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Never had an orgasm? Struggle to reach orgasm with a partner? Vanessa Marin joins us to talk about stepping onto the path to female orgasm.

If you are a woman and want to learn how to have your first orgasm, or how to orgasm more consistently with a partner, enrollment for Finishing School is now open!

Finishing School: Learn To Orgasm

If you are a man struggling with performance anxiety, we’ve got you covered with The Modern Man’s Guide To Conquering Performance Pressure

If you find it difficult to have an orgasm, you are not alone. Far from it. MANY women struggle with having orgasms – both alone and during sex with a partner. Female orgasm is a cultural issue as much as it is a personal one – our culture stacks the deck against women enjoying sexual pleasure. So if you can’t have an orgasm, don’t feel ashamed – instead, give yourself the gift of focusing on learning how to orgasm, step by step, with the support of loving and skilled professionals.

Sex therapist Vanessa Marin has put together an incredible, comprehensive course for women who struggle with orgasm. If you have never had an orgasm or struggle to have orgasms consistently, the course offers you a proven path towards orgasmic confidence. You will learn the skills needed to bring yourself to orgasm and how to share orgasm with a partner. You will learn the art of masturbation and how to communicate about what your specific body needs to reach orgasm. You’ll discover what your barriers to orgasm are and how to overcome them. You’ll gain a ton of sexual confidence and swagger that will trickle out to all parts of your life! This is a huge gift you can give yourself (or your female partner!) and will transform your experience of your sexuality.

If you are a woman who struggles to orgasm, this course is for you. Check it out and enroll here: Finishing School: Learn To Orgasm

If you are a man struggling with performance anxiety, we’ve got you covered with The Modern Man’s Guide To Conquering Performance Pressure

If you enroll in one of Vanessa’s courses through the links above, we’ll throw in our Couples Massage Mastery course for FREE! We believe that couples massage is an amazing foundation for a more orgasmic life – and that the skills you learn with massage will transform your sex life. Just forward us your receipt from Vanessa and we’ll hook you up!

Note: We stand by Vanessa’s courses 100% – and when you enroll, we receive a small referral payment that helps support our work and the podcast. Thanks!

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Transcript of Podcast Episode: The Path To Female Orgasm with Vanessa Marin

Chris Rose: 00:00 Hi. Welcome to Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. This is Chris from PleasureMechanics.com, and on today’s episode, we have a very special guest, sex therapist Vanessa Marin joins us to talk about female orgasm, especially female orgasm for women who have never experienced orgasm, who can not consistently reach orgasm alone or with a partner. And as it turns out, this is a lot of women. Many women have never learned how to have an orgasm, and as Vanessa and I discuss, it is very much a learned skill. Orgasm, as deeply personal as it feels, is also a relational issue, and it’s also a cultural issue, and we are going to talk about all of that on today’s episode.

Chris Rose: 00:53 Before we get started, I’d like to remind you that you can come over to pleasuremechanics.com to discover our complete podcast archive, and while you are there, be sure to sign up for our free online course, The Erotic Essentials. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com/free to get started, and unlock a treasure trove of free resources for you, so you can start creating a sex life you want on your own terms.

Chris Rose: 01:24 All right, on today’s episode, we will be speaking with Vanessa Marin about female orgasm. Vanessa joined us on episode 288 of Speaking of Sex, to speak about male performance anxiety, and in that episode, we talked about one of her online courses, The Modern Man’s Guide to Conquering Performance Pressure. A bunch of our community members signed up for her course, and the feedback we got was awesome. People loved her strategic, step by step approach. They loved the depth of information she offered, and told us that her course was a really great compliment to what we offer here at Pleasure Mechanics, and so, looking at her other offerings, I asked to take a look at her female orgasm course, Finishing School, and I was so blown away but what I found, I knew I had to share it with you all.

Chris Rose: 02:22 If you are a woman that struggles with orgasm, whether you’ve never had an orgasm, or struggle to orgasm consistently, this course is for you. She walks you through, step by step, the emotional struggles, the physical struggles, the strategies and techniques to reach your first orgasm, or to get to the place where you feel orgasmically confident, where you know that your body is capable of tremendous pleasure, and you know how to get there, both alone and with a partner. Vanessa Marin has this beautiful offering ready to go, and brings to it the depth and wisdom of her experience from a decade as a sex therapist. She’s brilliant, she’s wonderful, she’s an ally to The Pleasure Mechanics, and we really want to share this course for the women in our community who it resonates with.

