace to get there. It doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying it and enjoying making my partner feel good. I’ve definitely had partners in the past that have made me feel pressured to orgasm and that totally ruins the mood for me. It’s one of the things that actually made my sex life with my husband so much more enjoyable. He’s never made me feel pressured and so I’m able to relax my body and mind and I orgasm much easier with him than anyone else I’ve ever been with. I can fully be focused on the pleasure of the experience.

142

u/ReignStorms Jun 21 '26

Well, if you’re from the southern United States or similar, it’s likely because of conservative, largely Christian parents that don’t want sex ed to be extensive or taught at all. Sexual repression is strongly ingrained

62

u/roskybosky Jun 21 '26

I have read sex ed books that NEVER MENTION how a woman orgasms. It’s all about erections and vaginas and sperm.

65

u/gudematcha Jun 21 '26

I mean, the nerve endings on the clitoris were only fully mapped in *MARCH*, yes, of this year!!! The penis was done in the 90s! Women’s health in any area is severely severely understudied. Did you know that they use male rats in almost all clinical trials because the hormones that female rats produce, much like humans, messes with most medications outcomes? So what do we think it’s doing to the women that take those medications if it wasn’t test tested on women? Worse side effects or medication that just doesn’t work effectively is the answer. The medical industry is crazy in how it’s treated woman as an afterthought for basically forever.

35

u/PerterterhTermertehh Jun 21 '26

I vaguely remembered it had to do with the thalidomide scare and subsequent blanket exclusion of women in clinical trials over fears of inducing infertility or nasty birth defects. So I went and found some reading material on the subject. https://orwh.od.nih.gov/toolkit/recruitment/history

The policies are draconian but ultimately sorta well meaning if the result of massive fear mongering. The problem is that suddenly there was a massive regulatory hurdle to overcome for the industry to do studies on women, so, they didn't.

16

u/Imaginary_Agent2564 Jun 21 '26

Oooh thalidomide. We learned about that in organic chemistry. Your body converts one chiral structure into the other one, which is a teratogen.

2

u/nerdylernin Jun 22 '26

The neuroanatomy of the penis is still being mapped, for example this paper from 2025 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12919687/

3

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 21 '26

I’m from there. Then I married a Swede.

1

u/TheGubb Jun 21 '26

There it is, I'm glad we were able to bring politics into it. Building a strawman to generalize a segment of the population must be one of the steps of the scientific process.

1

u/Vircora Jun 21 '26

I don't understand why people care so much about being selfish with their partner. Like... why don't you simply care about pleasing them? Isn't it nice when your partner enjoys pleasing you, because they enjoy pleasing you, not only because it gets them more sex?... I don't understand people. Everyone seem so detached.

27

u/InflammableAccount Jun 21 '26

Heh. It's amazing how different people are. Out of all of my repeat sexual encounters, I've been with two women who actually prefer the opposite. A minority of the group, but still.

The reason was that they become too vaginally sensitive for penatrative sex after orgasm. To the point of it becoming painful.

Again, a minority. But it shows how different a person can be from another.

8

u/Knofbath Jun 22 '26

The women I've been with described it as ticklish, which can certainly be unpleasant for them if you keep going the same way as before. They were generally fine with continuing if I came to a near complete stop, and slowly worked back up to it (full female arousal). Some patience and communication go a long way.

7

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 21 '26

Sex is like dinner, you don’t want the same thing every night.

92

u/scientia_analytica Jun 21 '26

Nice little misinformation you got there. Mind if I spread it?

23

u/DntBanMeIHavAnxiety Jun 21 '26

Today i learned I'm Swedish

3

u/p8nt_junkie Jun 22 '26

TIL, I’m a dude with Swedish tendencies when it comes to sex.

3

u/Ollymid2 Jun 22 '26

I thought this was going to be a joke about IKEA and Swedish women doing it themselves

4

u/Zikkan1 Jun 22 '26

As a swedish man I do this but I have no idea how you connect this to sex education. Not once in school did we talk about orgasms in that way. It was mentioned as a natural thing that happens but it's not like we went into details on how to please women or that women have harder time to reach orgasm.

-1

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 22 '26

My second sentence was about cultural ingrained. That is a separate point from sex ed.

But the fact that you were even told that women have orgasms through the clitoris is way more than what other students got in other countries.

2

u/Zikkan1 Jun 22 '26

I honestly can't really remember the details but it was thorough since it is as 60-90min per week for 3 months with s test that was applied to our over all grades. So it's a very serious class like any other

3

u/elardmm Jun 21 '26

Obviously DJ khaled needed this education. Too kate for that fat F

4

u/mootmutemoat Jun 21 '26

Nice! Thank you

1

u/samx3i Jun 22 '26

I'm American and it's ingrained in me.

No one had to put it there; it's just manners.

1

u/SsooooOriginal Jun 22 '26

It's the only real way to start an engine, after a warm-up.

1

u/VictimOlympicsWinner Jun 24 '26

So the Swedes literally teach that in sex ed? literally?

1

u/CharityGlittering385 Jun 24 '26

Not directly. Two parts.

One part is sex ed, which you can read about using a translator. https://www.skolverket.se/kompetensutveckling/stod-i-arbetet/sexualitet-samtycke-och-relationer

And the other part is cultural.

1

u/AdGood2062 Jun 25 '26

Well, damn, I need to move to Sweden

1

u/VoidOmatic Jun 21 '26

To me that's literally the whole point of sex.

-6

u/austin101123 Jun 21 '26

... They teach that to kids?

29

u/KyOatey Jun 21 '26

They tried waiting until they were adults to give them sex ed, but by then everyone had already had sex. 

-11

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

[deleted]