Women Aren't Having Orgasms. Men Don't Know Why. Let's Talk About It.

Sex can be romantic. Animalistic. Should be pleasurable. Egalitarian. Messy, but in a good way. Fun. Often, it’s straight-up confusing. When it comes to a guy’s climax, the routine is fairly simple: You get a little turned on, there’s some touching or rubbing or partnered stimulation of some kind, and then when you’ve reached the point of no return—a release!

But women’s orgasms can be as confounding as a Westworld plotline. First we have to feel generally comfortable around you, then remember whether or not we left our curling iron plugged in this morning, reassure ourselves that we unplugged it, then remind ourselves that we’re making out with a guy we really like. The blood eventually rushes to our genitals, and the touching from then on has to be juuuuust right—not too hard, not too soft, and usually on the exact right spot. Things are going well! We’re feeling it! And even then, sometimes when an orgasm is ascending like a firework—poof!—it turns out it was just a dud.

11 Shocking Facts You Never Knew About Masturbation

Masturbation. It’s not just a great way to kill time, but it’s also the safest sex you can have. And it has many health benefits.

Although we can all agree that masturbation is pretty much the cherry on top of the ice cream of life, there’s more to the act than that. Here are 11 things you probably never knew about your favorite hobby.

1. MALE FETUSES MIGHT MASTURBATE IN UTERO
If you thought the first time you touched yourself and realized it felt really, really good was when you hit puberty, you might be wrong. Researchers in Spain recently found that in utero masturbation is actually a thing among male fetuses, so this “gratification behavior” starts far earlier than originally thought.

The Scary Truth About Lyme Disease

Michael Radonich remembers the day he got Lyme disease: It was late August 2012, the beginning of his first semester at the Wharton School in Philadelphia. He and his classmates had boarded buses for a day of ropes courses and bonding activities at a campground in the Pennsylvania woods.

About two weeks later, Radonich suddenly awoke to shooting pains in his scalp, as if someone had clipped electrodes to his temples. His heart rate began fluttering between 60 and 140 beats per minute. His experienced severe double vision, and then the left side of his body went numb. He was 28 years old, much too young to be having a stroke.

You Know About the G-Spot, But What About the A-Spot?

There are multiple ways to help your partner have an orgasm. You can stimulate her clitoris or even to work toward the elusive G-spot. But there’s another mysterious erogenous zone that you probably haven’t tapped into yet: the A-spot, or the anterior fornix.

Like the Loch Ness Monster, there’s speculation as to whether the A-spot actually exists. Some experts swear it can trigger long-lasting orgasms, says Yvonne K. Fulbright, Ph.D. and author of The Better Sex Guide to Extraordinary Lovemaking.

Other experts aren't so sure.

“I’ve never seen any proof anatomically of the existence of the spot,” says Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale School of Medicine. Though she says that there are some areas of the vagina that are more sensitive than others, she can’t define one exact spot that sets off a long orgasm.