Everybody's familiar with the concept of blue balls: the fabled, gut-wrenching pain that results from not "finishing" after hooking up.
To the many men whom I have personally given blue balls, let me just say that I apologize. I always thought you just told me you had blue balls to guilt me into giving you a blowjob to completion.
It wasn't until the past few years that I realized the blue balls phenomenon is actually a real thing. And no, it's not because I kept hearing my sexually unsatisfied male friends complain about it; it's because I myself experienced it.
The first time it really happened to me was in college. My boyfriend at the time found it fun to finger me up until the exact millisecond before I was about to have an orgasm and then stop. When done correctly, this teasing move was the most delicious torture on planet earth and eventually led to a massive, explosive finish.
When done incorrectly, like if his finger slipped in a stray direction that completely threw off the rhythm and killed my orgasm game, I was left with the throbbing, hot pangs of discomfort that I could only call "blue clit."
It felt like he'd engulfed my vagina in scorching flames without giving me a fire extinguisher.
My ex wasn't the only man to ever give me blue clit. Men who only sort of knew how a vagina worked gave me blue clit. Men I really liked but with whom I was taking things slowly gave me blue clit. Men who were actually doing a great job, but my mind was focused on what I was going to have for dinner later instead, gave me blue clit.
Any time a man got me close to orgasm without actually pushing me over the edge, I experienced warm, uncomfortable pulsations in my clitoris. It didn't actually hurt per se, but it didn't feel good, either.
But was blue clit actually real? Despite the fact that women are way less likely to actually have an orgasm during intercourse than men, I'd heard so much about blue balls and practically nothing about the flipside phenomenon. Was blue clit a legitimate biological phenomenon like blue balls?
I needed answers to this important issue of our time. So I talked to Sid Azmi, sexpert and owner of Please New York sex shop in Brooklyn, NY, who told me blue clit is absolutely real:
"It's not a declared medical condition, but just like men can have that backup of blood due to the non-release of orgasm, that can happen to women, too," she said.
To review your anatomy basics, when a man becomes sexually aroused, blood flows to his penis and gives him a boner (that's the scientific term). If he's unable to orgasm and release all that blood, the blood that pooled there remains stagnant and puts painful pressure on his testicles, giving him blue balls.
Something similar can happen to women, too. When a woman becomes sexually aroused, blood flows to her clitoris, causing it to swell and harden. The labia and the vaginal walls also get pumped with blood. If all that blood is then not released via orgasm, it can cause a female version of blue balls. AKA blue clit. (AKA vindication. This sh*t is real.)
Azmi does say the blue clit phenomenon is not nearly as painful as blue balls is for men. This is because our vaginas are constantly getting filled in and out with blood (not just during sexual arousal), so we're used to the whole "filled up with blood" feeling down there:
"I think [blue balls] are more prevalent in males because the blood flow goes up and it takes a longer time for it to come down. For females, [blood flow] is a lot more natural...because we're meant to have babies," she says.
Basically, this is one of the few times in our lives we can actually be thankful for our periods. (See also: Letting us know we're not pregnant every month.)
Even though blue balls aren't as painful for women as they are for men, the phenomenon still happens to both of us. I asked Azmi why she believes we don't talk about blue clit as often as we should. She says it's because we're "more accommodating" to the male orgasm, and women often aren't given the same permission to get off:
"A lot of women fake their orgasms because they think it takes too long, [or] because guys don't do it right, and they don't know how to tell their partners they're not doing it the what they want to... So [if the] tension doesn't get released anatomically, we feel it psychologically."
In other words, if we're having sex with a guy and it's just not going to happen, we start to feel self-conscious about the fact that it's not happening. And then we feel this tension on a mental level in addition to a physical one.
If I'm hooking up with a guy and he's failing to get me off, not only am I physically frustrated, I'm mentally frustrated. Like the time I tried to give a hookup very specific instruction on how to get me to orgasm, and he ignored me and just kept doing whatever he felt like doing. That was ... disheartening.
Of course, sex can still feel great without that release of pleasure at the end, and as Azmi tells me, there's a danger to looking at orgasm as the end-all be-all of a sexual encounter.
But let's be real: Orgasms bring sex to whole new levels. And since 70 FREAKING PERCENT of women still aren't experiencing an orgasm during sex, I think it's fair to say blue clit is a significant problem we should be hearing more about.
So if you're consistently experiencing blue clit with your partner or that guy you met at happy hour, don't be afraid to speak up and tell him exactly how to make sure you finish. You owe it to your clitoris.
