Finding Orgasms, “Too Much Sex” and Diverging Desires: Writer Allison Hope

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“Finding Orgasms, ‘Too Much Sex’ and Diverging Desires: Writer Allison Hope”

a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript

August (narration):

Writer Allison Hope was just beginning her sexual journey, at age 15, when she and a friend came up with an idea for a contest. At the time, they were working together at a children’s toy store in New York City – which is where Allison grew up. And the pair had been chatting about their blossoming dating and sex lives. 

Allison:

And determined that while we were starting to actively date, and to be sexually active, that neither of us had ever actually had an orgasm. And so we decided to gamify it. We created a little friendly competition, to encourage each other to experience what is probably one of the most enjoyable aspects of human existence, the orgasm. 

August (narration):

Ah, the orgasm. And as if that weren’t prize enough, they upped the ante.

The winner would get a pack of Rolos.

Allison:

-those silly little milk chocolate candies with caramel in the middle, because we both said that was our favorite candy at the time. 

August (narration):

So whomever reached the Big O first-

Allison:

-the other person would have to buy them a pack of Rolos. So it was game on.

August:

Did you know anything about orgasms at that point? Did you know that they were so wonderful?

Allison: 

I knew orgasm was the end goal. But I don’t think in my adolescence when I was pursuing, you know, sexual experiences that I had the end goal in mind really. Or did I know enough about my body to understand how to get there. It was more of this sort of ephemeral idea that was out there in the ether, this idea of orgasm, then it was this sort of practical function of my body that I could understand and reach. 

So perhaps it made sense that it became a bit of a competition and a game. Frankly, without even really looking up and understanding how I how I would get there or how I could encourage a sexual partner to help me get there.

August:

So was this specifically going to be partnered sex to get to the orgasm? Or was masturbation a part of your life at that point?

Allison:

I don’t think that at the time either of us considered that we could help ourselves to the finish line. Our social lives were rich, and we were meeting new people and having sexual experiences with new people. And so the focus always seemed to be on looking to sexual partners to pleasure us. 

August (narration):

And that is precisely what they hoped would lead to orgasms — and those caramel-filled chocolates.

Allison’s friend is the one who came up with the contest. 

Allison:

One of the things we always joked about was she sort of hyper sexualized herself in some ways, and had many sexual partners and had admitted that while she had partners had never finished and had never orgasmed. 

And so I admitted the same thing I was starting to explore my own sexuality and my own queer sexuality and and to experiment with different people and friends with benefits and people I met along the way. 

I think it started as a joke, that we realized that there was some irony in being sexually active, and being quite sexually active, but actually not reaching orgasm. 

August (narration):

It wasn’t only a goofy game, though. Allison said that even at that young age, they recognized that something more meaningful was going on.

Allison:

We were supporting one another in that journey as friends to meet that new part of ourselves.

And it’s funny, because in some ways, I thought a friendly competition to reach orgasm would help me get there more quickly.  It actually added some pressure, where I felt like it was a race to the finish line, literally. And I wanted to win. And yet somehow, I think the pressure made it harder for me to do that. 

August (narration):

Raise your hand if you relate. Maybe not to the whole Rolo contest part, but have you ever tried so hard to come—or felt so pressured to come by someone else—that doing so seems impossible. Pushiness on anyone’s part, unless it’s your kink, tends to be a bit of a buzzkill. 

Allison told a few people she was sleeping with at the time about the contest, and they did their best to cheer her on: Come on, you can do this!

Allison:

But I think I had a little bit of a hang up at that moment, and a bit of a mental block, which impacted my ability physically to actually reach the finish line.

I wish I could tell you that I won the bet. But I did not. I lost. I did not orgasm, I did not get my Rolos. But, I am pleased to say that my dear friend won, so at least it was not a total loss for all. And so I was out, you know, 55 cents or whatever it cost at the time to buy her pack of Rolos. 

August (narration):

Allison admired her friend, and she was a bit jealous. And those feelings would linger on – along with related orgasm challenges.

Allison:

That mental block stayed with me, admittedly, and I don’t know if it was caused by the competition, or that was just one piece of it along the way. 

August (narration):

Allison was able to flourish more in her sexuality, though. Not long after the contest and her job at the kid’s toy story, she started connecting with a broader queer community in the city.

Allison:  

Through my adolescence sort of exploded into this scene of exploring my queer identity and moving through different gender expressions and patrolling the streets with my older queer siblings and mothers and fathers, as we called them at the time and and looking for sexual partners and trying on different people for size. 

