Can Sex Feel 'Too Good'?

Sometimes sex feel a bit too good and we can get overwhelmed. If we are too excited then we can stop enjoying it. Here’s some advice for a reader about this and how to deal with it.

Hi. So my boyfriend and I have dated for a couple months now and we just started having sex. We talked about it prior and he’s dominant and I’m submissive. So when he starts to [have sex with] me he will go slow at first but then just wants to [have sex with me] fast. I get so turned on and I honestly want him to but then it almost feels too good? Is that a thing? Like I can’t handle how good it feels and I have to tell him to stop. Is that normal?

I’m not the ‘normal police’ so I can’t really tell you what’s normal, but it is something that people experience. Sex can feel so good to the point where it’s a bit too much. However, just like all other new enjoyable things, we can learn how to like them by understanding our bodies a bit more and bringing a bit more communication into it.

Why sex can feel ‘too good’

Sex can feel really good to the point of it feeling a ‘bit much’ or a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of reasons for this. Although you have experienced pleasure from other things (eg eating something nice, laughing at a dad joke, or playing table tennis) it’s a more intense version of that pleasure. (There’s more in this article about knowing when we have orgasms and what this can do in the brain.) Physiologically, you are experiencing intense pleasures that involve being really out of breath, new feelings in the body all while being pretty naked with someone you really like. It also involves your nervous system working flat out to both be excited and not so overwhelmed that it feels bad. It’s a lot.

The emphasis on Orgasms

Also orgasms aren’t just a simple physiological response to stimulus (such as being tickled), but they have this huge cultural weight to them. That they are the ‘best thing ever’. Or that when we have orgasms from ‘real and proper sex (penis in vagina sex)’ then these are ‘the best kinds of orgasms’ or the ‘ultimate kind of pleasure’. That they are ‘the best thing ever’, that this is ‘something we do when we are in love with someone’. (And that it ‘makes us fall in love more’.) As you can tell with the ‘ ‘ I’ve been using I try not to do that here at BISH. Orgasms feel great, or meh, or not great, just like everything else.

What does research say about this?

Here’s a quote from an academic article about how young people feel about their orgasms.

(The numbers are the anonymous code that they give to each person who did the questionnaire and the F here means female).

Orgasm was experienced as the “ultimate pleasure,” as a form of extreme and/or unusual pleasure (e.g., “It feels so good it almost hurts,” 079[F]; “It’s the most extraordinary feeling I have experienced,” 097[F]), often better than any other pleasures of sex (“When I actually orgasm it is amazing and better than all the rest of the buildup,” 030[F]). Participants typically described the physical experience of orgasm as involving tingles and contractions in either the genital region or all over the body, followed by a sensation of (physical) release. This is best captured by participant 021[F]: “It starts by building up from inside me, my whole body starts to tingle as the intensity builds …. The intensity then spreads across my whole body and then when I feel like I am going to explode. The intensity is released.”

Opperman, E., Braun, V., Clarke, V., & Rogers, C. (2014). “It Feels So Good It Almost Hurts”: Young Adults’ Experiences of Orgasm and Sexual Pleasure. The Journal of Sex Research, 51(5), 503–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2012.753982

So it’s a lot. Now for some advice.

It’s totally okay to stop sex if it’s too good

If something feels good but too good, you can stop. Just like if you are being tickled to death, or laughing so hard it feels too much, or really enjoying a game of table tennis, it’s okay to stop. The ‘should story’ about sex (which is retold by sexologists in white coats like Masters and Johnson*) is that sex ‘should’ end in a climax and not just slowly wind down over time. This means that even though with any other activity it’s okay to slowly just calm down and stop, culture tells us that it’s kind of not okay with sex. That we’re supposed to keep going until there is a climax like orgasm or ejaculation (which are different). It sounds like you are able to say stop and that your boyfriend is listening: great!

*Masters, W.H., & Johnson, V. E. (1966). Human sexual response. Little, Brown. Which you can borrow from the Internet Archive for free here I think their ideas have been very unhelpful.

A reminder about your nervous system

During the Covid lockdowns I wrote a lot about stress, but this article about how to deal with stress still stands up. I explain that we have nervous systems, which are responsible for our bodies in ways we don’t have to think about. Breathing, heart rate, twitching, laughing, orgasms, that kind of thing. There are two parts to it, the sympathetic nervous system is activated when we are excited but we also need the parasympathetic nervous system to keep us calm enough to enjoy the excitement.

