Scarleteen

Hi. I've seen similar issues on your website, but none of them are quite like mine. So I'm a 16 year old girl and I'm a virgin. I have a girlfriend and when I kiss her or touch her I don't feel pleasure. It just feels good being close to her and making her feel good. She feels pleasure extremely well. My body physically gets aroused, but I feel no pleasure when she touches me or kisses me. So I've also never been able to please myself either. Ever. I've never felt pleasure down there. No matter what I do, I feel nothing. I might as well be rubbing my arm or fingering my mouth. It's really depressing actually. She feels everything and I love that, but I want to be able to feel good too. I feel absolutely nothing on or around my clitoris and nothing on, or around, or in my vagina. It just feels like pressure. And my girlfriend said maybe I'm not sexually excited, but I am. My body gets wet and everything, but no pleasure. Is there something that I can do or should I visit a doctor? I don't want to be like this forever. I love my girlfriend and want to stay with her for a long time, but it's not fair to her that she can't make me feel anything and I can't either. I've also dealt with anxiety and stress, does that play a role in my problem? Lastly, I DO have the desire to kiss, and touch, and have sex, but I can't feel any type of pleasure.

Hi Jaynedo, and welcome to Scarleteen.

It's hard to know exactly why you're not feeling much pleasure when you're being intimate with your partner. This is something you could bring up with a doctor, but unless you're feeling actual numbness or a loss of sensation anywhere (vs just feeling touch but not having it be particularly interesting or pleasurable), I think it's less likely that it's a medical issue.

One thing to keep in mind is that even if you're feeling sexual excitement, noticing that you're getting wet, etc. it could still be that you're just not feeling aroused enough for sexual contact to feel particularly wonderful. There can be a bit of a learning curve involved in terms of figuring out what works best for you in terms of what kind of contact and situation makes you aroused and otherwise feels great. And this can be frustrating, or confusing, but often it's just a matter of time and of some experimentation. Also, since you mention stress and anxiety: those can absolutely be a factor in being able to enjoy sex or other physical intimacy. If you're getting any sort of mental health support from a doctor or counselor this is something you could bring up with them.

Since you say you do enjoy things like kissing and touching your girlfriend, and you're getting general pleasure out of being intimate with her, I think it might be good to focus on what you can do together that's enjoyable for both of you, for the time being. Experimentation (either with her or on your own) might be helpful, but if it's not feeling fun, and instead you're feeling like this issue is haunting you whenever you're together, maybe it will help to just focus on what you enjoy now.

Here's a link about sexual response that might be helpful as well: Sexual Response & Orgasm: A Users Guide