And again, the irony there is that I had many sexual partners in many different diverse experiences, and yet, still had not found my orgasm.

August (narration):

Thankfully Allison was still able to find pleasure: physically and socio-emotionally, she said. 

Looking back, she considers the stigma around orgasm—her lack of them— something she put on herself.

Allison:

As a Virgo and somebody who wants to put their best foot forward and be seen as somebody who has it all together and, and is enjoying everything and doing well, I think I sort of devalued the period at the end of the sentence, if you will. And absolutely, still enjoyed,— I wouldn’t say all of the experiences; some were raw and negative. But I absolutely had many sexual and other experiences that that I enjoyed through those years.

August (narration):

She fell in love for the first time, at age 18, had an attentive partner. And she enjoyed some very spicy getaways at Fire Island (which is not to be confused with Fyre Festival, by the way). It’s a thin, barrier island off the southern shore of Long Island, and known for its protected beaches. [ocean waves, birds chirping softly]

She visited Fire Island annually, for about 10 years, starting just after college. She and some friends would rent a house in Cherry Grove, which is known as the queer, lesbian section of the island. And it was basically a party, 24/7.

[rock/party music starts: “Overcome”]

Allison:  

All rules abandoned, anything goes, clothes optional. 

August (narration):

Happy hour starts at 10am, just a “total debaucherous blast,” she said.

Allison:

Every year, the time on Fire Island was was filled with sort of sexual freedom. Societal rules were just abandoned.

August (narration):

One of the last times Allison visited Fire Island, she learned that there are limits to how much sex she’d like to have.

Allison:

You know, sexually explicit, debaucherous. You couldn’t really walk more than a few feet without finding a new sexual partner to to have fun with. 

August (narration):

She couldn’t even go to the bathroom or take a shower without an orgy taking place. And she learned that there is such a thing as “too much sex”—at least for her.

Allison: 

It feels like a silly, in some ways selfish, thing to say. I know, some people are out there like searching for, for, for partners and for sex. At that time, I felt like, by the end of the week, I was worn out. I was done. Which for me at the time was like a shocking sort of realization.

By the end of that week, I was ready to, to just be alone and be celibate for a little while. [soft ocean waves + birds chirping]

August: 

Was it the emotional energy? Was it the physical…like, we can have friction and soreness. Was it kind of just all of it? The way you’re describing it, it almost sounds like, I love my favorite dessert. And then I eat it all day long. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, that was great until it wasn’t.

Allison: 

The dessert analogy is perfect. 

August (narration):

The perfection of an ice cream sundae and the perfection of an amazing lesbian orgy on Fire Island in the summer, she said, [orgy sounds] are parallel in her brain. And yes, she was sore physically by the week’s end. And emotionally?

Allison:

It takes a lot of energy to engage socially and sexually like 24/7 for a week straight. I was ready to be alone by myself with a book and my clothes on.  [birds softly chirping in the distance]

August (narration):

Allison now looks back on those adventures at Fire Island with nostalgia. Her life, including her sex life, have changed a great deal since her last visit there—especially since meeting her now wife. [emotional music starts]

Allison:

It was a really quiet and beautiful little dance that we did when we first met. Very slow, and getting to know each other. 

August (narration):

The opposite of what she had experienced with anyone else before. 

And, shortly before meeting her, Allison found her orgasm. 

Allison:

Alone one night, just decided to try it myself. And, and push past whatever those mental barriers were, that had been preventing me from just relaxing, and leaning into that feeling and that crescendo, if you will.

August (narration):

Finally, she said, she understood the function and process involved with orgasm. And there was no going back. Every sexual experience that involved sex toward orgasm after that was going to lead to one. 

August:

And was that first orgasm what you had imagined or hoped for?

Allison:

It’s strange to put this in the same bucket. But I feel like expectations around what an orgasm might feel like before ever having one is sort of like trying to guess at what it would feel like to fall in love or look at your child in their eyes for the first time when they’re born. It’s a feeling you cannot possibly quantify or qualify until you’ve actually felt it. 

August:

You mentioned pushing past the barriers. What did that teach you about those barriers? 

Allison: 

I wish I could say I astutely understood the barriers. I can honestly say, I’m not sure. With other things in life, sometimes the thing that feels insurmountable becomes accessible only because you just keep going.

And that’s the best way I can describe it for myself. That moment when my feet stopped moving, and I stopped walking, I just had to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. And that is the thing that helps me to reach orgasm. That moment where the wall usually stands, I just kept moving through it. And I don’t know if it was anything more than that. But it worked. 

