Have YOU been faking orgasms for years and struggling in the bedroom? Well, we’re the sex experts who’ve found the secret to truly turning yourself on… and the answer is not what you think

What woman hasn’t been frustrated with her sex life at some point?

We certainly have – probably not aided by some of our partners, like the chap who liked to lie back after lovemaking with his white socks still on and scroll silently through his phone, rather than embrace.

Indeed, as the authors of a new book on female desire – and despite being in the relative prime of our lives, aged 34 and 37 respectively – we know all too well the deep troughs a woman’s libido can find itself in. We’re also the creators of a sexual well-being app that’s been used by 600,000 women to date, many of whom have told us of their sexual woes – of their worries that their sex lives don’t match up to the hot spontaneity of Hollywood films.

Of their wish to feel better about themselves in the bedroom. And, especially, that they could somehow rekindle their flagging desire.

Women of all ages have sought our help, but a surprising number have been in their 40s, 50s and older.

They’re only just beginning to reckon with the sexual realities they’ve kept silent for decades.

One woman, almost 50, married for 25 years and a mother of two, told us, ‘I feel like I’m missing out on something big, like great sex is a party I’ll never be invited to.’

She had never had an orgasm and had been faking it for most of her adult life. After sex, she would quietly cry herself to sleep, her partner unaware of the pain and loneliness she was carrying. She felt broken, ashamed and incredibly isolated.

Yet sadly, she wasn’t alone.

In a survey we ran of 3,000 mid-life women, more than half didn’t realise their symptoms were actually sexual difficulties, the female equivalents of premature ejaculation or erectile dysfunction. They thought it was just ‘them’ and they had failed in some way.

That’s how poor our education around female sexual health has been. These women were never told their struggles were normal, treatable, or even worth talking about.

For this client, the first step was unlearning the shame she felt.

Over three months, we worked on rebuilding her sexual confidence, understanding her body and opening up communication with her partner.

When she finally told him the truth – that she’d never had an orgasm in their 25-year marriage – he was hurt, but what followed was an extraordinary moment of empathy and reconnection.

From that point, everything changed.

They stripped things back to basics, exploring touch, sensation, and desire as if they were teenagers again.

She eventually climaxed through clitoral stimulation (a reminder that most women don’t orgasm from penetration alone).

But for her, the breakthrough wasn’t the sensation itself.

It was the realisation she was worthy of pleasure. That she was allowed to ask for her needs to be met. That she could feel safe enough to finally let go.

That’s what great sex really is. Not performance. Not perfection. But a space to be our true selves.

So let us show you how you too can ignite your sexual pizazz.

Through extensive research, we’ve found the secret to truly turning yourself on. And, clue, it doesn’t start ‘down there’…

DOES YOUR MARRIAGE HAVE A ‘DESIRE GAP’?

A growing number of women in perimenopause and menopause have asked us for support with their sex lives. And what’s striking isn’t just the symptoms they report, but the language they use.

It’s not just about low libido. It’s about disconnection, both emotional and physical.

In our survey, ‘a lack of sexual confidence’ was the number one challenge, listed by 51 per cent of respondents. That outranked everything from low desire to pain.

That says a lot. These women aren’t just struggling physically; they’re questioning their right to ask for pleasure at all.

As one woman in her 40s told us: ‘It’s like my desire for sex has just switched off. I feel like it’s my fault, like there’s something wrong with me.’

Meanwhile, another said: ‘I love my partner, but for the past few years, I’ve had no interest in sex. The more I feel like I’m supposed to want it, the less I do. It feels like more of a chore than anything.’

Many of these women came of age in a time when sex was about pleasing others, performing, or simply enduring. Lie back and think of England.

So when the body starts changing and desire gets quieter or more complex, the voice in their head saying ‘I’m not sexy any more,’ or ‘It’s too late for me’, can drown out everything else.

What most frustrates us is that, when sex becomes painful, less frequent or emotionally distant in a long-term relationship, women so often carry the blame. ‘It’s my hormones.’ ‘I’ve changed.’ ‘I’m the problem.’

