Why Can’t I Orgasm While Masturbating? For Vulva Owners

This is my answer from a question I received on Quora.

Alice Alinari @ Unsplash

There are many reasons why a woman cannot achieve orgasm when masturbating. These include:

• You are trying too hard and not relaxing enough to let it happen. Studies show that women need to relax and de-stress in order to have an orgasm.
• You don’t know enough about your own body and your specific pleasure zones that can trigger orgasm. Practice touching yourself in different areas to see what your response is. Rather than trying to orgasm, just explore your pleasure potential and response.
• You feel shame or guilt, which won’t allow you to get fully turned on. This can happen to many women, if they were brought up in an environment that shames sex and pleasure. This is something that can take a while to work through. However, there is nothing shameful about pleasure, masturbation or sex, and studies show that masturbation is actually good for your physical and mental health. So learn to embrace your pleasure as an act of self-love.
• You are not turned on and feeling desire. Desire and arousal begin in the brain. Exploring erotic thoughts or fantasies in your imagination can help you to start building desires. Also, just touching yourself can begin to turn on the brain and build desire. What is…