Orgasm: Is It Really All That?

When it comes to orgasm, 'What’s the big deal? is rarely ever the reaction. Let's be honest, humans are spellbound by this riveting response. It’s often hailed as the greatest human experience. You have not truly lived unless you’ve had an orgasm – or have you?

Life is full of intoxicating outbursts of all-consuming excitement, many of which rival reaching climax. Are humans therefore guilty of having played up orgasm as the peak experience?

A study titled, 'The Components of Optimal Sexuality: A Portrait of ‘Great Sex,'" out of the University of Ottawa, indicates that we are indeed glorifying the big “O” a bit too much.

Oddly, the study’s mostly U.S.-based participants ranked intense physical sensations, including climax, as extremely unimportant in sizing up good sex. The 34 male and 30 female participants, ranging in age from 23 to 82, saw lust, sexual desire, attraction and chemistry as terribly unimportant as well.

Equally intriguing is the finding that sexual gratification doesn’t have much to do with having an ideal body or technique, as the media would have us believe.

Participants largely confessed that sexual satisfaction has a lot more to do with erotic intimacy, connecting, being present and uninhibited and in-sync.

Such findings are resounding given they highlight sex as a holistic experience and not just a physiological one. They also underscore the fact that what rocks us to our core are experiences beyond the groin that move us. While orgasm is an amazing experience, in many ways we’ve been brainwashed to think that it’s the maximum one, when it’s obviously not. Read on >>