Sex File: I'm hurt that my wife has been faking her orgasm

I'm trying not to be hurt but I feel as if we've been having different experiences

Mon, 01 Dec, 2025 - 02:00

Suzi Godson

We've been married for five years and I thought we had a pretty good sex life. But recently my wife asked if I'd be open to trying a vibrator and said she'd sometimes faked orgasm.

I'm trying not to be hurt but I feel as if we've been having different experiences and I'm slightly emasculated by the idea of including toys. Should I just say yes and leave it at that?

It must have come as quite a shock to discover that what you considered to be a "pretty good sex life" was not delivering in quite the same way for your wife. Although you are trying not to feel hurt, it's understandable that you are.

By withholding the fact that she finds it hard to climax through penetrative sex and sometimes fakes her orgasm, she denied you the opportunity to do anything about it, and now here you are, five years into a marriage, feeling like your entire sexual relationship has been a lie.

It sometimes comes as a surprise to men to learn that many women don't orgasm from penetrative sex. To put a number on that, a study by Debby Herbenick at Indiana University found that fewer than one in five women are able to orgasm through intercourse alone. You may also be wondering how you didn't realise that your wife was faking it. The reality is that most men don't and, even if they do, they don't raise it and so it carries on.

Herbenick also explored the issue of women faking orgasm and found that nearly 60% of women had done so at least once. Ironically, this study, which surveyed more than 1,000 women, found that most faked orgasm to please their partners. Specifically they wanted their partners to feel successful (57%) and they liked their partners so they didn't want them to feel bad (37%).

Although your wife has not been honest with you until now, her motivations were not malign and, as I am sure you can imagine, the longer the lie went on, the harder it was for her to come clean. The question, then, is not why did she do it but what has changed?

Herbenick also explored the reasons why women chose to stop faking and she found that, regardless of whether or not they had an orgasm during sex, women stopped faking once they felt more comfortable with their partner, more confident in themselves as women and more certain that, even if they didn't have an orgasm, their partner was happy with them.

In that context, the fact that your wife has finally opened up to you is an extremely good sign. It is likely that some of that confidence stems from the fact that she has recently discovered how much easier it is for her to achieve orgasm using a vibrator.

Vibrators, particularly when they are focused on or around the clitoris, exponentially speed up the arousal process, so if you want to see what your wife looks like when she is having a real orgasm, accept her invitation to explore sex toys with enthusiasm.

Once you can give her an orgasm with a toy, you can figure out how to give her an orgasm in lots of other ways too. To do this, you and your wife both need to learn more about female sexual response.

There are lots of good books on this subject but She Comes First by Ian Kerner and Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski are the classics. Educating yourselves will increase your confidence and help you to put the past behind you so that you can both enjoy a more informed and mutually satisfying sexual future.