Menopause and its impact on intimacy is rarely seen for what it actually is: a couples’ issue.

It’s not about ‘fixing’ her to make sex how it used to be. It’s about helping the sexual relationship to evolve and close the ‘desire gap’.

We’ve found many women in this phase are deeply ready for more. They’re done with self-sacrifice and silence.

Their kids are older (if they have them), their careers more settled. They want to reconnect. Not just with their partners, but with their own pleasure.

This is often the beginning of a far more honest and fulfilling sex life. Because they now finally have to start having real, vulnerable conversations about sex – the kind they may have avoided for years. They have to expand their sexual repertoire beyond penetration and orgasm as the default, so pleasure becomes wider, deeper, more creative.

And because they have to tune in to what genuinely turns them on. They begin asking: What makes me feel alive? Desired? Powerful?

In doing so, they connect with the woman they want to be in this next phase of life. But first, they have to understand what desire actually means.

EVERYTHING YOU THINK ABOUT DESIRE IS WRONG

There are two enormous common misconceptions about sexual desire.

First and most importantly: that we all have a sex drive. Biologically, a ‘sex drive’ just doesn’t exist.

Biological drives are internal states that push us to perform specific behaviours to survive: hunger drives us to eat, thirst to drink, and so on.

But as much as someone might love sex, they’re not going to die without it. Sex is not like food, water or air – if it were, there’s no way we’d be going weeks, months or years without it.

And unlike true biological needs, the less we have sex, the less we actually want it.

Sexual desire is actually a motivation, not a drive. We want sex – for pleasure, connection, potentially to conceive – more than we need it.

So it certainly follows that at other times, we might not want sex. We might be stressed, tired, menopausal or not feel good about our bodies.

In short, there’s no right amount of sex you should be having, and no instinctive drive that will ‘make’ you seek it out.

The second misconception is that desire is entirely spontaneous – you flick a switch, and you’re in the mood. While spontaneous desire is real, it’s more common for men.

Another type of desire is responsive desire. It doesn’t pop up out

of the blue, but instead needs a gentle nudge, like maybe a nice massage and a locked bedroom door for privacy.

It’s much more common in women, and in long-term relationships.

YOUR SEX ACCELERATOR… AND THE BRAKE

To stimulate desire, you need to understand that within your brain and central nervous system is something called the ‘dual control model’ of sexual response.

It’s made up of two parts:

your sexual excitation system (SES) and your sexual inhibition system (SIS). They are capable of working both independently and at the same time.

Some have compared stimulating your SES to hitting the accelerator of a car. As it scans for sexually relevant stimuli – like the smell of someone’s cologne or kissing, say – your SES revs up and tells your body to ‘turn on’.

While your SES is on the lookout for tantalising sexy cues, your SIS is doing the opposite, and is looking for reasons you should slow down or stop – from feeling stressed to hearing the kids next door.

What triggers the accelerator, or the brakes, is different for each of us. How sensitive they are is different, too. Some of us might be heavy on the accelerator and barely touch the brakes, while others might be all about the brakes with a less sensitive accelerator. It’s normal for our levels of desire to be different, then. Lots of products now claim to be the miracle cure for drooping desire – from supplements to sex toys. But these ‘libido-boosting’ products aren’t that effective, because they only focus on hitting your sexual accelerator and don’t do much about the brakes. Here’s what you can do to really change things…

THE TALE OF THE LACE CORSET

Firstly, the golden skill of communication. On one memorable occasion, Anna tried to spark up a flagging relationship by surprising her partner with a lace corset. It took her 15 minutes just to get into it. But she thought it was worth the effort, as for the past three months her long-term boyfriend had been struggling to maintain an erection. Did it help?

The corset had barely been on for a minute before her boyfriend covered his face with his hands and turned away. Inadvertently, she had hit his sexual brakes: he had seen the corset as a sign of his failings, whereas she had thought it would spice things up.

In hindsight, Anna didn’t need a corset: she and her partner needed to talk about their problems. Sadly, they never managed to do so, and it all fell apart.

Communication, then, is key. You and your partner should talk about one another’s accelerator and brakes, and make a plan to find the right balance.