Chris Rose: 03:20 So, if you or a woman you love struggles with orgasm, definitely check out the course, and at the end of this podcast we will share a special offer for you, that if you sign up for Vanessa’s course, we’re going to bundle it with a couple of Pleasure Mechanics courses for an amazing opportunity to level up the orgasmic pleasure for you or a woman you love. All right, so everyone who’s interested in female orgasm will get a lot out of this episode. There’s tons of great information here, and at the end, we’ll tell you about the opportunity to join Vanessa Marin’s Finishing School, learn how to orgasm with all of the support of us, your Pleasure Mechanics, Vanessa, amazing sex therapist, and together, we will get you there. We will support you every step of the way.

Chris Rose: 04:15 All right, so without further ado, here is Vanessa Marin and I, discussing female orgasm.

Chris Rose: 04:24 Hello, Vanessa. Welcome back to Speaking of Sex.

Vanessa Marin: 04:28 Thank you. I’m so excited to be back.

Chris Rose: 04:30 So, the last time we spoke, we focused on performance anxiety in men, and today we’re going to focus on female orgasm, so here are two big questions to get us started. How do you define an orgasm, and do you believe it’s something that comes naturally, or is it a learned skill?

Vanessa Marin: 04:48 That first question is a really great one. There’s actually not really a great agreed upon definition of orgasm, and I think that can cause a lot of confusion. What I think of it as is a peak sexual experience, where you’re just experiencing a tremendous amount of pleasure in your body, and it feels like something that’s just that apex for you. It feels really ultra pleasurable and enjoyable. And when it comes to whether or not it’s something that comes naturally, or a skill, I come down wholeheartedly on the side of orgasm being a skill, and a skill that needs to be learned. So, I think most women, we think of orgasm as, “Oh, it’s something that happens in our body, it should just be this natural thing like breathing, or sneezing,” but I firmly believe that it’s not.

Vanessa Marin: 05:33 I believe that it’s something that we have to learn how to do, and I think it’s really important to recognize that, and to take any of the shame, or stigma, or embarrassment out of needing to learn how to do it.

Chris Rose: 05:44 I was going to ask about shame later, but since you mentioned it, let’s jump right in. Why the orgasm shame? Can we talk about this? I feel like I get so many emails saying, “I’ve been faking for years and I’m too ashamed to admit it,” or, “I feel embarrassed that I haven’t learned this yet, and it’s a real deficit of my personality.” How do we replace the kind of personal shame with a cultural conversation about how… I feel like culture is rigged against female orgasm, and we’re all stuck there. Where do you come down on this?

Vanessa Marin: 06:13 Yeah, it sure does feel that way a lot of the times. I mean, I think it’s really interesting, as well, because even as recently as maybe five or 10 years ago, we didn’t really talk about female orgasm that much as a culture. Any time it would be mentioned, it would be something like, “Oh, female orgasm, what’s that?” The kind of dopey husband on a TV sitcom or something like that. And so, there was a lot of shame about even acknowledging that female orgasm existed, and then what I’ve seen, at least in my own practice, is over the last five or 10 years, we’re starting to talk about female orgasm so much more openly. There are a lot of magazine articles about it, it’s all over the internet, it’s just a much more open conversation, and so you would think that would be a really good thing, and it is, but I’ve also found that it creates a different kind of shame for a lot of women.

Vanessa Marin: 07:05 Now a lot of women feel really ashamed if they don’t already know how to orgasm, so it’s like we’ve done this rapid shift from shame about even acknowledging that it exists, into now all of a sudden it’s okay, and if you haven’t had one, then there’s something horribly wrong with you. So, I think that recognizing that bigger cultural societal picture is really important for every woman, in recognizing that this is not an internal experience. It’s an external experience that’s been thrust upon all of us, ways of making us feel ashamed of our bodies, and our pleasure, and our needs and desires. So, I think that can be a big piece of it.

Chris Rose: 07:43 Yeah, and often so that online sex advice, and as sex educators, we are often told to say things like, “Take your mind off the orgasm,” or, “It’s all about the journey, not the destination,” but over the years, I’ve kind of realized that this can feel patronizing or dismissive, and ultimately I think orgasm does really matter. So, how do you think about the importance of orgasm in the overall experience of sexuality, and honoring it without putting pressure on it?

