The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey part five

a continuing report on the state of the sexual union

A Decade ago, the story goes, a reporter asked Richard Burton just what it is that makes a woman good in bed. The great modulator coiled his eyebrows and spoke for a generation of men. "Nothing," he said. "All she has to do is lie there."

That was then. Now the sexual revolution is a fête accompli. The Eighties were supposed to be dessert, but now that most of our old assumptions about sex have been discarded, what have we been dealt in their place? Mouseburgers, leather men and little old ladies on the radio. How many people go to bed and struggle with wave upon wave of conflicting information, so full of advice on how to, they can't quite remember why?

Part of the reason we launched this series was to loosen things up a little, to present information without necessarily turning it into advice. This month, we are turning things over to 14,761 guest experts on female sexuality: the women who responded to The Playboy Questionnaire. They seem to know why as well as how to, and they are going to lead us to the focal point of contemporary sex, the female orgasm.

The pill, the women's movement and the sexual revolution have all contributed to a sexual society in which most of the standards are centered on women. The culmination of all the changes that have taken place in the past 20 years is that the one question that counts has become Was it good for her?

We asked all our respondents what they think is the best moment in intercourse. The most popular answer among the men was "When my partner comes." The most popular answers among the women were "Foreplay" and "When I come." What might appear a difference of opinion is really agreement--acceptance of the way we measure good sex.

Ascendant as it is, the female orgasm is still a mystery to many men. It is no less a mystery to many women. After 5,000,000 years of human evolution, sex researchers have yet to figure out how many kinds of female orgasm there are. Every month, the Playboy Advisor (since Errol Flynn's death our foremost expert on sex) is inundated with letters on the subject. Most are from men who have seen more women going than coming. On top of all the rest, men are just now learning to deal with the phenomenon of multiple female orgasm. Is one enough? A woman's capacity for orgasms is, theoretically, unlimited. Is anything enough? Multiple orgasm represents a boon to women. At the same time, women who have long had trouble achieving even one orgasm may now feel pressure to have waves of them. And there's little doubt that any emphasis on multiple female orgasm brings greater and greater performance pressure to bear on men. Modern swordsmanship seems always doubleedged.

When one woman climaxes like, lightning, why does another lie chilled and disappointed? When one woman sleeps with three men, all of whom climax in ten minutes, why does she come in three minutes with one, in ten with another and not at all with the saddest but wisest one? Male technique has something to do with it, but even Richard Gere will tell you there's more to it than that. Why do so many men swear they've had the experience of feeling like different men when they sleep with different women?

We have no shortage of questions. We can't claim to have all the answers, but some of them are here. One in particular--timing--seems paramount in determining the differences between women who climax easily and women who don't. We will discuss it in detail, but even that isn't nearly all there is. Most of us passed adolescence long enough ago to know that sex is impervious to formula.

You probably remember Lady Chatterley. She had a lover. The two of them had truly pitiful sex at first. It got better and better as they went along, which can be an inspiration to us all. Not everyone bought the story, though. Norman Mailer is only one of many sociosexual critics who keep pointing out to us that the course of true sex never runs quite so smooth.

We are aware that sex is riddled with riddles. There are always psychological colors flying around, shifting like the northern lights. A woman stimulates herself and comes in two minutes; her partner does it for her and she doesn't come at all. Why is that? Sex is mysterious. It is, finally, an irreducible communication, whether of bodies only or of bodies and souls. Much of it simply is not quantifiable.

What we have in this survey, however, is an enormous number of people who are willing to talk about their sexual lives. We will tell you about the numbers. We will speculate about the intangibles. We will not pretend that percentages can represent sex, but we think they can describe it. In this case, they paint a picture of surprising consistencies.

We divided the women who answered our questionnaire into three groups. The orgasmic women (40 percent of the total) always or usually climax when they have intercourse. The sometimes-orgasmic women (38 percent) may or may not climax. The nonorgasmic women (20 percent) rarely, or never, reach orgasm when they have intercourse. We won't be talking much about the sometimes-orgasmic women. Unless stated otherwise, their responses fall between those of the two other groups.

