When we think about the gender gap, we tend to think about cold hard cash. Or maybe a lack of role models. What we don’t initially consider is that there’s another issue at play, and it starts in our own beds. However, for one woman, it was the start of something big.
Meet Andrea Oliver, Co-Founder of Emjoy – the app that can help you orgasm. With over 80,000 users, there’s certainly an audience, something that Andrea wasn’t at all surprised by. “With nearly 40% of women struggling to orgasm, I knew that a resource was needed. So, I started searching the internet – and it’s so crowded with misinformation. So many articles written by people without any qualifications. I couldn’t find a digital proposition that was even similar to what I was looking for.”
A quick look through the app and you can see why Emjoy is developing such a cult following. With guided sessions, sexy stories and self-exploration, the app is both easy to navigate and to understand.
So why didn’t this exist previously?
“Honestly, I think five years ago, this would have been impossible. Simply due to the regulations within the app market. From Apple to Facebook, it’s tough to present an app like this as a wellbeing product, rather than pornography.” Andrea explains.
“While the app offers a selection of ‘sexy stories’, erotica isn’t the only offering. The key objectives are to help people with vaginas discover their bodies, though users have reported that the app has helped improve body image, self-esteem, as well as increase arousal. From finding the ‘G spot’ to mindful sex, Emjoy is designed to assist self-identifying womxn improve their relationship with both sex and themselves. In fact, some of our users have described it as a sex education!”
From sex therapists to mindfulness ‘sexperts’, Emjoy is run by a small team of experts, ensuring that their advice is worth listening to. Mia Sabat, Sex Therapist at Emjoy, is one of their in-house team. We asked her to answer some of the most searched questions about masturbation:
What can I do to make an orgasm more likely to happen?
The first and most important thing to do is to take time to get to know yourself and, without a doubt, the best way to achieve this is to explore your body alone. Only through this path will you be able to know what you like, how you want it and then learn to communicate it when you decide that you are ready to share these intimate moments with someone else.
Secondly, it is crucial to not get obsessed with having an orgasm. If we are thinking all the time that we must reach climax, that exact same thought will be the one that will not allow us to achieve it. Relax, enjoy, feel pleasure, love your body, and it will come.
There are many ways to help you feel relaxed. You might find it helpful to listen to some calming music, or to burn a scented candle, for example. Audio guides, like those provided on Emjoy, can also help. Once you’ve relaxed your body and mind, it will be far easier to enjoy yourself as you experiment and play.
I feel guilty about masturbating – how can I combat this?
Feeling guilty when masturbating is a more familiar feeling than it may seem. There are many beliefs around this practice that make it look negative. For either cultural, religious, or moral reasons, masturbation may be associated with something dirty, dangerous, or something you should be ashamed of. However, masturbation is not only a common activity, but a healthy one too, and there’s nothing to feel guilty about.
It is a safe practice that can help you to connect with your body better and give you more pleasure, which can help you to enjoy your sexuality even more. Not to mention, it’s a wellbeing matter!
Masturbation helps to relieve stress and sexual tension and it is a safe way to obtain sexual pleasure. It can decrease premenstrual tension or menstrual cramps. It also helps to stimulate the body’s defence system and strengthen the muscles of the pelvic and anal areas. It creates an overall feeling of wellbeing, improving self-esteem, and it can also favour higher levels of sexual satisfaction in couples.
Why am I not interested in masturbating?
We must not forget that sexuality is unique to us. There is no “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong”. If you like to masturbate, that’s fantastic for you. If you don’t, that is perfectly okay, too.
If you’ve tried masturbating and you are not satisfied or happy with the experience and you don’t feel like doing it, don’t do it.
There are many ways to practice self-love, and perhaps this is not one for you at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t want to masturbate. For some people, it might be that they haven’t yet found pleasure in masturbation, or it might be that they need to try different things.
For others, it might be they feel ashamed due to cultural and social beliefs and, for others, they may not have an interest in sex, or identify as asexual. The bottom line is that I always recommend getting to know oneself in order to understand what one wants to be happy. However you want to live your sexuality is your own decision, no one else’s. Don’t compare yourself to what other people do sexually. My best advice is to get a good sex education from reliable sources, to get to know your body, and then decide what you want.
How can I tell my partner they’re doing it wrong?
There is only one way to achieve this: to communicate.
This step is essential, and it’s a sensitive issue for many people. We are aware of this difficulty at Emjoy, and that is why there is an entire collection dedicated to learning how to communicate what you want.
To start, we need to know what we like, how we like it and what we don’t like. It seems very basic, but nothing should be taken for granted here, especially when dealing with communication with a partner. If you find it a bit strange to start a conversation so directly, you can ease the way by bringing it up in a positive way, perhaps describing what you are into.
It’s important not to focus on what the other person is doing wrong.
The timing is also crucial, pick the right moment to have that sort of conversation. Try to find a relaxing moment, where everyone is open and willing to listen.
If we’re not happy or satisfied in any way, we need to talk to our partner. Otherwise, we will end up storing things inside that bother us, perhaps leading to a lack of desire, faking orgasms and feeling disconnected.
Communicating our needs is a way of demonstrating our own self-respect. It is easy to understand if we compare it with food: we can easily say without a problem if we liked a dish or not. In that sense, this topic should be treated in the same way and with the same lightness.
Going forward, we have to understand that sexuality evolves, and we must be able to say what we want for the present and for the situations to come in the future.