Vanessa Marin: 08:12 Yeah, that’s such a good question. I mean, I think that having that perspective about trying to relax into the experience, and trying to realize that orgasm isn’t the be all, end all of sex, those things are really important, but yeah, of course, when you have never had an orgasm, and you want to have one, hearing advice like that is so frustrating, because it makes it seem like all you need to do to have an orgasm is just to relax, or to not think about it, or have a glass of wine, and that’s just not the case. Like I said a few minutes ago, orgasm is a skill, and like any other skill, it has to be learned.

Vanessa Marin: 08:50 So, I think what it really comes down to is there needs to be a balance of both. Of reminders to be mindful, to explore your relationship with your entire body, not just with orgasm, to have better communication with your partner. That, but it also has to be coupled with really practical, concrete, tangible tips, strategies, exercises, solutions for actually learning how to orgasm, and I think that’s the problem that you see in a lot of articles written online or in magazines. They’ve got a 400 or an 800 word count that they can fill up, and so the vast majority of what you’re going to see is just, “Just relax, and take your mind off of it,” but there hasn’t been a really great conversation about yes, those things are important, and here’s exactly what you need to do to learn how to have that orgasm.

Chris Rose: 09:41 And part of the reason we’re talking is because you have done the work of putting together an amazing online course, that really breaks it down step by step, so how do you think of the components of… Your course is called Finishing School, which is a brilliant title.

Vanessa Marin: 09:58 Thank you.

Chris Rose: 09:59 Within Finishing School, what are the skillsets that are developed? How do you take us through that journey?

Vanessa Marin: 10:07 Yeah, so I do start with some of the blockages, the most common blockages that come up around orgasm. It’s like getting a foundational orgasmic education that we really weren’t given the opportunity to get anywhere else, so you learn things about the truth about how orgasm really works, and a lot of the myths that are out there, and the things that are confusing to people. You learn about some of the most common blockages that come up. And then I go into a portion of the course where I’ve broken things down into the most common mental blockages that come up, and the most common body blockages that come up. So, you learn specifically what those are, and very concrete, active tips for how to move past those blockages.

Vanessa Marin: 10:47 Then we get into the real heart of the course, which is where you learn how to masturbate. So, I firmly believe that masturbation is the best way to learn how to orgasm. Like I said, it’s a skill, has to be learned. Masturbation is the way to learn. So, I’ve taken all these different techniques and tips that I’ve tried out over the years, and boiled it down into a four factor system. So, you learn each of the four factors separately, and do different routines around that.

Vanessa Marin: 11:16 Then, there’s a whole section about troubleshooting your technique, because again, it’s a skill. It takes some trial and error, so going over some of the most common blockages that come up when you’re starting to learn. And then, finally, learning how to actually have your first orgasm.

Chris Rose: 11:35 And then you go into partnered orgasms?

Vanessa Marin: 11:38 Yeah, so I go over learning how to orgasm on your own first. That’s the first big chunk of the course. And then the second chunk of the course is all about learning how to take what you learned on your own and translate that into with a partner. So, that portion of the course is broken down into different ways of orgasming with a partner, so it talks about touch, about oral sex, about intercourse or penetration, and a lot of different tools, and tips, and strategies.

Chris Rose: 12:05 So, what are these blockages? When we think about an unorgasmic woman, a preorgasmic woman, often we can think that it’s such a personal constellation of factors that would be blocking that orgasm, but you and I, who are talking to thousands of people, see patterns. What are maybe the top three blockages you see, physically and emotionally? Can you name some of them?

Vanessa Marin: 12:30 Yeah, that’s a great question. So, definitely one of the main mental ones is having a hard time focusing. So, a lot of women will try learning how to masturbate, and they’ll say, “You know, I just… I get really bored. I get distracted. I don’t know what to think about. I feel kind of silly and foolish in the moment. I just can’t get into it.” And that’s also a really common experience that actually most of us, regardless of whether we’re struggling with our orgasm, most of us have a hard time staying mentally focused and present during intimacy with a partner, so that’s a super, super common one.