We have a much higher percentage of regularly orgasmic women in our sample than, say, Shere Hite did in her Hite Report on female sexuality. That must reflect the differences between her ideology and ours, not to mention the differences between her respondents and ours. The charge that has been leveled at Hite is that she went out looking for female dissatisfaction and male incompetence. We like both words better without the prefixes; and so, apparently, do our readers. We did not go looking for orgasmic women. The largest sample of highly orgasmic women yet studied came to us through a questionnaire we published in the January 1982 issue of Playboy. Since we found virtually no difference in the frequency with which all three groups of women have intercourse, we will be talking throughout this article about differences in quality, not simply quantity of sex.

Almost all of the orgasmic women--86 percent of them--say they are satisfied with their current sex lives. For them, the sexual revolution and its aftermath appear to have added up to a freedom to feel pleasure. Still, more than three quarters of the sometimes-orgasmic and 56 percent of the nonorgasmic women also claim to be sexually satisfied.

It is a sociological axiom that when you ask people if they are satisfied, about 70 percent will say yes. Nobody wants to be a complainer. Given that, then, it is the drop-off from 86 percent to 56 percent that is significant here. More than half of the nonorgasmic women say they are currently satisfied, but their other responses would fill a streetcar with desires.

We asked all our respondents, for instance, to tell us how they would change their sex lives. They could pick from a whole list of possibilities or write in their own. Orgasmic women averaged 3.1 suggestions. Nonorgasmic women averaged 4.2. While that is not enough difference for us to announce a sex gap, it turns out to be a window of vulnerability.

Whether or not a woman is orgasmic is surely the most important element of her sexuality. Why, then, do so many nonorgasmic women tell us they don't mind being left high and dry? Fifty-nine percent say they can be "sexually satisfied without having an orgasm," compared with just 37 percent of the orgasmic women. You might call that diminished expectation or quiet desperation. Either way, it still appears to be compensation, not satisfaction. The nonorgasmic women we surveyed want to have orgasms. Because the sex they are having now does not provide them, they have to look for substitutes.

Orgasmic women told us their most intense orgasms occur during intercourse. But when asked what provides their intense climaxes, nonorgasmic women choose masturbation over all other activities. Oral sex takes the middle position for both groups.

How come masturbation is first choice among women who have trouble climaxing through intercourse? Why aren't they turning to oral sex?

Part of the reason is the same for women as it is for men. Oral sex requires a partner. Masturbation, like playing second base, takes only a good set of hands. Fifteen percent of the nonorgasmic women say they have no steady sex partner, while only eight percent of the orgasmic women have no steady partner. That leaves the 85 percent of nonorgasmic women who do have partners, though, so sexual solitaire is not the only game they play.

The nonorgasmic women get the least oral sex of all the women we surveyed. Perhaps that's because few men perform cunnilingus to the point of orgasm, seeing it more as a form of foreplay. Since so many of the women say they want more oral sex, those men might want to bone up on cunnilingual technique. More (or better) oral sex may help nonorgasmic women become more orgasmic in intercourse. Experience suggests that many women who have problems climaxing through intercourse are very responsive to oral stimulation.

Time out for a public-service reminder: The clitoris is sensitive and doesn't require more than the most delicate attention. Women often complain that men are too rough with female genitalia, just as men grumble that women are too gentle. Shortly before orgasm, the clitoris retracts under its hood and may then require slightly more deliberate stimulation. If penetration occurs at that point, along with some manual stimulation of the clitoris, some nonorgasmic women may find that they can climax.

Eighty-seven percent of the orgasmic women rate themselves as good lovers, but so do 74 percent of the nonorgasmic women. Here again, self-description is somewhat deceptive. The more specific the question, the more we found out about the differences among the groups of women we surveyed.

An ability to discuss sex without blushing seems one important distinction. More than twice as many orgasmic women as nonorgasmic ones are comfortable talking with their partners about sex. Nearly three fourths of the orgasmic women say they are very comfortable. The numbers for the two other groups are significantly lower. Sixty-two percent of the sometimes-orgasmic and roughly half of the nonorgasmic women can talk about sex with ease.

Previous studies have reached similar conclusions. In one, women who did not talk about sex--who simply waited for good things to happen--were labeled "romantics." Women who openly and constructively discussed sex were called "realists." Seventy percent of the "realists" but just 23 percent of the "romantics" were highly orgasmic. Good communication is one way men and women tailor their sexuality to their partners'. It's one of the key factors in getting in sync, and that, as we are going to see, may be the prime ingredient of good sex.

