Anorgasmia and Me: How I Got to Get Off

When you think about sexual dysfunction, you probably picture an older man taking Viagra pills. But that’s only one type of sexual dysfunction.

According to research, up to 43% of people assigned female at birth (AFAB) and 31% of people assigned male at birth (AMAB) experience some level of sexual dysfunction. That’s not just when they’re old, either. It can happen at any time in life, and for any number of reasons.

There’s a load of different types of sexual dysfunction, but for me, it was anorgasmia — that’s the fancy medical word for never or rarely being able to orgasm. In my teens and early 20s, I’d easily be able to count the number of orgasms I had in a year on one hand – except for the years when that number was zero. 

You might think I’m nuts for just putting up with it for so long, and I wouldn’t blame you! But hear me out.

I’d never known any different, so I had no ‘normal’ to compare it to. I tried a few times to research what I was going through, but I didn’t know the right words to describe it beyond ‘I can’t come’. What I found fell into four categories:

1. Cis women couldn’t orgasm during partnered sex with cis men, usually because their partners were expecting them to come through penetration alone and/or lacked either the desire or the knowledge of how to get them off.

1. Cis women who hadn’t learned what or where the clit was. 

1. Sex toy marketing that told me I was guaranteed to orgasm if I bought this specific toy.

1. People saying the problem must be all in my head.

There were a few articles talking about sexual dysfunction (although not as many as there are today — yay, progress!). But I didn’t think that was something that could happen to young people. So I internalised the message that I must be either broken or doing something wrong. 

I read the guides. I bought a whole variety of toys. I did everything that was supposed to get me off, but it just didn’t happen. Masturbation ended up more frustrating than enjoyable; the fact that I likely wouldn’t come was a distraction from enjoying how it felt. Part of me wanted to give up, but I still had a sex drive. I wanted to satisfy it – I just couldn’t. 

Every time I had sex with someone else, I faked it. I was too ashamed to be honest, especially since I thought I was the problem. It was one of a bunch of reasons I couldn’t enjoy sex. 

I thought that maybe going on testosterone as part of my gender transition would help. Maybe part of the issue was dysphoria? So I sat through the waiting lists until I got my prescription, and… 

Nope. My sex drive was higher, I was more sensitive down there, but I’d get so close and just… drop. None of the pleasure and all of the frustration, with the added fun of wanting it more than ever.

So, you must be wondering, what happened? Why is this all in the past tense?

First of all, I learned what was going on with me. SSRIs — like the kind I’ve been on for ten years with some questionable levels of GP oversight — can really mess with you sexually. I thought for years it was just your sex drive that they affected, but I later found out that they can make it hard or even impossible to orgasm too. Considering I’ve been on them since my mid-teens, I didn’t really have any sexual functioning before to compare to, so it was harder to make the connection. 

The only time a medical professional has directly asked me about my sex life beyond the standard ‘are you pregnant?’ question was a psychologist at the Gender Identity Clinic requiring me to describe how I masturbate in order to access HRT. I neglected to mention any of my issues with orgasms out of fear that I wouldn’t be allowed to transition if he knew. 

I was never the one to bring it up thanks to the mix of embarrassment, not knowing it could be a medical issue in someone my age, and fear that any sexual issues could either be used to deny me transition-related healthcare or be dismissed as too complicated for any medical professional to handle because of my transgender body. (And it’s not an entirely unfounded fear; I’ve had GPs refuse to see me because they don’t feel confident providing any healthcare to a trans person). So I didn’t know that my medication could be part of what was causing my anorgasmia. 

Now I know that, it’s easier to let go of the shame and embarrassment. There isn’t anything unfixably wrong with my body. I’m not broken. And there are other people who have been through this too, and found treatments that work for them. 

I’m in the process of stopping my medication. I don’t have to live with the side effects if I don’t want to, particularly when I wasn’t sure how much the SSRIs actually helped me. I can’t say if coming off them will help with getting off, but it’s worth a try. 

So what has helped? For me, the thing that’s made the biggest difference so far is taking black maca supplements. 

It was completely by chance that I found out about them: I saw a recommendation in the replies of someone else’s tweet while scrolling Twitter one evening. Now, I’ll be honest: I’m sceptical of a fair amount of herbal remedy and supplement-based solutions, particularly if there’s limited research behind them. And I definitely don’t take my health advice from Twitter on the reg. But I figured that I didn’t have anything to lose by spending £6 on a pack of 100 tablets that I could always stop taking if they didn’t do anything for me. 

Three months later and I’m buying my second pack.

Black maca supplements alone, even before I started coming off my medication, meant the difference between coming less than 1% of the time to about 40% of the time. And, unlike my SSRIs or some of the other supplements I take, I haven’t noticed any major side effects. 

Being real, though: more often than not, the big O still just doesn’t happen. This isn’t a perfect cure and I’d be sceptical of anyone trying to sell one. It has been well over a decade for me, so I can’t expect to suddenly be able to come freely in just a few months. 

This isn’t something that can be fixed overnight, and everyone’s bodies and experiences are different. But if you’re like me, you’re not alone. And even if it feels like nothing will ever change, that you’re going to be like this forever, that might not be true.