Is it possible to have orgasms at the same time as your partner?

I’d love if I could orgasm with my husband but if I try to hold on so that we both climax at the same time, the sensation passes and then I can’t orgasm at all. 

How can I train myself to wait — is it possible?

A. In Hollywood, all a man has to do is thrust once or twice and his celluloid partner begins to writhe in orgasmic ecstasy.

That is because on-screen sex is synchronised, meaning that orgasms are always simultaneous, and no one ever needs instruction.

It is infuriating because instead of reflecting reality, such portrayals of sex create unrealistic expectations and add to existing anxieties about adequacy.

The simultaneous orgasm is not commonplace. It never has been, yet it has become a kind of holy grail: much sought after but rarely found.

The fact that it is so difficult to achieve only seems to have made it more desirable. Whole industries have grown up around solving the problem of the unattainable shared orgasm.

Magazines, books, tantra, yoga; the business of simultaneous pleasure has been around for decades, yet the simultaneous orgasm continues to elude.

The reason that it is so difficult for men and women to orgasm together is largely a matter of timing. Women generally take longer to reach full arousal and men rarely last that long. Younger couples can address this inequity by letting the male have a quickie climax.

This induces a refractory period — a recovery period when erection is impossible. During this window of opportunity, he can concentrate on helping his partner to increase her level of arousal and when they subsequently have intercourse, she is on the verge of climax.

The only problem with this strategy is that the refractory period varies with age. In a younger man it can last just five minutes, but by the time a man is in his 40s it can last for several hours. It requires both to be open with each other about individual response cycles.

A simultaneous orgasm is only going to happen when both partners reach the point of no return at precisely the same time. However, everyone, male or female, moves through the various stages of the cycle at an individual pace.

The four phases; excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution are fairly self explanatory but the plateau phase, which extends to the brink of orgasm, is when things tend to go wrong in the quest for a shared orgasm. At this point the woman is sexually excited and she is going in the right direction towards orgasm.

However, orgasm is controlled by the involuntary or autonomic nervous system. She can’t dial it up like a pizza, and as soon as she starts thinking about if and when one is going to happen, she stymies her sexual response and finds herself back at square one.

A percentage of women are so trapped in the myth of the simultaneous orgasm that they would rather fake it than admit that it isn’t working.

This is obviously self-defeating because it means that they will never receive sufficient stimulation from that partner, and it does a disservice to other women because it propagates the myth that men can have sex on their terms.

Tantric techniques can help, but only because they take away the goal of orgasms and encourage couples to focus on the experience of pleasure rather than the quest for climax. Tantra centres on synchronised breathing. Y

ou should sit face to face, with your legs wrapped around the other’s torso staring into each others eyes. Your arms are wrapped around each other and you are pressing your naked bodies against each other. Breathing together, you try to focus on the build-up of sexual energy.

Your husband’s excitement will be visible. Yours won’t. But don’t be tempted to rush it. The longer you spend tuning in to each other, the more intense the eventual sexual experience will be.

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