Common Reasons People Fake Orgasms
From insecurity to wanting a sexual encounter to end, research explains numerous reasons for faking it
Published in
4 min readJul 29, 2021
Although we like to assume that we’re consistently pleasing our partner, obviously that’s not always the case. But oftentimes we may not know this because our partner is giving us a sexual performance that makes us think we did deliver the pleasure they wanted. Faking orgasms is nothing new, and research shows that 58.8 percent of women have felt the need to fake an orgasm at some point in their sex lives.
Why do they do it? According to the Faking Orgasm Scale for Women, or FOS, which was published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, the reasons for faking orgasms can be placed into four broad categories:
- Altruistic deceit: When someone fakes an orgasm so they won’t hurt their partner’s feelings.
- Fear and Insecurity: Faking an orgasm to avoid negative feelings that may come up during sex.
- Elevated Arousal: When a woman fakes in the hopes that she will actually become more aroused.
- Sexual Adjournment: Faking an orgasm to get the sex over with already.
These categories shed light on the common themes of orgasm faking, but they don’t tell the whole story. Within each…