Does candid conversation make women more orgasmic? Or is it just that having orgasms makes them want to sing their praises? There is almost certainly an interplay. Talking about sex lets a person in on what pleases his or her partner. That leads to better sex and then to more communication. It's a mutually reinforcing cycle that orgasmic women ride more smoothly than the rest.

Alan and Donna Brauer, the gurus of Extended Sexual Orgasm, tell couples to "spend at least five minutes after each session debriefing. Talk about what you experienced and what you learned. Say what you liked about watching each other. Say what surprised you. Say what you didn't like and would do differently next time." That kind of sexual round table is only a part of the Brauers' overly intricate E.S.O. program, but it's good advice on its own. When sex talks, people tend to listen and learn. Orgasmic women may have learned better than most that talking about sex can make it less problematic and more successful.

What about age differences? Do women climax in chronological order? You might expect younger women, who grew up when the benefits of sexual liberation were the accepted facts of life, to be more orgasmic than older women. On the other hand, you might expect older women to be more orgasmic, since they have had more time to learn from experience.

The two factors probably cancel each other out. The women Kinsey studied in the early Fifties did seem to become more orgasmic with age, but our figures indicate that if experience beats youth, it's by only a little.

The older women we surveyed are slightly more orgasmic than the younger ones. The primary difference comes in for women 30 and older. As they age, they are somewhat more likely to achieve orgasm through intercourse than younger women are. Also, the married women in our sample are a shade more orgasmic than the single women.

We noted in part two of this series that a wedding ring is not a sexual aid, that our data indicate that sex doesn't improve after marriage. We're not contradicting that here. It's time, not marriage, that may help couples get their sexual signals straight. Other influences certainly have their effects, but the most important one of all--we will return to it--is what we call "sexual synchronization."

Orgasmic women are a little more daring when it comes to extramarital sex. Forty-one percent of them have had affairs, compared with 36 percent of the nonorgasmic women. The difference is not enough to threaten the institution of marriage. The reasons women have affairs--reassurance of desirability, sexual variety, a rush of excitement--are the same for both groups. Orgasmic women are no more likely to have "open" relationships with their partners or their husbands. Of those who have affairs, less than 13 percent of each group report having them in order to find "better sex." We think it is wise not to draw conclusions about extramarital sex and orgasm. The reasons people have affairs have more to do with personal needs than with sexual ones.

Every reader of romance novels knows money is an aphrodisiac, but in our data, the alliance between big bucks and big orgasms is shaky. (We have always known it's only the act of spending money that's an aphrodisiac.) The only fiscal/physical correlation our figures turn up is one of extremes: Almost three times as many of the women who always climax as those who never climax make $40,000 or more. "The very rich are different from you and me," says F. Scott. "Yes," replies Ernest, "they have more excellent sex."

So far, the best generalization we can make about nonorgasmic women is that they are less active--in bed, in conversation, in terms of affairs and even intercourse--than women who climax more often. They do not necessarily like it like that. In response to the question Would you like to be more active during sex? nonorgasmic women are about half again as likely as the rest to say yes.

Orgasmic women, on the other hand, take a decidedly active part in their sex lives. They are much more sexually satisfied than their nonorgasmic counterparts. They don't want to be more active in sex; they're already active. They can't come up with many ideas for improving their sex lives. They are not really looking for more oral sex, though they wouldn't knee you in the ear if you tried to provide it. They could stand a little more foreplay. They would like even more intercourse than they're getting now. (Three out of four orgasmic women have intercourse two to three times a week or more. Sixteen percent have intercourse three times a night or more on the nights they set aside for sex.) Nowhere do they appear as truly dissatisfied as nonorgasmic women. Nonorgasmic women say they're satisfied, but they are searching for better sex the way Diogenes sought an honest man. Orgasmic women are satisfied. Still, most of them would be willing to turn up the gain and go for even more.

If those distinctions were the only ones we could find, we'd be finished now. The paragraphs that follow should be a clue (continued on page 182) Sex Survey (continued from page 96) that we're not. Now's the time to turn to the subject of sexual timing. Before we do, it's worth noting that these data should be taken only as general guidelines. So much writing about sex in recent years has called itself definitive, making sex sound mechanical, step by step. It is a paint-by-numbers approach to a subject whose complexities demand more than that. Even the few studies we have seen published about sexual timing have made sex sound like a track meet in which the slowest time wins. Nothing has been that baldly accessible since the Telly Savalas of ten years ago.

