Write your own happy ending

I didn’t see it coming. We’d been “dating” (whatever that means nowadays) for two weeks, and we still had not had sex. My friends were vocal with their opinions. “Dude, you better hurry up,” advised one of my guy friends. “Homeboy isn’t going to wait forever.”

I don’t see anything immoral about having sex on a first date, but generally the more I like the guy, the more likely I tend to hold off on the sex front. Aside from some painful pink or blue balls (pink balls are real; look it up), leaving room for mystery never hurt anybody. On the flip side, the sooner you have sex, the sooner you find out whether you’re sexually compatible. (I should keep the latter in mind more often.)

The night finally arrived. A group of us were out drinking on a Saturday night when I turned to my new guy friend and smiled. “Let’s go play.”

The next day I came home to find one of my roommate’s lounging on our sunny deck. Some people have a therapist and a couch, I have an awesome roommate and an awesome patio set and deck.

“So ... ” I eventually tell my friend, “we had sex last night.”

“And?” she asked. I can’t remember if I even told her about the good times, or if I focused on the downside of the situation.

“He can’t stay hard. Or orgasm,” I told her. “I’m not gonna lie, I was kind of insulted. This has never happened to me before.”

“Melysa ... ” my friend said, her voice trailing off as she cocked her head at me.

“What?” I said laughing. “Am I being a bitch about this?

“Do you like him?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, then,” she said, “give him time. Just have fun. You know the orgasm isn’t everything.”

“Yeah,” I nodded in agreement.

I should mention that one of the men I dated in the recent past had called it quits with me because I didn’t reach orgasm when he and I had sex. Trust me, it’s an awkward situation to go from kissing and holding hands one minute, to being walked to your car and being told he can’t help but need the orgasm.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said. “I really like you, but I don’t want to lie to you. Maybe that’s selfish of me, and maybe that’s a total guy thing to say, but it’s the truth.”

As I mentioned in the past, according to the Kinsey Institute, 75 percent of men always reach orgasm with their partner, while that only holds true for 29 percent of women.

It’s not uncommon for women to either not achieve orgasm from intercourse or to fake it. Besides stumbling over some whisky dick every now and then, I haven’t personally found men to have a problem getting there. And yet here I was, sleeping with a man who couldn’t achieve the happy ending expected and I was not comfortable with it at all. I felt like a chauvinist for letting it get to me. My ego was bruised.

Then, my roommate added, as if reading my mind, “Don’t you think that’s a double standard, to not want men to put pressure but to pressure on the man?”

She was right, of course. I know plenty of women who were hurt or felt less of a woman because she couldn’t orgasm, a situation I personally have been in multiple times, and yet here I was feeling inadequate, unsatisfied, and judgmental. I suddenly found myself sympathizing with all the men out there who expected women to convulse and shake, a sign they were doing it right.

Unlike the gentleman who broke it off with me, I first decided to do some research. I read about male orgasmic disorders, performance anxiety, and porn-induced sexual dysfunction. I was conscious not to say anything, although, let it be known, the man was not apologetic — which I found attractive.

We hung a few more times, but in the end we stopped reaching out to one another and, in the end, like most relationships, it fizzled out. And just as well it should, because it means we weren’t meant to be, neither together nor in play, and in the end that’s the difference between attraction and real chemistry.

It wasn’t about him, or me, it was about him and us together. There was nothing wrong with him, just as there was nothing wrong with me. But our bodies were trying to tell us something. A person should find a partner with whom she connects on an emotional and physical level. We deserve to be with someone who doesn’t think we’re broken and wants to fix us. Sometimes we don’t get the happy ending we think we deserve, but it’s that ending that allows for a new beginning with what could possibly be the real deal.

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