August:

I kind of love that you found it by yourself. Does that feel special to you like, you’d had all these orgies and these really sexual experiences with so many different people, and then it’s like, ‘oh, this is mine.’

Allison: 

It feels perfectly right. I think you can liken it to that phrase, ‘you can’t truly love others until you love yourself.’ And starting from the inside out is really important. 

I can’t imagine it turning out any other way. I can’t imagine that it would have made sense for me to find my orgasm through someone else, with someone else, before I first was able to identify it with myself.

[acoustic, encouraging music]

August (narration):

When Allison started dating her now wife, she said the sex at the beginning was some of the best she’d ever had. At the same time, she hadn’t imagined that she would want exclusivity, much less marriage.

Allison: 

Monogamy was not something I necessarily bought into ever. Coming of age as a teenager into my 20s with multiple partners, and the backdrop of that is that marriage equality was not yet law of the land. So frankly, the sort of traditional institutions like marriage, or even homemaking, were just never things that I thought were going to be a part of my story because legally and socially, they weren’t acceptable. And even more so I had very much bought into the idea of counterculture. And I don’t need those institutions to thrive. 

And so, meeting my now wife really grounded me and surprised me in many ways, because I couldn’t see past her. There was no one else. When I met her, my sights were locked.

And now we’re 13 years later, and I still feel that way. You know, there’s just no one else who holds a candle to her. And so monogamy sort of found me, and then the institutions followed. 

It’s amazing how meeting one person can change your perspective – and really my whole worldview and my position in it.

August (narration):

Early in the relationship, as I mentioned, the sex was incredible. Some of the best Allison had ever experienced. But there were some notable differences in their respective libidos—which didn’t surprise Allison.

Allison:

I’ve always had a lot of sexual partners. I’ve always been very sexual. So I can honestly say, I’ve not often had partners that matched my level of sex drive. So I didn’t think much of it when my when I met my now wife and our sex drives were a bit mismatched. 

August (narration):

Allison leaned into quality over quantity, and worked on shifting her expectations. It wasn’t exactly breezy, but they were working through the issues. Things came to a head, though, she said, when about two years into the relationship, her wife entered perimenopause – the time of life for a person who menstruates when their cycle starts to change, leading up to the end of periods and fertility.

Allison:

And we think that was the cause of a real just drop off in her sex drive – from something to really nothing. 

August (narration):

Allison’s wife isn’t alone there, by the way. While some menstruating people experience increases in sexual interest with perimenopause, others notice a decline.

For folks who wish to increase low desire, addressing the underlying cause and expanding your ideas around sex and pleasure often help a great deal.

For others, “low sex drive” is less of an issue that needs “fixing” and more of a new reality that simply…is. And either way, navigating the changes with a partner can be challenging.

For Allison, her wife’s libido drop felt sudden and dramatic, as though they’d gone over a cliff.

Allison:

I fell off that cliff. I felt I felt that drop in a way that was that was earth shattering for me, and having to reconcile I’m in this monogamous relationship and I’m a sexual being and I want to be sexual with this person more than anyone I’ve wanted to be sexual with and now I can’t.

August: 

I can imagine a lot of pain and frustration on both of your ends, you know, where the love is so strong. And I’m sure there were just many layers of feelings. Were you able to have good communication about it? How did that go, talking about these issues?

Allison:

Our communication has improved significantly over time. 

I would say at first, there were a lot of big feelings without a lot of big words to back them up. That led to falling out for a little while, which was actually a helpful thing, because we both then we’re able to gain this additional perspective that, okay, the circumstances may not be ideal. But the love is still very much there, and just as strong as ever, and we want to work through this and be together. So what does that look like? 

That has required a herculean effort on both of our parts in terms of trying to really empathize and understand one another and where we’re coming from, trying to meet one another where we are, in terms of what are your comfort zones, and ‘how are you feeling right now?’ And just really learning how to communicate in a way that is respectful, and where we’re not just talking at each other, but we’re actively listening. 

August (narration):

Allison described that process as a journey — one that’s been fraught, but also “tender and incredibly empowering.” They both went through stages of grief: denial, anger, acceptance.

Allison: 

There was a point when my wife gave me permission to go sleep with other people, knowing and respecting that I’m still a sexual being and have both physiological needs and desires and wants that she had come to terms with, and peace with the idea that I would still be with her, love her want to come back home to her.

And it’s interesting, because that permission gives me a real sense of comfort and freedom, that I would feel much more constrained, if I didn’t have. 

August (narration):

Allison has opted not to act on that freedom, which has completely surprised her.