The experience of sex is subjective. So is the experience of time. To some people, ten minutes in bed seems like four. To others, it seems like forever. While we have enough respondents in our sample to even those differences out, we want to leaven what could be a mechanical discussion with an understanding of what is most important in sex--the experience as perceived by the participants.

We asked our respondents to tell us how long it takes them to climax. A third of the women said it depends on their mood or the mood of their partners. The rest gave us estimated durations and it is from those estimates that we have learned the following.

If we say a man takes ten minutes to climax and would like to take longer, it is not the ten minutes that matters. What matters is that he and his partner be compatible. Timing is a vital element of compatibility. If he takes ten and so does she, that's fine. If he takes five and so does she, that's fine, too. If there's a discrepancy--if he takes five and she takes 15, say--our information may help them compromise at ten. The key is not the actual duration. They may both say they take ten minutes; it may actually be nine or eight or six or 20. The key seems to be that both partners' sexual time line be roughly the same. That's the way it is for most orgasmic women and their partners.

With that said, here is what the women we surveyed have to tell us about timing and sex.

Forty percent of the orgasmic women usually become aroused in less than five minutes. Slightly more than a quarter of the sometimes-orgasmic and less than a quarter of the nonorgasmic women can become aroused that quickly.

Take it up to ten minutes and our two extreme groups diverge even more. Eighty percent of the orgasmic women need less than ten minutes to become aroused. But just about half of the nonorgasmic women take more than ten minutes.

It is clear from those numbers that fore-play is more crucial to women who have trouble reaching orgasm than to those who don't. All women may enjoy it, but nonorgasmic women need it to reach what Masters and Johnson call "the plateau phase" of sexual response. That's the stage in which sexual excitement is under way and the body begins preparing for orgasm. Women who don't get enough foreplay often cannot reach even the plateau phase, much less orgasm.

Sex researcher Seymour Fisher, author of The Female Orgasm, doesn't think a man's sexual behavior has much to do with bringing a woman to orgasm "beyond the point of delivering a certain necessary minimum of stimulation." The women we surveyed indicate that the necessary minimum varies quite a bit from woman to woman--that's the whole point. No woman is going to reach the heights of orgasm unless she has first reached the plateau.

Once aroused, the women we surveyed take off in different directions. Nonorgasmic women are almost evenly divided in terms of the time it takes them to climax (on the rare occasions they do). Forty-seven percent say they climax in less than ten minutes. The rest take longer than that.

The sometimes-orgasmic women we surveyed are faster. Nearly 60 percent of them reach orgasm in less than ten minutes.

The breakdown is much more lopsided among orgasmic women. Just 28 percent need ten minutes or more to go from plateau to orgasmic peak.

It ought to be apparent by now that there are sizable differences in women's speed of sexual response, just as there are in their capacity for having orgasms. Are those differences intrinsic to the women themselves, or are there other factors at work?

Some distinctions are intrinsic. A woman's emotional and physical make-up determine to a large degree whether she climaxes in a minute or in an hour. Fisher thinks it all revolves around a woman's past ability (or inability) to hold on to the objects of her affection. Masters and Johnson think the quality of clitoral stimulation is what counts the most. For those reasons and others, it has long been accepted that many women simply cannot achieve orgasm.

We will never join Hite in the quest for female superiority, but we're cool on "frigidity" as well. Orgasms are as normal for women as they are for men. Our findings suggest that the women we have been calling nonorgasmic might better be described as "slowly orgasmic."

We asked our female respondents to estimate the time it takes their male partners to ejaculate. They did a pretty good job. The men said it takes them an average of ten minutes. The women estimated 9.6 minutes.

The men Kinsey studied back in the Forties took, on the average, only two minutes to ejaculate. That means men have quintupled their time to orgasm in less than 40 years. Our data show that most men still climax before most women, but the gap is narrower.

What happens if it narrows even more? What happens if it closes? The Tonight Show's ratings will take a dive, for one thing. But for another, we may find that our nonorgasmic women have been just a step or two behind the rest.

The orgasmic women in our sample are the most likely to have lovers who take their time. Although women overall say their partners take less than ten minutes to ejaculate, nearly 40 percent of the orgasmic women say their partners take longer than that.