Vanessa Marin: 13:04 Another common blockage that comes up is having a poor relationship with your body, so I think most of us, especially as women, we are bombarded all day, every day, with these ideals of what our bodies are supposed to look like, and it’s this incredibly narrow window that probably a handful of women on the face of the planet really actually fit into. And so, most of us women have really complicated relationships with our bodies, but I kind of liken it to a lot of us walk around throughout our days beating up on our bodies, saying negative things about ourselves, insulting ourselves, and then we get into the bedroom, and we say, “Okay, body. Give me all the pleasure that I want. Give me orgasms.” And it just doesn’t work that way. We can’t have a different relationship with our body inside the bedroom than we have outside the bedroom, so that’s another very common topic that I spend a lot of time going over.

Vanessa Marin: 14:00 And sort of related to that one is the third one I would say, is feeling uncomfortable with your genitals. So, just as you might feel self conscious about your belly, or your thighs, your genitals can bring up a lot of discomfort, as well, and again, there’s a huge component of socialization here. We women have been taught to believe that our genitals, they smell weird, they look kind of weird, they taste funny, it’s something to be hidden, and embarrassed of, and ashamed of, so developing a better relationship with your genitals, as well, and learning that they’re totally normal, and natural, and beautiful, and nothing to be ashamed of, is a huge part of learning how to orgasm.

Chris Rose: 14:42 Another thing I hear a lot is worrying about taking too long, while meanwhile the men we talk to want nothing more than to pleasure their partner. What conversation needs to happen to help women take all the time they need to relax into receiving? And is it possible it isn’t about time at all, but about worthiness? How do you think about that?

Vanessa Marin: 15:04 Oh yeah. Definitely. I mean yeah, it’s such a huge thing that comes up. It’s really not about time. I actually have done an interesting exercise with a lot of my clients, where I’ll ask them, “How much time do you think you give yourself when you’re with a partner, or even on your own,” but this comes up more strongly with a partner. But how much time do you think you’ll give yourself before you give up and say, “I don’t think an orgasm’s in the cards for me tonight.” And a lot of my clients will tell me, “Maybe like two minutes,” and you know, also as humans, we’re notoriously bad at predicting how much time has gone by, so I’d be willing to guess that that’s actually more like 30 seconds, maybe 45 seconds.

Vanessa Marin: 15:45 So, you know, that’s not that long at all. Even if it was the full two minutes, two minutes is not very long at all, but I think it just cuts right to that worthiness issue right away, like am I really worthy of allowing my partner to focus on me, and to try to bring me pleasure? Even am I really worry of directing my own attention, and my own love, and care towards myself? So, that’s definitely a huge issue that comes up, and a really important one to address.

Chris Rose: 16:14 Yeah, because it seems like even women who are orgasming, and are masturbating, often there’s this lock and load attitude of kind of grab a high powered vibrator, lock it down, get it out of the way, as if it’s functional, and the idea of taking extra time just to build pleasure, taking extra time to relax, feels like, “But I have my to do list, and I have all these other people to take care of.” So, when we become more orgasmic, when we allow ourselves more pleasure, what effects are you seeing in your clients in the rest of their lives?

Vanessa Marin: 16:49 The really interesting thing about exploring your relationship with your orgasm is that it becomes about so much more than just your orgasm, and it really, especially in this topic, it really has the potential to change the way you relate to your entire life, and I know that might sound a little dramatic, but it really is so true. And that’s one of my favorite pieces of feedback that I get from the women who go through Finishing School is, “This changed my entire relationship with my body, with my pleasure, with my partner, with my life,” and it’s definitely… A huge part of that is this idea of slowing down, and that’s it’s okay for us to take our time with sex, and with ourselves, and with our partners, and to want to experience as much pleasure, and connection, and sensation as we can.

Vanessa Marin: 17:37 I mean, yes, we’re all busy. Sometimes just having a quickie is really nice. I’m not saying we all need to have three hour long sex sessions every single day, but I think most of us, if you’re really honest with yourself, and you ask yourself, “Okay, how much time in my life do I actually create for pleasure? How much do I prioritize pleasure in my life?” For most of us, that answer is going to be really sad. Probably shockingly small. So, this idea of really allowing yourself to take up more time, more space, take in more, can be so transformative. It’s really, really exciting.

Chris Rose: 18:18 Indeed. It doesn’t sound extreme at all, to I think those of us that have witnessed this, and then to allow that space for people to imagine what might change in their life, in sometimes relationship sense, sometimes jobs change, it really does trickle out. I’ve seen people have major creative breakthroughs, and write that book they’ve always wanted to write.

