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Confidence and Joy is a newsletter by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Subscribe here. You can also follow Emily on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!

This week's question has it all – love, sleep, science, and orgasms. Let's dig in!

Q: Hi I’m a 42 year old cisgender woman. I’ve never been lucky enough to experience orgasm naturally (without help from a vibrator). However in the last few years, I occasionally wake up to my body having an orgasm all by itself. What ON EARTH is going on?!! And if I can’t have one when I’m making love with my husband (who I’m very much in love with), then why is my body teasing me like this during the night?!! PLEASE help. Thank you.

A: This is such an important question!

First, let’s establish, for the record, what a “natural” orgasm is: any orgasm you have is a natural orgasm, regardless of the mode of stimulation.

Sometimes people worry about using a vibrator because it’s “unnatural” but that’s like saying that it’s unnatural to eat food that’s been preserved in a refrigerator. We use technology to make convenient what might otherwise be cumbersome. A fridge simplifies food storage. A vibrator simplifies arousal.

And yes indeed, orgasm during sleep is also natural, and it’s not uncommon—as always, I’m not going to tell you the percentage of women who report the experience, because it’s impossible to hear a statistic like that and not compare yourself to it and decide that you’re normal or not based on that number. But sleep orgasm definitely happens.

The “what on Earth is going on” is actually quite straightforward. You know how teenage boys experience wet dreams, ejaculating in their sleep? That can happen to adults, including adults who don’t have semen.

Over the course of the night, we cycle through multiple phases of sleep, including REM sleep, which is when we have those hyper-associative, hallucinatory types of dreams. During this phase, our bodies are paralyzed, with only our eyeballs ticking back and forth under our eyelids. (Why are we paralyzed? Well, when people don’t experience this paralysis, they act out their dreams, which can be dangerous.) But also, during this phase, the penis becomes erect—we’re still not sure exactly why, but there they are, coming and going over the course of the night.*

Though I haven’t seen research on this, it’s reasonable to assume that the same thing is happening to clitorises, the biological homologue of the penis. And if you have that arousal happening, sometimes, for some people, the arousal goes all the way to orgasm.

The most important thing for you to take away from all this is: your body is not teasing you. It’s just doing what bodies sometimes do. Sending self-critical, judgmental thoughts to your body for doing entirely normal things, will only hit your brakes more. Try replacing the “WHAT THE HECK” feeling you have right now with something more neutral, like, “Oh, that’s a REM sleep thing.”

You can read my post on the dual control model here.

If you would like to have an orgasm with your husband, my first recommendation is to use a vibrator with him. Of course you’ll have to have a conversation with him about it—just as some people worry that using a tool to orgasm is “unnatural,” some partners worry that the tool is somehow a “replacement” for the partner.

It might be that he’s all for it, no deep conversation necessary! He may be so interested in being with you when you orgasm that he’ll jump right into the opportunity to use a toy with you.

If he does have reservations, be sure to emphasize all the things he gives you that no mechanical object ever could: all that love you mentioned, all the pleasurable sensations of his hands and mouth and the whole-body touching of making love. A vibrator can’t gaze into your eyes. No toy can nibble your earlobe and stroke your breast at the same time. Not even the most advanced technology can breathe warm breath against your inner thigh. In fact, the vast, overwhelming majority of toys are not even designed for penetration, so they’re not even a replacement for that.

The main thing a vibrator does is create sensations more intense than any non-mechanical stimuli can. Adding that to your body while you make love is an enhancement that may be all it takes to get you to orgasm with your beloved.

I could go on here about a variety of other reasons people often struggle to orgasm with their partner, even when they can orgasm on their own, but that’s another post!

I hope this helps normalize sleep orgasms AND vibrator use, both solo and partnered. Always remember: the only measure of an orgasm is whether or not you wanted and liked it.

* In fact, when we’re sleeping our best, our night is divided into two parts: the first part of the night is full of deep, restorative sleep, and the second part of the night is full of REM sleep. When you wake up out of a dream, you’re probably waking up out of REM. When people say they “never dream,” what they mean is they don’t remember their dreams, and they may rarely wake up directly out of REM sleep. This is also a primary cause of “morning wood.” If a penis is erect during REM, and a person wakes up out of REM… there’s the erection! It’s not about being horny, it’s about sleep phases.

Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com

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Stay safe and see you next time.

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