This Guy Doesn’t Get Why His Girlfriend Needs to Masturbate After Sex & I Think I Just Rolled My Eyes Straight Out of My Head

A recent article in The Guardian’s sex advice column, Sexual Healing, has gotten a lot of attention after this guy wrote in with a question whose answer seems pretty obvious to everybody but him.

I mean, really, what do you even say to that?

His letter in full reads, “I have been in a relationship for nine months. I thought the sex was good for us both, but when we finish she tells me to shower. I wondered why, and now I know – she masturbates. She has done it multiple times; I think she is insatiable. What should I do?”

The columnist, Pamela Stephenson Connolly, is actually incredibly generous (some might say coddling or perhaps even irresponsible) in her response, suggesting “Many women crave a second orgasm, especially if she has been super-aroused during intercourse.” Now, that is true, as are some of her other points like the fact that many people “find the type of orgasm they have during masturbation (for women, often clitorally focussed) to be qualitatively different from what is experienced during lovemaking.”

Sure, yes, maybe that’s what’s happening here. Maybe this guy is just so thrilling in bed that his girlfriend stays aroused long after they’re done. Sure. … Or maybe the answer is more obvious.

A natural answer to the writer’s question of “What should I do?” is “Ask her!” but it doesn’t sound like the communication between these two is great. Or at all existent. (At least not when it comes to sex.) And–not knowing anything at all about his girlfriend–it’s not hard to see why this guy might not be super easy to talk to about your sexual needs. The shaming inherent in the assumption that her desire to masturbate makes her “insatiable” is unacceptable.

Even if she did climax with him (sure) and she has craved multiple orgasms “multiple times,” a sexual appetite does not indicate the sort of deviance he seems to be implying. And that his mind immediately went to imaging how damaged she must be instead of wondering whether she is truly satisfied with their sex life makes it pretty safe to assume that no, she is not.

A desire for sexual satisfaction is in no way shameful, and while I wish this woman and any woman (any person at all) didn’t feel the need to hide her masturbation, this guy is utterly ridiculous for feeling so scandalized over finding out that she does.

(image: Matthew Henry / Burst)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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