New research has investigated the role that male ejaculation plays in female sexual satisfaction for the first time. The preliminary study found, among other things, that many women report experiencing more intense orgasms when their partner ejaculates.

The findings appear in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

“The study was mainly informed by clinical observations. During my practical, clinical work I noticed that women have very strong opinions regarding men’s ejaculation — and I am not speaking about the clinical criteria that most research usually focuses on such as intravaginal ejaculation latency time or how long the man can control or prolong his ejaculation,” explained study author Andrea Burri of the European Institute for Sexual Health.

“Here, we are talking about other ‘non-clinically relevant’ aspects, such as how much ejaculate he expels or how loudly he moans, etc. I noticed that many women find it very distressing when their male partner suffers from delayed ejaculation or the inability to ejaculate — mostly because it gives them the feeling of not being desired or attractive.

“Yet, there is not much — well next to none — research out there that has taken a closer look on how the man’s ejaculation affects women, their own sexual satisfaction and their sexual functioning and what aspects they consider important,” Burri said.

For the study, Burri and her colleagues surveyed 240 sexually active, heterosexual women (ages 20 to 60 years old) regarding their sexual preferences. They found that 50.43% of women considered it very important that their partner ejaculates during intercourse.

“Quite a lot of women indicated that they themselves experienced more intense orgasms when their partner ejaculated, or when they had the feeling that the partner’s ejaculation was more intense, and/or when he expelled a greater ejaculate quantity (subjectively felt),” Burri told PsyPost.

Women who viewed sex as more important also tended to view their partner’s ejaculation — as well as their own orgasm — as more important.

“Not surprisingly, how important it is to the woman that her partner ejaculates during sexual activity depends on how important she overall considers sex to be and also how important it is for her to experience an orgasm. There are plenty of women who tell me that it is about intimacy and that they actually don’t care about whether or not they have an orgasm. But for some women it is indeed important,” Burri explained.

About 18% of women preferred that their partner ejaculate before they reach orgasm, while roughly 28% preferred to orgasm beforehand. But the majority (53.5%) had no preference.

“Overall, we can say that although male ejaculation and its different aspects seems to play an important role for women – in one way or the other – the study demonstrates a considerable variability of women’s attitudes toward ejaculatory characteristics,” Burri said.

The study — like all research — includes some limitations. For instance, the study was conducted in Switzerland and the participants tended to be younger.

“Also, all the variables that we were interested in were assessed in a ‘self-report’ way, so when you ask about the ejaculatory volume of course we were unable to measure it and had to rely on what the women considered ‘a lot’ or ‘little’. Then again it is about subjective perception because even when you have sex you are unlikely to measure how much he objectively expelled but how much you feel he did,” Burri explained.

“It is noteworthy to mention that there is quite a large proportion of women that are repulsed by men’s ejaculate and this deserves a closer investigation as well,” she added. “However, this was beyond the scope of the present study. Equally, there is quite a huge variability on how women perceived ejaculate and the effect it has on their sexual functioning, so the sources of this variability need to be further explored as well.”

The study, “The importance of male ejaculation for female sexual satisfaction and orgasm ability“, was authored by Andrea Burri, Joceline Buchmeier, and Hartmut Porst.