Now look at the other extreme: Three out of four nonorgasmic women tell us their lovers are in and out in less than ten minutes.

That is another mutually reinforcing cycle. Orgasmic women can work themselves into a sexual lather much faster than nonorgasmic women. Because a great many men can't or don't postpone their own orgasms for longer than ten minutes, a woman who climaxes quickly has a far better chance of climaxing at all.

Say a woman's partner invariably takes the average time--ten minutes. If she takes 11, she'll almost always have trouble reaching orgasm. She may never reach it, in fact. Experience with orgasm begets greater ease in reaching it, so women who are quickly orgasmic find it easier and easier to climax. Conversely, women who are slowly orgasmic may well remain stranded--not quite getting there time after time.

Orgasmic women, to put it simply, are more in sync with their partners. Only 28 percent of them take more than ten minutes to climax. Of that 28 percent, the vast majority have partners who take just as long. But more than half of the nonorgasmic women take more than ten minutes. Of those, 66 percent say their partners take less than ten minutes.

We can make this in-sync business clearer by looking at the numbers a different way. The in-sync factor is working against more than a third of the nonorgasmic women we surveyed--34 percent of them take more than ten minutes, while their partners take less than ten minutes. But it is working for the orgasmic women we surveyed--only eight percent of them take such a handicapping combination to bed.

Women reach orgasm in different ways and at different speeds, but being in sync is often what determines whether or not they are going to reach orgasm at all.

Sexual synchronization, however, is easier spelled than achieved. Most women could invest more time and care in stimulating women's bodies. Most women could invest more effort in being receptive to such stimulation--in paying closer attention, in responding more viscerally, in remembering that men don't want sex to be an ironman contest, at least not all the time.

Most men still do not take as long to reach orgasm as most women do, though they have made nearly unbelievable strides in less than four decades. Most men still begin sexual encounters with a fast start. That's great in a foot race, but in sex it's no advantage. The best equalizer is probably foreplay. Almost all women would like more of it. Many of them need more.

They want their men to take all the time they can. To take a little extra time in foreplay, a little extra care in oral sex, a little more interest in open conversation about sex. They would like their men to try to stay on the safe side, since all that is liable to happen is that they--the women--might climax first. When all is said and done, it may be that not every woman can have an orgasm every time, but everybody wants to have a chance.

So much for proselytizing. Now we get to do our favorite kind of demolition, the exploding of sexual myths. They are the tried and falsisms of a subject that's only about two feet from our hearts, so we have to have a personal stake in them. Please watch out for flying myth material.

• Women can "get in touch with their bodies" through masturbation. Ok, this is not quite a myth. The myth comes in when people believe such self-service "getting in touch" will make a woman more orgasmic during intercourse. While masturbation may be a good way for both men and women to learn about their sexual responses, our data indicate that it doesn't have anything to do with intercourse. The women we surveyed do not use masturbation as practice.

More than a third of the nonorgasmic women masturbate more than once a week. Only a touch more than a quarter of the sometimes-orgasmic and orgasmic women masturbate that often. It is the women who have trouble climaxing who masturbate the most, so the practice-makes-perfect doctrine doesn't hold up.

• Women who don't have orgasms in intercourse get them anyway, through oral sex. Another misapplication of cause and effect. According to our figures, orgasmic women get cunnilinged more than anyone else. Fifty-four percent of them receive oral sex every time or most times they have sex. For the sometimes-orgasmic women, that figure is 47 percent. For the nonorgasmic women, it is only 38 percent.

Many men perform cunnilingus until their partners are barely aroused and then commence intercourse. They see cunnilingus more as foreplay than as a way for women to reach orgasm. It can, of course, be both, but that doesn't seem to be the case for many couples. Almost half of the nonorgasmic women complain that they don't get enough oral sex. Even more of them say they don't get enough foreplay. In both cases, they would like their men to show more stick-to-itiveness. We suspect that the reason they want more oral sex is that they apparently are not getting orgasms from it now.

• Orgasmic women have the most lovers. The best, perhaps, but not the most. Before long, we will dispense with all the variations of practice makes perfect. "Synchronization makes perfect" would be closer to the truth. Unless partners spend their sexual time working toward getting in sync, all the practice in the world won't make a great deal of difference.