Allison:

And I think in good part, that’s because of my earlier experience which I talked about – that I have had so much diverse sexual experience, so many different partners, all different scenarios.

August (narration):

All of that, paired with her marriage and the freedom she was granted, Allison said, made her realize that the most urgent parts of her own sexual needs can be satisfied by herself. She’s also learned to separate out her sexual needs and her intimacy needs.

For example, she still needs physical affection-

Allison:

And I can get that from my wife. And I still need sexual satisfaction, and I can get that from myself. It’s not the ideal. But for me, it is good enough.

August (narration):

In addition to the many positive sexual escapades Allison has had, she’s also been through cheating—so she recognizes how trust is built and how easily it can shatter. 

While she believes that she and her wife are mature enough to navigate non-monogamous relationship agreements—which she knows work for many people-

Allison:

It’s not something that I want to explore right now.

August (narration):

If you relate to these relationship dynamics – differences in libido or orientations, you’re far from alone. 

Allison has written about her story before. Her articles and personal essays have appeared in major publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Elle and more. And when she shares about her sexual journey, she hears from folks who relate: they often remind Allison of several years ago, when she and her wife were first grappling with diverging desires.

If you relate, she recommends separating out all of those external variables and social pressures and expectations from what you truly want and need.

Allison:

And it’s so easy, I think, for those things to get muddled and conflated. 

August (narration):

To feel like, well, ‘I’m married, so XYZ should be true.’ Or to compare your sex life or desires to what you hear about from friends or see on TV. 

Allison:

You know, and we have these expectations and these pressures we put on ourselves. And what I found is when I’m able to boil all of that off, and look at it almost in a scientific way, too, like the physiological.

August (narration):

She’s even been able to pinpoint one to two days per month, very cyclical, when she knows she’s going to physiologically need sex more than others. 

Allison:

And I’m able then to separate out the emotion from the physical and that’s huge. And that helps you have honest and real conversations with your partner. It helps you know yourself really well and what you need and want.

And I realized in saying all this, how far I have come from that 15 year old, placing a bet on a pack of Rolos to have an orgasm. And I have to say, I’m impressed. [laughs] I’m impressed with myself.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August (narration):

Beyond the articles and essays I mentioned, Allison’s writing has recently ventured into erotica. And like the past few guests you’ve heard from here, she has a story in The Big Book of Orgasms, Volume Two, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

August:  

I’m curious whether erotica writing is a part of your sexuality and your expression. Did your journey in some ways lead you to continue exploring sexuality that isn’t just sex?

Allison: 

I’m a writer by nature. And it’s part of who I am and how I express myself. I have long used writing as an outlet to explore questions and challenges in my own head and heart, and have come to realize that I have the very lucky gift and opportunity to be able to share that with others and to find that others share the same concerns and challenges and emotions and feelings and questions. 

And eotica feels like a very natural outlet to be able to explore my sexuality in ways perhaps that I used to explore physically. And I’m now exploring, sort of virtually, if you will, with my words.

August (narration):

Her story in The Big Book of Orgasms, Volume 2, called “The Phallacy,” is her first piece of published erotica writing. 

Allison: 

I’m only just starting out on that journey, perhaps, but I did discover in the process that being able to write about sexual experiences, real or imagined, is a wonderful way of getting into my own head and exploring those parts of desire and sexuality that might be dormant or unexplored.

August (narration):

Allison wrote “The Phallacy” as a fantasy turned reality tale, and it’s based on a true story from her personal life. 

Allison:

So many of us have these missed connections, or lost connections – those moments where we look back and say, “I really wish I had taken advantage of that opportunity. I really wish that flirtation had turned into something more. I really wish I had gotten a chance to get that last kiss.” 

My story brings that to life. And it’s the story of two people who had a really sexual energy between them working together. And it never was actualized. They moved away, they moved on with their lives, they went on to do other things… They come back together 15 years later, and they get to complete that fantasy and be together for the first time.

[acoustic chord riff]

August (narration):

Learn more about Allison Hope and find links to her articles and essays at urbaninbreeding.com. And find her erotica story, “The Fallacy” in The Big Book of Orgasms, Volume 2, available at most booksellers or through the link in the show notes. 

For more Girl Boner fun busy augustmclaughlin.com. There, you can check out my books, join my Patreon community for fun extras, explore past episodes and sign up for my email list for occasional updates and spicy surveys, which I often weave into upcoming episodes. 

You can support the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts (that’s the purple iPhone app) or the iTunes Store, and by letting a few friends know about it. 

Thanks so much for listening.

[Outro music that makes you wanna dance!]