My friend from college asked me to share this mortifyingly embarrassing story about her sex life.

She used to have sex with a broomstick.

She said the embarrassing parts are important because those make people actually retell it. And she wants this to travel far.

So here goes.

When she first started having sex, it didn't feel like anything.

Every movie, every TV show, every book basically implied the same thing: penetration itself was supposed to feel incredible for women. Like orgasm fireworks.

But when she actually had sex, it mostly felt like... not much.

Which was especially confusing because she could orgasm easily on her own.

So in college she made it a mission to solve the problem. She approached it like a science project.

She bought one of those giant laminated Kama Sutra cards with every position illustrated like a football playbook.

Then she rigged a broomstick to her closet door with rope so she could test angles and motion.

She did these experiments in complete darkness because, in her words: "I didn't want my dead relatives watching."

She worked methodically through the positions on the card. Crossing them out one by one.

She added a stuff sack to the setup because maybe weight and pressure was part of it.

Nothing.

At one point she literally scotch-taped hair around the business end because maybe that was part of it.

Still nothing.

Eventually she wrote BROOMSTICK across the whole Kama Sutra chart.

That became her private word for sex that technically counted as sex but wasn't pleasurable.

She assumed something was wrong with her. Not "something feels slightly off." More like: "I guess everyone else got issued instructions I somehow missed."

And honestly, a lot of women quietly think this.

Not because they don't enjoy sex. Not because they can't orgasm.

But because sex with another person and masturbation exist in two completely separate categories in their heads.

That was true for her for many years.

More than a decade later

Then she and her husband were moving houses and he found the old Kama Sutra card.

"What's Broomstick?"

She started laughing and explained.

And instead of getting defensive, he just got curious.

"What do you mean penetration doesn't make you orgasm?"

She said: "It just doesn't."

Then he asked the question nobody had ever really asked her before:

"Well... what does?"

She knew immediately. She'd known for years. But that was masturbation. She'd never considered that kind of touch could be brought into sex with another person. Different worlds. Private world. Relationship world.

He asked if she'd take his hand and move it the way that felt good. So she did.

That night, while they were having sex, he did that same motion with his hand.

And she had an orgasm during penetration for the first time in her life.

Afterward she asked: "Was that weird for you?"

He said: "No. It was hot."

That moment rearranged something in her brain.

Not just sexually. Emotionally. Because she realized she'd spent decades assuming this thing was a problem with her body that would make him feel like he was bad at sex if she shared it.

She later discovered there was actual large-scale research on this. Not internet opinions. Not Cosmo tips. Actual research with thousands of women.

Turns out only about 15% of women orgasm from penetration alone. But when clitoral stimulation is paired with penetration, the number jumps dramatically.

And there was even a name for it: Pairing.

She said finding that out honestly made her emotional. Because suddenly her body didn't seem broken or complicated anymore. It was an information problem. One shared by a huge number of women.

That's also when she found OMGYES. She'd assumed it would be clinical and awkward, or fluffy sex tips pretending all women are identical. Instead it was basically: here are the actual patterns thousands of women discovered worked for them. Including Pairing.

What struck her most wasn't even the techniques. It was the relief. The women on there talked about these things so plainly and specifically that it removed this weird feeling that everyone else had secretly figured sex out except her.

That's why she kept trying to spread what she'd found. But nobody shared her social posts or forwarded her emails about the research.

People only started retelling it once she included all the details: the broomstick, the closet-door engineering, the scotch-taped hair, the giant BROOMSTICK written across the Kama Sutra chart, and how she showed her husband what she liked using his hand.

Because stories travel. Facts usually don't.

So she finally said: fine. Fuck it. Put it all out there.

That's what this is.

40% of women go for years thinking something was wrong with them because they didn't orgasm from penetration.

She was one of them. She bravely told something a hell of a lot of people keep to themselves. So women and guys out there can learn without going for years and years. So send this to your girlfriends. Tell your guy friends. That's the deal.

The research

OMGYES did the research that named Pairing. They're sending people to this story because their project is basically gathering discoveries just like this one, the things 20,000 women wish they'd known sooner, organizing them and explaining them in detail, with animations of the specific ways women discovered to do each technique.

They've made the Pairing section of their site free for anyone who comes from this story.

As told to whatworkedfor.us