Scarleteen

i’m 16 years old & recently i’ve been trying to masturbate , the last few times i’ve touched myself (clitoral stimulation) it takes a while for me to feel anything ; there’s like a buildup , and eventually it does feel good but only for a few seconds , and then it goes away and if i keep going it starts to hurt . How do i fix this ? am i doing something wrong ?

Hi prettyinpeace,

That sounds pretty frustrating! Am I understanding you right that this a newer issue for you and that in the past you've found it easier to feel pleasure and to orgasm during masturbation? If so, can you think of any big changes in your life that happened around the time you started noticing the difference?

Actually in the past when I’ve tried to masturbate it didn’t feel like anything at all so matter how much I tried. Now it’s like the situation I explained previously. So I feel like I’m getting somewhere but it’s still not good enough.

Got it, thank you for that clarification!

So, something I want to emphasize is that you're not doing anything wrong, and that you're far from the first person to have these kinds of struggles with pleasure and masturbation.

When you masturbate would you say you're pretty aroused and/or engaged in some kind of fantasy or sexual media? Or does it feel like your brain isn't very engaged in what's going on?

I’d say I feel physically aroused but I have noticed that when I start to touch myself I’m not really thinking about what’s going on or like you said i’m not engaged.

Got it, in that case I think a good starting place would be to find ways to get your brain more engaged in what's going on. Our brains are our biggest sexual organs, which means that if they're not super involved in what's going on, it's unlikely to feel like much. I really like this article as a starting place for figuring out how to loop our brains into the process: How to Understand, Identify and Make Choices About Desire

I’ll check it out, thanks!

You're very welcome!