Sex advice: Help! I can't find her G-spot

I’ve been with my girlfriend for three years and I have not found her G-spot. It’s not for want of trying. I would really like to know once and for all: Does the G-spot even exist?

This question has divided science for at least 40 years. In the 1950s the physician Ernst Grafenerg identified the existence of an area of heightened sensitivity in the vagina — but the term G-spot wasn’t coined until 1981, by Dr Frank Addiego. He published a case study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine describing how a woman had learnt that stimulation of an erotically sensitive area on her anterior vaginal wall led to a much deeper orgasm.

Beverly Whipple, who co-authored the paper with Addiego, then went on to write the bestselling book The G Spot, which sent millions of men off to try to find it, often to no avail.

In 2001 Dr Terence Hines, professor of psychology at New York’s Pace University, did a comprehensive review of all the research on the G-spot and concluded that it was “unverified by objective means”.The next year Professor Adam Ostrzenski, an obstetrician-gynaecologist, contradicted him in a paper published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. In it, he claimed to have found an anatomical structure that matched descriptions of the G-spot.

When Ostrzenski’s paper was published it was criticised because it was based on the dissection of the body of a single 83-year-old woman. He published a subsequent study identifying the same structure in a further eight cadavers. Many asked how Ostrzenski had been able to identify a structure that had eluded other surgeons for decades.

One of the people who challenged Ostrzenski’s results was the urologist Helen O’Connell. She is famed for discovering the full extent of the clitoris in 1998 — that the clitoris is the small visible tip of a double wishbone structure which has two legs and two elongated bulbs, which are made from erectile tissue and extend internally for about 9cm on either side.

When a woman is aroused they swell up and wrap around the vagina.

O’Connell responded to Ostrzenski’s paper by dissecting the vaginas of 13 female cadavers aged from 32 to 97 years old. She found nothing, and concluded that there was no particular structure or spot specifically associated with orgasm in the vagina. Instead, her research confirms that although the vagina has no erectile tissue, the anterior wall has an abundance of nerve endings. Therefore, any pressure applied to it can push on the aroused internal clitoris, particularly the bulbs, which are on either side of the lower vaginal wall. So the answer to your question is that yes, I’m afraid you are wasting your time looking for the G-spot. There is no specific structure in the vagina that corresponds to a G-spot. However, you will not be wasting your time if you apply pressure to the anterior wall of your partner’s vagina, because doing so will indirectly stimulate her clitoris and this can help bring her to orgasm.

Did you know that the closer a women gets to orgasm, the larger her clitoris gets? In its normal state, the visible tip of the female clitoris measures roughly 3.4mm in diameter and 5.1mm in length, but when a woman is fully aroused it doubles, or even triples, in size. It is a sight to behold, and a reminder that your time could be much better spent observing obvious indications of female sexual pleasure, and ensuring that sex is a much more rewarding experience.

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