Vanessa Marin: 18:38 Oh, yeah.

Chris Rose: 18:39 And it’s hard to talk about I think sometimes, because we don’t understand scientifically how sexual energy fuels the rest of our creativity, and happiness, but there’s the connection, and we’re gathering the evidence, body by body. So, stepping into orgasm is kind of a climactic peak of this journey, but just like climbing Mt. Everest isn’t about those last few steps, I imagine that there’s skills learned along the way that start impacting your relationship to your body, to your relationship, to yourself, to your kids. What are some of those skills? Is it really about communication? Is it about staying present? How do you think about the kind of fringe benefits of going on this journey?

Vanessa Marin: 19:29 Yeah, there’re so many of them, and it really can be very individual, based on the particular woman, and what her story is, but there are… Some of the really common ones that tend to come up over and over again are just learning how to slow down, and get more pleasure and enjoyment out of life in general. One really interesting thing that I think happens around orgasm is some women, there’s almost this belief that an orgasm just kind of comes out of nowhere, and so I find myself repeating a lot, like, “Pleasure is the pathway to orgasm.” You’re not going to have this orgasm out of nowhere, it shocks you and takes you by surprise. You’re going to be having it after you’re feeling a lot of pleasure, and so I think that general idea of cultivating more pleasure, more build up, that’s something that definitely flows out to a lot of other areas of people’s lives, as well. It is that cheesy saying, like, “It’s the journey, not the destination,” but it’s very true in a lot of context.

Vanessa Marin: 20:27 So, that’s a common one. Learning how to stay more present, and focused in the moment, is definitely a really common one, as well. Increasing your body confidence, your connection to your body is another popular one, so yeah, definitely a lot of things along those lines.

Chris Rose: 20:44 Do you think it’s important that women learn to masturbate with their hands, or are sex toys a part of this? What’s the balance there?

Vanessa Marin: 20:52 What I usually do is I encourage women to think about what they would want out of their partnered sex life, when they’re considering what path to go down on their own. So, if you’ve discovered that you love sex toys, and they bring you a lot of pleasure and enjoyment, and you want to learn how to use sex toys with your partner, and feel comfortable about that, and excited about that, then that’s awesome. Sex toys are great. They do things that our hands and our mouths can not do, so I think that’s… They can be a fantastic option for a lot of women.

Vanessa Marin: 21:24 If you want to be able to experience a variety of orgasms, then my experience has been that learning how to masturbate with your hands is the most transferrable method of learning how to orgasm. So, if you masturbate with your hands, it makes it easier for you to teach your partner how to get you there with their hands, or with their mouth, and finding little tricks and techniques for getting there during intercourse, as well. So, it just really boils down to that option. What feels like the better path for you, what brings you more pleasure and enjoyment.

Chris Rose: 21:59 And I also love encouraging women, even if they’re using sex toys in addition, to get comfortable touching themselves. Sometimes I think sex toys act as this intermediary, if we’re not comfortable touching our own bodies, so even that self connection, even touching your whole body, and self massage can be a way of reconnecting and self love.

Vanessa Marin: 22:20 Absolutely. Yeah, I agree with that. Again, sex toys can be awesome, but you definitely should have a connection with your own body, as well. So, if the sex toy feels like a way for you to avoid touching your own body, or it just feels like something that’s easy, and quick, and fast, then I think that’s a little bit different. I think it’s important to learn how to cultivate that relationship with your own body first.

Chris Rose: 22:45 So, when women tell me they have trouble reaching orgasm with a partner, the first thing I clarify is does that mean orgasm during vaginal intercourse, with no warmup, with no clitoral stimulation, or does that mean you can’t reach orgasm in the presence of a partner? How do you work with the idea of partnered orgasms, and the skill of the partner, the activities, versus the kind of emotional charge of a witness?

Vanessa Marin: 23:11 Yeah, there can be so much stuff that comes up around orgasming with a partner, so it’s definitely very interesting and helpful to start piecing apart, where are the specific challenges that you’re having? So, one of the really common things that I find is that a lot of women feel embarrassed about the way that they masturbate, or the way that they bring themselves pleasure, and so there’s this aspect of not wanting to let a partner in on that, and so they don’t want to show their partner, or teach their partner. A lot of times that really comes down to just being able to normalize masturbation, and that the ways that we bring ourselves pleasure, they’re all beautiful, and wonderful, and special, and sexy, and hot. So, trying to develop more of that comfort.

