Wondering Why Orgasms Feel So Good?
Here’s what happens to your body when you climax
Whether you find it easy to climax or experience trouble orgasming, knowing just what happens to your body when you orgasm is a good way of learning to understand your body and your sexuality. Because with more knowledge, comes more pleasure!
Below are six things that occur in your body when you have an orgasm.
1. Your pelvic floor muscles contract
Your pelvic floor muscles consist of several muscles that stretch from your pubic bone to your tailbone. These muscles are important as they help prevent things like incontinence and pelvic floor prolapse.
They’re also highly involved in orgasms.
When you climax, your pelvic floor muscles contract rhythmically. This movement is involuntary and the longer and stronger these contractions are — the longer and stronger your orgasm becomes. This is why Kegel exercises are a great route to increasing your orgasm abilities.
2. Your pain is abolished
Feeling like sex when you’re in pain isn’t all that common (hence the phrase “I have a headache” as a way of saying no to sex without actually saying the word ‘no’).
In fact, pain or other medical and biological issues are one of the causes of low libido in men and one of the causes of low libido in women.
However, if you feel like a bit of hanky panky despite your headache, back pain or period pain, sexual pleasure, and especially climaxing, can effectively kill it off — even if only temporarily.
What happens to your body when you orgasm, is that the orgasm acts like a painkiller. This, combined with sexual arousal naturally increasing your pain tolerance, works like a charm.
3. Your body is flooded by oxytocin
When you have an orgasm during sex, your brain releases oxytocin. This is a “feel-good” hormone responsible for bonding with others. And it’s part of the answer to the question of why orgasms can feel so amazing and make us feel closer to the person(s) we’ve had them with.
Because orgasms make us feel good, some people use partnered sex or masturbation as a means of relieving stress. Oxytocin enables relaxation and thus climaxing can make it easier for you to wind down after a busy day — and even fall asleep.
4. Your blood pressure increases
Orgasms are usually referred to as the peak of a sexual experience — both in pleasure and from a timeline perspective (for many, orgasms signal that sex is over).
However, it’s also your body, in a sense, literally peaking.
When this explosive goodness occurs, your heart starts working overtime. This means your blood pressure goes up and your breath gets heavier. So not only does your pleasure mount, so does your body’s reactivity to the situation.
5. Your logical side takes a break
What happens to your body when you orgasm and have sex in general, can sometimes feel a little science fiction. For example, the part of your brain that steers logic, the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, is temporarily tuned out.
This helps explain why sex can make some of us throw caution to the wind and make bolder decisions than we would otherwise.
For example, perhaps your otherwise anxious nature morphs into one of confidence and risk-taking. Maybe you feel like you can let go in another way during sex and orgasm than you do otherwise.
Without the angst and fear-stirring — orgasm and sexual arousal become easier.
6. Your body might emit liquid
People of all genders have the ability to ejaculate when they have an orgasm. For those with penises this is more of a common occurrence and if you don’t know otherwise, you might think that ejaculation and orgasm are one and the same thing.
They’re not.
Having an orgasm is the actual feeling — whereas ejaculating is a separate event that can either be accompanied by a climax, or not. This is why some men and people with penises feel like their orgasms are a bit “meh”, whereas others have what is referred to, as a dry orgasm.
The same goes for women and those with vulvas/vaginas. Not everyone experiences them and it’s yet to be determined if everyone is capable of it. For some who do squirt when they have an orgasm, it’s sometimes described as an even more intense experience.
What happens to your body when you orgasm
Orgasms are the result of lots of things taking place in both your mind and your body. They might not always be the earth-shattering experiences they’re described as — but climaxing certainly affects us physically.
Here’s what happens to your body when you orgasm: your heart rate and pain threshold increase, you might emit liquid, your brain floods you with oxytocin and turns off your logical side, and your pelvic floor muscles contract rhythmically. No matter how big or small your orgasm is– it’s obvious all climaxes are all the result of some pretty big things going on in your body.
Leigh Norén is a sex therapist with a Master of Science in Sexology. She helps people reduce stress, shame, & anxiety surrounding sex-so they can get their sex drive back and enjoy their partner again. If you’re looking to learn more about how your sex drive works, download her free resource, The Desire Test.
Originally published at Therapy by Leigh.