Eight percent of the orgasmic women we surveyed have had more than 50 lovers. Eight percent of the sometimes-orgasmic women have had more than 50. Eight percent of the nonorgasmic women have had more than 50. All you can say about people who have had a lot of lovers is that they have had a lot of lovers.

• Women who lose their virginity early are the most orgasmic.Men who lose their virginity early may be the most likely to pop off in high school, but that's about as far as you can go with this one. The age at which a woman begins sexual activity seems to have no bearing on her orgasmic capability. Women who started in back seats at drive-ins at 16 are no more nor less orgasmic than those who started in honeymoon suites at 24.

We have nothing against practice, early or late, but timing is demonstrably more telling. In any case, isn't it time to mothball the phrase "lost her virginity"? Wouldn't "first had intercourse" or "began sexual activity" be better? "I lost my virginity" sounds almost as antique as "Where's my zoot suit?"

• Women who use reliable birth control are more orgasmic than women who don't. The theory is that women who know they can count on their birth control are more relaxed about sex than those who aren't so sure. It makes sense. It isn't true. There is no relationship in our data between orgasmic capability and birth control. Orgasmic women, in fact, are the most likely of all to say that they use no birth control (and we included tubal ligation and vasectomy in our birth-control question). Interestingly enough, though, nonorgasmic women are the most likely to say they rely on coitus interruptus--a singularly unsatisfying way to pull out of a sexual encounter--as their form of birth control.

It may be that danger spices the sexual experience. It may be that orgasmic women are less concerned with the consequences of sex and more concerned with the sensations. Until some smart sexologist sends us the perfect elucidation, we'll hedge and say it's probably a little of both.

• Women are responsible for their own orgasms.Macha motivation is fine, but it is presumptuous to take a shared responsibility and try to make it your own.

We asked all of our respondents, Who is responsible for the female orgasm? (The male one seems to take care of itself.) There were only infinitesimal differences among the groups of women--or between the women and the men, for that matter. Almost everyone thinks women and men alike have to pull their own sexual weight, an acknowledgment that many hands do, indeed, make lighter work.

By the same token, this is actually something of a trick myth. Our question is similar to the question Are you satisfied? in that most people probably answered the way they thought they should. Doesn't it sound sensible and responsible to say we all share the burden for everybody's orgasms?

Orgasmic women, like the rest of us, pay lip service to that kind of egalitarianism. They are not waiting around for something to happen. They are far and away the most likely of all the women we surveyed to say that "my own orgasm" is the one great moment in intercourse. Nonorgasmic women don't value orgasms so highly. They are less than half as likely as orgasmic women to put their own climaxes at the top of the sexual list.

Whoever is ultimately responsible, orgasmic women are out there making their orgasms happen. That is one of the secrets of their success.

Recent years have taught us that real men don't eat quiche, that real women don't pump gas, that there are certain prescribed ways to make love to a woman or a man and that little old radio psychologists can make hay till the cows come home spinning advice on the relative merits of spitting out and swallowing sperm. We would hate to be left out of the fun of packaging sex information with catchy hooks, so maybe it's time for some weird but true information. File it under the heading Orgasmic Women don't Count the Cracks in the Ceiling.

Orgasmic Women think variety's the Spice

Orgasmic women are more experimental than most women. They think the sexual experience can be heightened dramatically as it plays itself out, as a matter of acts. Of the most sizzling segment of our orgasmic sample--the women who never have sex without orgasm--28 percent say a "willingness to experiment" is the single best thing you can find in a lover.

A diamond is forever, but a little blueberry jam and a heat-seeking replica of the MX missile is tonight.

Orgasmic Women disagree with Fingerprinting Experts

Fingerprinters know that the finger tips are, objectively, the most sensitive parts of the body. They have the greatest concentration of nerve endings. True but boring. The women in our survey say their breasts are, subjectively, the most sensitive parts of their anatomy. The orgasmic women put breasts over the top, but we counted almost as many breast votes from the sometimes-orgasmic and the nonorgasmic women.

Those women--and there are a lot of them--can be sexually triggered by men who stimulate their breasts gently. They are sure to be turned off by men who treat breasts the way gorillas treat American Tourister luggage.

Orgasmic Women don't buy what Old Wives say

The ancient matrons' adage has it that familiarity breeds contempt. The orgasmic women we surveyed are not too primed for breeding in the first place, but they would probably say that familiarity breeds contentment.