Vanessa Marin: 23:55 There’s also a big piece around not wanting to give a partner feedback. I think so many of us think that giving a partner feedback means you’re telling your partner that they’re not doing a good enough job, or even that they’re bad, bad in bed, so a lot of women hesitate to give that kind of feedback. And of course, feedback is absolutely crucial, and essential to not just having an orgasm with your partner, but having a good sexual experience with your partner. So, that’s a huge one as well.

Vanessa Marin: 24:25 And then there’s also another big piece about the misinformation about how orgasm works with a partner, and all of these myths about how female orgasm is supposed to work, particularly around intercourse, where most women feel like they need to be able to have an orgasm during intercourse, and that something’s wrong with them if they don’t.

Chris Rose: 24:47 What do you think about orgasm during intercourse? Because studies show that very few women, some say around 30%, are capable, and yet we strive for it as if it’s this holy grail. And I know yet… As a queer person, I don’t want to diminish the importance of it for some women. Do you think it’s something worth striving for, or should we kind of take it off the table altogether and focus on other activities for female orgasm? How do we strike that balance?

Vanessa Marin: 25:18 Yeah, so I definitely, whenever I start talking about this topic, I climb right up onto my soapbox, and I start going off, so I’ll just offer that warning right here. But I believe that there’s… The reason that we emphasize orgasm during intercourse, I believe that it’s BS, frankly, and I believe that it really boils down to because that’s how straight men have orgasms, that that needs to be how women have orgasms, as well, and I think it creates a lot of disrespect, and just even an unwillingness to see that women’s bodies are different, and we need different things to get to orgasm. That doesn’t mean we’re more complicated, it doesn’t mean we’re difficult, or that our orgasms are mysterious. It just means that we need different things, and just because male bodies work in a certain way, doesn’t mean that all female bodies need to work in that exact same way.

Vanessa Marin: 26:12 So, in Finishing School I share a lot of information about this, but even talking about some of the science behind what are analogous structures in our genitals. So, most people don’t know that when we are fetuses in the womb, we start off as basically being one sex, and we don’t differentiate into being male bodied or female bodied until we’re about 11 weeks, and so the tissues that create genitals, they originally start off as being the exact same tissues, and so there’ll be certain parts that go and make a labia, and a clitoris, and a vagina on a female bodied person, and a penis, and testicles, and scrotum on a male bodied person. And so, the clitoris and the penis are biological equivalents. They’re made out of those same tissues. It’s kind of like the same ball of clay gets molded into two different shapes, and yet I think we have a lot of disrespect for the clitoris. We think of as this, again, this mysterious or complicated thing and that needing clitoral stimulation is somehow a sign that something’s wrong with the woman, that she’s not advanced enough or doesn’t know her body enough.

Vanessa Marin: 27:24 And we expect that this stimulation of the vagina is what’s going to be what leads to orgasm for women. So, I actually looked it up, and I wanted to know what is the biological equivalent of the vagina for a woman on a man, and it is the prostatic utricle. I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing that right, but you know, you don’t see any men’s magazines articles saying, “Here’s how to have an orgasm from your prostatic utricle.” So, it’s just, again, it really just boils down to this belief that we have that if something works for the man, then that’s the way we women are supposed to work, as well, and it’s just not true.

Vanessa Marin: 28:03 So, I think that… I know I’m going off on a long tangent here, but what it ultimately boils down to for me is there are ways that you can learn how to orgasm during intercourse, but it’s really important to be clear that it’s not from intercourse.

Chris Rose: 28:19 Thank you. I love that distinction.

Vanessa Marin: 28:21 That will be my quick summary of it. You can listen to the five minute rant, or you can listen to the one sentence summary.

Chris Rose: 28:29 Oh, that’s so important, because it’s such a different thing to be penetrated cold, and then that thrusting, versus after warm up, and while you’re having your clitoris stimulated, or dropping your own hand down, and there’s so many ways to get creative with it, but we have to get off script.

Vanessa Marin: 28:44 Exactly. Yeah, and intercourse is great. It’s really fun. It can feel pleasurable. It can be very connecting and intimate, so I don’t mean to bag on intercourse, but definitely just getting into a different mindset about it, that intercourse is not the activity that creates the most stimulation for the most important part of a woman’s body, but there are very easy ways to create that stimulation at the same time, so just getting that distinction in your mind really opens up so much spaciousness to approach it in a different way, and give your body what it actually needs.

