When Is Enough Enough? Orgasm's Curvilinear Association With Relational and Sexual Satisfaction

Curvilinearity has been found for sexual frequency, but research has not examined whether curvilinear associations exist for other aspects of sexual relationships like orgasm consistency.

We examined whether there is curvilinearity and the nature of that curvilinearity between orgasm consistency and sexual and relational satisfaction for men and women.

With pooled samples of 1,619 and 1,695 men and women from Amazon's Mechanical Turk, we examined the differences of orgasm consistency values and both sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction through analysis of variance. We then tested for curvilinearity between orgasm consistency and sexual and relational satisfaction with regression analyses.

For men we found no evidence of a curvilinear relationship, but for women we found a curvilinear relationship between orgasm consistency values and both sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction.

Across tests, the overall picture suggests that there is no curvilinear association for men, but there is for women. For women, with each unit increase in orgasm consistency, the increase in sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction became progressively smaller. Past the 61-80% threshold for orgasm consistency, there was little gain in sexual satisfaction and no gain in relational satisfaction.

Physicians, therapists, and educators can reorient women's orgasm expectations by explaining that having regular orgasms-not necessarily always-is associated with satisfaction in their relationship and sexual experience.

Converging large samples and data analytic techniques evinced the curvilinear association between orgasm consistency and both relational and sexual satisfaction for women. However, this study is cross-sectional and correlational, which limits the conclusions we can draw from it.

While men's orgasm consistency is linearly associated with relational and sexual satisfaction, more consistent orgasms seem to be associated with women's sexual and relational satisfaction, to a point. Leavitt CE, Leonhardt ND, Busby DM, et al. When Is Enough Enough? Orgasm's Curvilinear Association With Relational and Sexual Satisfaction. J Sex Med 2021;18:167-178.