Nadia Bokody on the ‘four-hour’ sex rule men need to know

Researchers discovered this secret hack to the female orgasm decades ago, but Nadia Bokody says few men are aware of it.

The soft thud of rain against the window.

I remember it coming into focus while she took shape in the dark; the motif on the lampshade stencilling over her décolletage.

Then in the yellow glow of the bedroom, she whispered, “What do you like?” and I relearned everything I thought I knew about pleasure.

As a late-bloomer lesbian who spent over a decade sleeping with men before coming to the realisation I was gay, my early experiences with women felt revelatory and emancipating – as though seeing the world in colour for the first time.

And yet, in the intimate exchanges I shared with other women, I continued to navigate sex in the way men had taught it to me – as a genital-focused, goal-oriented affair.

Anything that happened around it was superfluous and ornamental, like a long string of curled ribbon adorning a gift.

In a recent paper published in Gender & Society, researchers Nicole Andrejek, Tina Fetner and Melanie Heath argue women conform to this kind of heteronormative script as a result of being conditioned to prioritise male pleasure.

“Women as a group feel less entitled to the types of sex that lead them to orgasm, relative to men. Even in the most private, intimate settings, our findings show that gender and heteronormativity shape how individuals act,” the authors write.

Indeed, most of my sex life has been underscored by a feeling my climax is laborious and excessively time-consuming. Exploring what I enjoyed outside of a partner’s pleasure seemed especially gratuitous before I came out, and few men ever inquired about what it might look like.

Researchers discovered this secret to the female orgasm decades ago, but Nadia Bokody says few men are aware of it. Picture: Instagram

I’d also never known sex that wasn’t genital-centric, and my curiosity for what existed beyond that was surpassed by the unshakeable sense I wasn’t entitled to ask for it.

When I sat down to interview male escort Samuel Hunter last year about women who pay for sex, I was struck by just how ubiquitous this sentiment is among his clients.

“Most of the women I see have been giving so much of themselves … and just pouring from this empty cup, and they’re just not used to being on the receiving end of affection,” Hunter told me, revealing the biggest barrier his clients face is accepting “they’re allowed and deserving to receive pleasure and have an experience based on their pleasure and not just getting f***ed”.

Tellingly, in a 2017 study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, a mere 18 per cent of women reported vaginal intercourse alone was sufficient for getting them to climax, while a whopping 77 per cent said engaging in activities that allowed them to spend time building arousal significantly enhanced their orgasm.

Though it’s rarely acknowledged, researchers have known for decades the most reliable way for women to climax is via acts that don’t actually involve vaginal contact at all – it’s through interactions that make them feel seen and heard, without time pressure.

Masters and Johnson first proposed this concept back in the 1960s, when they introduced the “sensate focus” technique after discovering women were more likely to experience arousal, lubrication and climax when so-called “non-orgasm/non-arousal focused touch” was involved.

And their theory mirrors much of what Hunter practises with his female clients today – activities centred around building connection and safety that aren’t necessarily intended to be sexually stimulating, and so take the pressure off participants to perform any kind of pleasure.

This can look like touching areas of the body that don’t include the breasts or genitals, talking, cuddling, and kissing. And this approach is so effective at fostering authentic sexual pleasure and orgasm, Hunter revealed he quite literally spends hours practising it with clients.

Male escort Samuel Hunter. Picture: Supplied

“The shortest bookings I ever get are four hours. But it’s not four hours of pumping away. There’s maybe an hour to an hour-and-a-half of sex … That lead-in, and feeling comfortable and safe and chatting is important. [My clients] really need that connection to start with,” he said.

And while every woman doesn’t necessarily require – or even have available to her – four hours for sex, there’s something to be said for creating a wider intimacy window. Not only to expand our restrictive definition of sex, but to dedicate time to making women feel fully humanised and consequently more conducive to arousal and climax.

The thing about sexual scripts, or indeed any deeply ingrained narratives we’ve come to treat as default, is they don’t change until we rewrite them.

Ironically, that didn’t happen for me when I started sleeping with women, or even after I came out and had my first gay relationship. The story I’d internalised about my own right to pleasure that coloured outside the lines was so pervasive, I didn’t realise I was still referring to it as a queer woman.

Not until I felt seen, in the dim glow of the bedroom of someone who touched me in a way that felt safe and deeply humanising, and simply asked, “What do you like?”

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Originally published as Nadia Bokody on the ‘four-hour’ sex rule men need to know