Female during sex

Societal norms and the media both heavily influence how we view women's orgasms, but research shows that their sexual activity preferences and experiences with orgasm vary widely. The female orgasm is often depicted as the center of a woman's sexual satisfaction and the ultimate goal of sex. But many women don't experience an orgasm during sexual intercourse until their 20s or even 30s, and the number of women who say that they always or nearly always have one during sex is declining. The social expectations surrounding women's orgasms can be particularly distressing to women who don't always experience them. And when depictions of sex in the media are thrown into the mix, the gap between expectation and reality widens even further.

Female ejaculation is when a female's urethra expels fluid during sex. It can happen when a female becomes sexually aroused, but there is not necessarily an association with having an orgasm. Scientists do not fully understand female ejaculation, and there is limited research on how it works and its purpose. Female ejaculation is perfectly normal, although researchers remain divided on how many people experience it.

Arousal is the state of being awake and focused on a certain stimulus. For individuals who have a vagina, this involves a number of physiological changes in the body. According to the Cleveland Clinic , desire disorders involve a lack of sexual desire or interest in sex, while arousal disorders involve wanting sex but struggling to get your body in the mood. The sexual excitement stage — also known as the arousal stage — involves a range of physiological changes in the body.

This process is known as the sexual response cycle. Experts usually categorize the sexual response cycle in four phases spanning from the second you get turned on mentally or physically to the blissful, tapped-out close of events. Different bodies of thought proceed through the sexual response cycle in slightly different ways, with some separating certain parts of the sexual response cycle that others lump together.