The married women in our sample are slightly more orgasmic than the single women. There is every indication that that's because the married women have had more time to get in sync with their partners. Since women's orgasmic patterns are as individual as their fingerprints (see page 187), men who have spent a considerable amount of time with the same partner have a certain advantage. They have had time to get acquainted with their partner's desires and sensitivities.

Women who always climax (they are the most convulsive 27 percent of our orgasmic group) are the most likely of all to be in relationships of more than four years' duration. Women who never climax are the least likely to be in such long-standing arrangements. The moral of this young wives' tale? Invest years in a relationship with an old wife and she'll only develop contempt for you. Spend the same amount of time with one of the women who answered our survey and you may learn the story of O.

Orgasmic Women know Jacqueline Susann was right

Once may be enough for many folks, but for orgasmic women, it's often just aperitif. Most of the men and the women in our survey have intercourse once during an evening devoted to sex. Of all the women we surveyed, just six percent have sex more than three times during those nights. But of the women who always climax, 17 percent usually go for more than three times when they go for it at all.

Orgasmic: Women are like Astronauts

One of them may be one, for all we know. We hope so. But there's no doubt many of them are highly susceptible to G forces.

We didn't ask our respondents about the G spot. Our questionnaire was written nearly two years ago, when sex researchers were still looking in vain for the F spot.

"Discovered" by and named for Ernst Gräfenberg, the spot lies in the front wall of the vagina, about two inches above the vaginal entrance. There is a great deal of controversy over how much the power of the spot may have been exaggerated, but every woman seems to have one. Dr. Theresa Crenshaw (author of Bedside Manners) and colleagues, in fact, claim to have "indisputable histologic evidence" that the G spot in the female is analogous to the male prostate. We'll all be hearing a great deal more about this in the near future.

The G spot can be hard to find if the woman in whom you're searching for it is lying down. It will probably be easier to locate if she is sitting or squatting. To find it, explore the upper front wall of the vagina, applying more pressure than you would to her external genitalia. If the spot bulges a little when you stimulate it, that's swell. You're doing fine. It should feel like a small pebble between your fingers. Keep applying a firm upward pressure on the vaginal wall. See what happens. Practice and patience may be the keys here. Pushing downward on the woman's abdomen, just below her navel, sometimes helps stimulate the spot.

Some women don't get much out of the G-spot stimulation. For others, it leads to a series of powerful orgasms and (maybe) even female ejaculation. G spotters are still looking for the source of the female's ejaculate, which is like semen but carries no sperm.

Apparently not just another trendy night spot, the G spot may help free women from the clitoral tyranny that has been imposed by Masters and Johnson, Hite and others. It's the most sensational development in amateur spelunking since the Davy lamp.

The past decade's emphasis on women and women's orgasms has brought the sexes closer to equality. At the same time, it has put greater and greater performance pressures on men. One of the most striking examples of those pressures that we've yet seen came across the Playboy Advisor's desk the other day.

A sociologist asked a group of men if they would be willing to give up orgasms for the rest of their lives--that's right, forever--in exchange for being made consummate technical lovers. You know--the mythical kind who always leave women gasping, glowing and grateful. Did the men rise up and do the pogo on the sociologist's supine form?

Hardly. Most of the men said they'd take him up on the offer.

Those men are admirably unselfish, but they've got their hearts where their gonads ought to be. Rather than dream of Faustian bargains, the women we surveyed seem to be saying, men should simply expend more time and energy--especially time--getting in sync with their women. Women are looking for experimental, considerate, patient partners, not sacrificial lambs.

The Sixties promised mutual gratification and the Seventies delivered mutual manipulation. Here's hoping what's left of the Eighties can usher in some sexual synchronization. If that happens, there won't be so many men who think all a woman has to do is lie there, counting the cracks in the ceiling.

By Kevin Cook in collaboration with Arthur Kretchmer, Barbara Nellis, James R. Petersen, Janet Lever and Rosanna Hertz.

Although more than half of the Hunurgosmic women report that they are sexually satisfied, their responses to questions such as this one seem to qualify their answers. More foreplay would be a welcome change for nonorgasmic women; nonorgasmic women are also more likely to say they want more intercourse than to say they want more oral sex. Nearly half of the orgasmic women want even more intercourse than they are getting now.