Pleasure Wasn’t Part of the Deal: What Layla’s Story Says About Marriage and the Orgasm Gap

Layla was thirty-two when she had her first orgasm. She wasn’t single. She wasn’t inexperienced. She was ten years into a marriage — one built on devotion, duty, and silence. For most of her adult life, sex had been something she gave, not something she enjoyed. Her story isn’t rare. In fact, it’s more common than we’d like to admit. And it exposes something uncomfortable: pleasure, for many women, wasn’t part of the deal.

In The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Layla’s account is a quiet scream. She speaks softly about the things most of us don’t say out loud — not because we don’t want to, but because we’ve been taught not to even notice. Growing up in a culture that treats female sexuality as dangerous, sinful, or irrelevant, Layla entered adulthood with no roadmap to pleasure, no permission to explore, and no language for what she was missing. When she finally did experience an orgasm, it wasn’t a celebration — it was grief. Grief for all the years she hadn’t known she could feel that way. Grief for the silence she’d called safety.

And here’s the part that lingers: Layla isn’t alone. She is a mirror.

What Is the Orgasm Gap?

The orgasm gap refers to the consistent disparity in orgasm frequency between men and women during heterosexual sex. Studies show that in mixed-gender encounters, men report orgasming about 95% of the time — while women report doing so only around 65% of the time, and often much lower outside of long-term relationships. In casual hookups, the number drops even more.

But this gap isn’t biological. It’s not that women are "harder to please" or that men are just naturally better at receiving. It’s cultural. It’s a result of what we’ve been taught — and not taught — about sex, bodies, and who gets to enjoy what.

We don’t just raise girls to be cautious about sex; we raise them to be absent from it. We teach them how to say no, how to avoid pregnancy, how not to get raped — but we don’t teach them that their own pleasure matters. Meanwhile, boys are often raised with porn as their default education, primed to believe that sex is about performance and release, not connection or care.

The result? A whole generation of women like Layla — who’ve had sex for years without ever being centered in it.

When Purity Culture and Gender Roles Collide

Layla was part of a deeply religious community. But the story she tells isn’t unique to Mormons. It echoes across countless evangelical, Catholic, and conservative spaces — anywhere purity culture takes root.

In purity culture, virginity is currency. It’s what girls are taught to protect at all costs, not because they’ll be happier or safer, but because their value to a man (and to God) depends on it. Sex becomes a transaction: abstain until marriage, then give freely. Your desires? They’re irrelevant. Or worse, dangerous.

Layla wasn’t told she could explore her body. She wasn’t told her pleasure mattered. She was told that her duty was to love her husband, bear children, and serve. In many ways, the silence was part of the training. When you aren’t even given the words for your own anatomy, how can you be expected to advocate for your needs?

And outside of religion, this isn’t all that different. Women are still praised for being accommodating, for being low-maintenance, for putting others first. Even in secular settings, women are often cast as the "gatekeepers" of sex, not the participants.

The Emotional Fallout of Being Denied Pleasure

Pleasure isn’t just physical — it’s political. It’s a way of saying “I matter.” It’s a declaration that your body isn’t just for someone else’s use. When you are denied that, over and over again, it doesn’t just hurt your sex life. It damages your relationship with yourself.

Women like Layla don’t just grieve the lost orgasms. They grieve the lost connection to their own bodies. The years of feeling broken, undeserving, or strange. The quiet comparisons with other women who seemed to enjoy sex, as if there was something wrong with them for not feeling the same.

And then, when pleasure finally does arrive — through therapy, a new partner, or sheer luck — the feeling is bittersweet. Because along with the joy comes the question: Why did no one tell me?

What Layla (and So Many Others) Teach Us

Layla’s story reminds us that sex should never be something we just endure. It should never be a performance, a duty, or a silent act of survival. And yet for many women, that’s exactly what it becomes.

But Layla also reminds us that it’s never too late. That there is power in unlearning. That even if we’ve spent years disconnected from our bodies, we can come back to them. That we don’t have to settle for “okay” or “fine” or “at least he finished.” We can ask for more — and we should.

Her story pushes us to ask hard questions: Are we teaching our daughters that their pleasure matters? Are we raising sons who know that sex is about more than their own release? Are we, as adults, modeling honest conversations about desire, boundaries, and intimacy?

If the answer is no — then what are we doing?

Moving Forward: How We Begin to Close the Gap

Closing the orgasm gap isn’t just about technique. It’s about trust, education, and permission.

We need to talk about sex — openly, and without shame. That means teaching accurate sex ed that includes pleasure and consent, not just danger and disease. It means talking to our partners about what we want. It means healing from the idea that our pleasure is too much, too complicated, or not important.

And for those of us who grew up like Layla — silent, disconnected, ashamed — it means forgiving ourselves. We didn’t fail. We were failed.

We start again. We reclaim.

Because pleasure was always meant to be part of the deal.