So during sex what might be happening is that your sympathetic nervous system is so activated that your parasympathetic nervous system can’t keep up. This is when it feels ‘too good’ and you have to stop. The key to enjoyable sex is to do it in ways where you can both be relaxed and excited at the same time. This means that at the very first sign of it feeling a ‘bit much’, you may need to breathe out, slow it down a bit, or try something else.

You can pause, or try something else

You’re using the term pounding* which I am reading as ‘sexual intercourse’ or ‘penis in vagina sex’ or ‘fucking’. It sounds like you’re enjoying this but it’s totally okay to enjoy other forms of sex too. Sometimes sex can be overwhelming when you are both doing the same thing at the same time (fucking). So you could pause and try some other things that might help you to be a little bit calmer and still excited. You could both try this resource about working out what kind of sex works for you both.

*I edited this out in the question because I thought it was a bit too ‘sexy’ for some of my readers, hope that’s okay

Maybe it’s ejaculation?

One thing that might be happening is that the feeling you’re having is ejaculation? For some women* the feeling of ejaculation or squirting might feel so close to peeing that they have to kind of stop themselves. It doesn’t sound like this in your question but it might be. I’ve written more about this here in my article about the clitoris and vagina.

*with vulvas

Find the speed of sex that works for both of you

He’s doing it slow and then speeds up and then he’s doing it fast. That might feel nice for him, but a different speed might be better for you and better for you both. I think that the ‘should stories’ that men are told about sex is that they must ejaculate / orgasm from sexual intercourse (what you describe as pounding). Maybe this means he is speeding up because that is on his mind? You could ask? Instead, maybe through the use of other words during sex like ‘slower’ or through moving your body a little bit more slowly you could find a speed that is good for you both. Remember that even though it feels like he is having sex with you, you are both having sex with each other.

More talk and communication

As I’ve written about extensively here at BISH and in my book Can We Talk About Consent, consent and communication are much more than just ‘yes / no’ or in your case ‘stop / go’. There’s always a middle ground and a spectrum. This is true for what you do, but also how you do it. So finding ways to communicate (as you have) both before and during sex is really good and important. Can you both maybe also try communicating with your bodies more and learn to find the sex and the way of doing sex that works for you both.

Make it good for you both

The amazing thing about sex is that it gives you the opportunity to become something other than your ‘self’. When you think of sex as an activity that you are both doing together, rather than doing it to each other, then it can really transform your sense of self. You can feel both the other and yourself at the same time, merged together. Feminist existential philosopher Simone de Beauvoir talks about that in her book ‘The Second Sex’

The erotic experience is one that most poignantly reveals to human beings their ambiguous condition; they experience it as flesh and as spirit, as the other and as subject.

I got this quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy but you can also read the whole thing here https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1949_simone-de-beauvoir-the-second-sex.pdf

Maybe if you think of yourselves as being part of the same assemblage when you’re having sex then you might both be able to have a better time too. I really like the idea that when we’re doing anything with anyone, then we become this kind of molecular assemblage of things like: noises – pillows – speed – feelings – background music – conversations – words – legs – hips – etc. There’s a bit more of this philosophical way of thinking about ‘the self’ in this article I did about how to impress someone.

See also Fox, N. J., & Alldred, P. (2013). The Sexuality-Assemblage: Desire, Affect, Anti-Humanism. The Sociological Review, 61(4), 769-789.https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12075 (Original work published 2013)

The submissive / dominant thing

It’s interesting that you mention that you agreed your roles in advance about who is submissive and who is dominant. I’m glad you can have those conversations. However, I just wanted to point out that you don’t have to be submissive or dominant. You can be neither, or both, or switch. Like I say above, you are both having sex with each other. Also remember that being submissive is not the same as being passive. I’ve written about this in my article about being embarrassed when a boyfriend asks questions after sex. I know you know this, but you can actively ask for what you want and move your body how you want when you are a sub. A lot of people who do kink say that actually the submissive often has more power.

Conclusion

Sometimes sex can be a bit too enjoyable and we can get overwhelmed. If we are too excited then we can stop enjoying the sex we are having. By learning the first signs of when this is happening we can slow down, or breathe, or try doing something else to keep us calm. It’s also always okay to stop.

BISH is run by me, Justin Hancock. I’ve been a trained sex and relationships educator since 1999. I’m a member of the World Association for Sexual Health. As well as BISH I also have resources, a podcast, and a coaching service for over 18s, as well as some of the best RSE teaching resources around. Find out out about my other work at justinhancock.co.uk. My work has featured (positively) in the media, like the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian, Sky One, and Novara Media.

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