Tensing Your Body During Sex

It seems that part of having an orgasm for many women is tightening up their pelvic muscles. This is yet another example of one of those things that women do which they think is “weird.” Most women whom I’ve spoken with give me one of their “oh-my-g-d-you’re-not-going-to-believe-me” looks when they admit that they need to seriously tense up and scrunch their muscles in order to orgasm. Well, listen up girls… most women tense up in order to have an orgasm. It makes a certain amount of sense if you think about it. An orgasm happens when there is just too much stimulation in the nerves and they “shoot off” as a response. Tensing up the leg, thigh and pelvis muscles just add to the general tension so that it makes it easier to have an orgasm. There are even some women who can have orgasms just by squeezing their thighs together (That probably makes riding the NYC subways way more pleasurable).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with tensing up your muscles to have an orgasm, unless it gets in the way of your having sex the way you want to. Here are some examples:

• You get painful muscle spasms after the orgasm (or in the process) because you are squeezing your muscles too tight.
• You feel like you need to concentrate so hard on squeezing your muscles that you end up with a headache.
• You break the headboard because you are pulling so hard (okay, I’m exaggerating , but you get my drift).
• You end up hurting your partner because you use him as your main squeeze toy (I’m not kidding, we had a patient like that).
• You can only orgasm in weird positions that allow you to tense as much as you need to. E.g. climbing up a pole.

If any of these are the case, then you might be best off working around the problems, rather than trying to change the tensing pattern, which is often hard to do. If you decide you really don’t like tensing so much here are some things to consider:

But the bottom line message from me is this: there is nothing wrong with tensing your muscles. If it’s not causing secondary problems, just go right on squeezing!

Tensing your body during sex can either be a means to generating pleasure or a reaction to experiencing pain. If you’re interested in learning about tensing your body due to pain, read our blog to learn more.