Chris Rose: 29:18 And some educators make these long lists of cervical orgasms, and G-spot orgasms, and clitoral orgasms, and combined orgasms. Do you think those lists are useful? Or is it more useful to think about the orgasm as kind of a generalized experience that has many approaches?

Vanessa Marin: 29:37 I think that those lists generally tend to be really unhelpful and harmful, because I think they create this belief that we’re supposed to orgasm in all these different ways, and I think that even though a lot of times different educators or writers aren’t intending to, I think a lot of women read them as having a certain hierarchy to them. So, it feels like clitoral orgasms are, “Yeah, okay, those are… Sure, if you want to have those kind, but the really advanced, or spiritual, or unlocked woman has cervical orgasms.”

Vanessa Marin: 30:10 And I just don’t think that that’s the case. I think that all orgasms really boil down to the clitoris. That’s the most sensitive part of our body. It’s the only part of the male or female body that is designed just for pleasure. It has no other purpose. So, these lists I think… They just create hierarchy, create some false beliefs, so I think the idea of exploring all of your genitals, and all of your entire body, is amazing, and you should definitely do that, and you should definitely try to experience peak pleasure in every part of your body, but just understand that the way that the female body works, you are so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so much more likely to have an orgasm from your clitoris, than you are from other parts of your body.

Vanessa Marin: 31:01 So, it might be… The same way that maybe you want to explore your elbow, and see how much pleasure you can bring to your elbow. That’s awesome, and that could be a really fun exploration, but keep in mind that the likelihood of having an orgasm from your elbow is pretty low. So, just having that different state of mind, I think can be more helpful.

Chris Rose: 31:21 So, you have run this online course about women’s orgasm for a few years now. A few thousand women have gone through your program. What have you learned from the women you have helped, and what’s surprised you?

Vanessa Marin: 31:33 Oh my gosh, I’ve learned so much. It’s been a really interesting experience. When I first built the course, it had been after years of working with female orgasm, and I kind of thought that I had a good grasp on all the different ideas and topics that went into it, but I’m really big on trying to learn as much as I can from the women who go through it, and it’s definitely been a really eye opening experience. I think one of the things, probably the most surprising thing that I’ve learned is that I think for most women, orgasm really boils down to learning the nitty gritty details of exactly how to masturbate. So, I think a lot of us women, especially in the last five or 10 years as we’ve made this kind of transition in the way we talk about female orgasm, a lot of women feel like they’re blocked in some way. Some sort of mental or emotional blockage, and it feels like there are all these things that are in the way.

Vanessa Marin: 32:33 And I think that can create a lot of fear, and anxiety, and worry about, “Oh, I’m just too blocked. I can’t allow this to happen. I won’t let myself be vulnerable. I won’t let down my guard,” and in reality, my experience tracking women who’ve gone through Finishing School is that working on the blockage stuff, it’s important, it’s good to address, but it really boils down to learning how to masturbate. It’s much more of a technical problem than it is a mental or emotional one, so I think that’s really surprising. It’s been surprising for me, and I think it’s really surprising for the women who are considering joining, as well, because there’s just this belief that it’s all these mental and emotional blockages.

Chris Rose: 33:13 So, can you tell us a little bit more about Finishing School, who it’s for, and how to tell if it’s right for you?

Vanessa Marin: 33:20 Yes, Finishing School is for women who have never had an orgasm, or never been able to reliably orgasm. So, I actually have two versions of the course. The one that I was just talking about is called Learn How to Orgasm, so that’s the version that’s for women who’ve never had an orgasm, or never been able to orgasm consistently. I also have a second version of it called Orgasm With a Partner, and that version is for women who can orgasm on their own, but have never been able to fully get there with a partner. And it’s right for you if you have any sort of curiosities about wanting to learn how to orgasm, or even wanting to learn how to experience more pleasure, more connection, intimacy and enjoyment out of your sex life.

Chris Rose: 34:01 So, Finishing School is an online course, it’s evergreen, it’s available anytime, but right now you are launching a live version. What is special about this opportunity that is right now, at the end of September, 2018, that’s available now?