For example, is tiredness your big sexual brake? If so, tell your partner sex is difficult for you at the end of a long working week, or you prefer morning sex when you’re more rested.

TRULY UNDERSTAND YOUR ORGASM

Our culture is obsessed with orgasms – from how to have multiple orgasms to making them longer and stronger.

But all this brings a heck of a lot of pressure. Which is why sadly, so many women fake orgasms. In a survey of more than 1,000 women, 59 per cent admitted to faking it.

We certainly both have – more than once.

And it’s why so many women tell us things like: ‘I get frustrated because sex seems to finish when my husband finishes and I’m still left wanting more.’

This is the infamous orgasm gap. We conducted a survey of more than 11,600 people, which showed 81 per cent of men orgasm ‘often to very often’ during sex, while only 53 per cent of women said the same. Yet a separate study found lesbian women orgasmed 86 per cent of the time.

And in the Hite Report, a 1976 landmark study, women orgasmed 92–95 per cent of the time during solo play.

So the orgasm gap isn’t about the female orgasm being ‘more difficult’ or women being ‘less likely to come’.

We think the solution is shifting our focus from chasing orgasms to prioritising pleasure.

To do this, first we have to understand what an orgasm actually is: the moment when built-up sexual tension suddenly releases with a bang (or, more accurately, with involuntary muscle contractions).

Usually this moment comes with a wave of relaxation, satisfaction and pleasure, lasting between 12 and 20 seconds.

When it comes to hitting that big O, around 72 per cent of women need clitoral stimulation.

Yet real pleasure is about much more than your clitoris – and much more than ‘just’ orgasms.

… THEN UNCOVER YOUR FANTASIES

Instead of focusing on the mechanics of sex, we believe you should explore it as an art. And fantasies are a great place to start. Some of you might feel hesitant about this. A surprising number of women tell us that, just as pleasure makes them feel indulgent or guilty, their fantasies do too.

But you wouldn’t feel guilty for having a dream, would you? Just because you find yourself imagining someone or something, it doesn’t mean you want it to happen in real life.

In one survey of 4,000 people, 80 per cent said they fantasised about sex with multiple partners while 59 per cent of straight women fantasised about sex with other women.

Fantasies, then, come in all shapes and sizes. Your brain is one of the greatest sexual partners you could ask for, and it’s dedicated to pleasing you.

Fantasies have a real-world purpose too: by letting our imagination play, we can safely explore our boundaries.

So grab a pen and paper – or if you’d like a bit of extra privacy, make a note in your phone and lock it so only you have access.

Think about something that arouses and excites you – a feeling, image or memory – and note your body’s response.

Who’s in your fantasy? What dynamics play out? Think about the emotional connections and interactions that excite you.

After writing down your fantasy, reflect on your feelings.

How do you feel?

Excited? Curious? Nervous?

Acknowledge these feelings as part of your erotic self.

… NEXT PLAY WITH TOUCH

Imagine getting a massage: You can feel warm, skilled hands gliding over your skin.

Where do you want to be touched? What types of touch do you want?

Next, explore self-touch: start to touch different parts of your body, exploring pressures, speeds and motions. Notice how your skin responds to light strokes, firmer pressure, circular motions or gentle pinching.

Finally, make a body map. You can do this by either drawing an outline of your body (front and back) or writing a list.

Mark in green any spots that you enjoyed having touched; amber for spots that you’re curious about having touched,

and then red for spots you don’t want touched.

We recommend sharing your body map with your partner, if you have one, as a conversation starter.

… FINALLY, IMAGINE YOUR SEXUAL FUTURE

Close your eyes and picture your hoped-for sex life. All the intimacy, love and communication that you dream of.

No doubt it’s different to the intimate life you first had in your younger days.

That’s because we’re all on journeys of self-discovery, especially when it comes to our sexual selves. Knowing what turns you on – both in bed and in life – is about as personal as it gets.

The beauty of our sexual selves and the thrill of self-discovery is that we’re constantly growing and evolving.

In the same way our relationships and lives change, our sexualities change too.

And that’s something to be grateful for.