Vanessa Marin: 34:17 Yeah. I’m doing a version of Finishing School, Learn How to Orgasm, which is called Finishing School Live, so this is a special version of the course, where we’re going to all go through it at the same time together, and we’re going to do group coaching calls. So, like you said, the course is normally evergreen, you can take it whenever you want throughout the year, but I do these really extensive surveys of the women who have gone through the course, so I can learn more, and keep improving it, and one of the things that I learned is that women wanted to feel more of a sense of connection to me and the other women in the course, and to feel a little bit more accountability and motivation. So, they still wanted that privacy of an online course, but just to feel a bit more connection overall.

Vanessa Marin: 35:01 So, I decided to try out this live version of the course, where we all start at the same time, we go through weekly material, and exercises and stuff all at the same time, and then throughout the course, we do these live group coaching calls, which again, are private and anonymous, but they’re opportunities for you to ask questions, get personal support, more motivation, just feel that connection to this great community that you’re a part of. So, I’m really excited about trying this version out. It’ll be the first time that I’m doing it, so I’m very excited about that, and since it’s the first time, and I’m still kind of testing out how this is all going to work, I decided to offer it for the same price that Finishing School normally is, so you’re getting these great group coaching calls, a lot more accountability, and support, and personal resources and suggestions, but it’s for the exact same price.

Vanessa Marin: 35:55 That is going to start on October 1, so September 30 is the last day to sign up for it.

Chris Rose: 36:01 All right, listeners. Get on it. There are links in the show notes. If you, or a woman in your life, has never had an orgasm, or struggles to orgasm, now is the time. Vanessa Marin, thank you so much.

Vanessa Marin: 36:14 Thank you.

Chris Rose: 36:17 Okay, so I hope that all of us got a lot out of that episode, and learned more about female orgasm, and why so many struggle with it. If you struggle with orgasm, if you have never had an orgasm, there is no shame in that game. It is simply time to give yourself the gift of focusing on it, of learning how to orgasm with the support of us, your Pleasure Mechanics, of this amazing sex therapist, Vanessa Marin. Let us be on your team. So, if you think this opportunity is right for you, check out the show notes page. There are links there to explore Vanessa Marin’s offerings, and when you sign up for her course, and if you do so before September 30, at the end of this week, you get the opportunity to join the live version, and get all of this bonus coaching.

Chris Rose: 37:15 And if you sign up for Vanessa Marin’s course, shoot us an email with a copy of your receipt, and will give you access to The Pleasure Mechanics’ Couples Massage Mastery course. Because in my experience, if you need to learn how to relax and receive pleasure, if you need to learn how to focus on your body, and stay present while receiving pleasure, massage is one of the best ways to do that. It helps you learn how to relax, it helps you learn how to receive, it helps you learn how to focus on pleasure without all of the pleasure and charge of a sexual situation. So, we would love to offer you the Couples Massage course, bundle it together with Vanessa Marin’s Finishing School, and you will be so well supported in exploring how to gain orgasmic confidence.

Chris Rose: 38:10 And men, if you are listening to this, you are not left out. Vanessa also has an amazing course for men. We discussed it in episode 288. She really has an amazing system to conquer performance pressure, and get more in touch with your pleasure, and your orgasmic capability. If you are interested in leveling up your pleasure, check out the links. I’ll include her course for men, as well, in the show notes page, and we will also throw in Couples Massage for you, because men need to learn how to receive, as well.

Chris Rose: 38:47 All right, so we are offering this beautiful bundle of Pleasure Mechanics and Vanessa Marin courses together for whoever wants to level up their sex life. Check out the links in the show notes page. Let me know if you have any questions. We stand behind Vanessa Marin’s courses 100%. We would not be sharing them and using our podcast to talk about them if we didn’t think this was a beautiful opportunity for you to opt in to really quality, fabulous sex education online. That’s what we’re all about, and when other people do it well, we want to shout it from the rooftops.

Chris Rose: 39:26 All right, so get in on this. Join us. Talk to me about it if you have any concerns, and let us help you. Let us help you level up your orgasmic confidence. No matter who you are, what body you’re in, there is so much pleasure available to you, and it is a learned skill. We all can develop the skill to develop more orgasmic capacity. Yeah?

Chris Rose: 39:54 All right. I’m going to go do my homework now. Signing off. This is Chris from pleasuremechanics.com, wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.