Lying back on my pillow, post-sex, I hug my husband tightly. I love him to pieces and never want him to know that I’ve just faked my orgasm. It’s not a When Harry Met Sally style performance, screaming and banging the headboard, just a question of catching my breath and moaning in the right places. 
It’s something I’ve done ever since I’ve been with him. 
Like 21% of women who fake it, I do it so I don’t hurt his feelings. And after years of sex that’s never really been better than ‘pleasant’, it feels too difficult to broach it. 
It would be horrible for him to hear and would rock the foundations of our marriage. It would make him feel inadequate and question whether I’ve lied about anything else. I haven’t. 
It’s not as if I’m crying out for something kinky like bondage to tip me over the edge. I think our bodies just don’t match – maybe it’s a pheromone thing. 
I know it’s not that I’m incapable of orgasms. I’ve had them with other men and know just how wonderful it can be. 
When I met Simon, I was in my second year at university in Leeds and we were in the pub. He knew people on my sociology course and we got chatting. I had a few beers and we started snogging so I invited him back to my room. 
We didn’t have sex that night, we lay in bed chatting instead, talking about our families and our courses. I went away liking him enormously. We arranged to meet up the following week and it continued from there. We had sex on our third meeting and it was…fine. 
He was only my second lover and I hadn’t orgasmed with my first boyfriend either. Simon turned me on, and I enjoyed it so I presumed climaxing would come with time and there were occasions I even thought I had.

Aside from the sex, we developed an amazing relationship – he’s a lovely man, kind, considerate and supportive. He’s never run me down once. Early on I felt this was the man I’d spend my life with. 
Having said that we did split up shortly after we finished our degrees. I was going to teacher training college in London and he was going to work in a conservation project in Indonesia and wanted to be free. Though I was upset I understood and we stayed friends. 
In the following three years I slept with seven people. Two left me cold, they were drunken one night stands. But the rest were lovely and with the second one of them I finally had an orgasm and understood what it was all about. It made me realise that any twinge I’d felt with Simon wasn’t close to the breathtaking orgasm I could have. 
When Simon came home after two years, we started seeing each other sporadically as friends. Occasionally we’d get drunk and end up in bed together. I was seeing another man casually at the same time. With him I had incredible sex and a lot of laughs, but I couldn’t see us building a life together. 
I was 25 when I got back together with Simon properly and finished with my other lover. Simon was then and still is the man I picture getting old with, sitting on a deck chair by the sea watching the sun set. 
It sounds odd, but I don’t think I really contemplated the sex part, it wasn’t high on my list of priorities. We had lots of mutual friends, we’d got a property together, we laughed and I loved him. I fancied Simon, he turned me on and not actually orgasming didn’t worry me – I still thought it was just a matter of time. 
At times I look back and wish I’d said something, but I never felt as though I was settling, I wanted to be married to him. 
We got married in 2008 when I was 27, and went on our honeymoon to Italy and like all newlyweds we were at it like rabbits. And it really was nice, I felt connected and intimate and very happy. But still an orgasm eluded me. 

I fell pregnant a month later and we now have two sons, aged 15 and 13. The early years passed in a haze. We still had sex but not very often. And I always pretended I loved it more than I did. He occasionally asks if I’m satisfied or whether he can finish and I will always reassure him that I’m there.
About 10 years ago we were sitting watching a film – I can’t remember which one – with a sex therapist in it and I wondered out loud if it would be interesting to go to one. He recoiled at the thought. So I think that’s put me off ever bringing it up again.
Sporadically I’ve tried to spice things up. I’m not one for toys, but I bought some lacy underwear in the hope that it would lead to more passion. The last time I did that was about five years ago – it never helped. 
And now we rarely make love at all – the last time was nearly two years ago. I don’t miss it as such. We do talk about it occasionally and say we should do it more often, but then we just roll over and go to sleep. But though we’ve discussed the quantity we’ve never discussed the quality.  
I wonder sometimes if it’s the same for him – he does orgasm but I’m not sure it’s incredible for him, more a reaction to the mechanics of it, it’s different for men. 
Ironically one of the reasons I’ll never tell him that I fake it is because I know how hurt I’d be to hear the same from him. 

Sometimes I look back on passionate encounters I’ve had wistfully. The other day a girlfriend was laughing that she’d had a phenomenal quickie with her husband in their lunch break when they were working from home. I was astonished. I don’t generally talk about sex with my friends – it would feel disloyal – but I’d presumed they were all the same as me and had a take it or leave it attitude. So it made me think. 
I worry that I’ll feel differently once the children have left home and we aren’t so busy. Maybe then I’ll long for passion and it will ruin everything. I hope I don’t as I adore my husband. Out of all our friends I think we’ve got one of the most successful marriages. We rarely row, we’re on the same page with the way we bring up our children, he’s loving and giving. 
Equally I hope he doesn’t go searching for more exciting and fulfilling sex. He’s the most wonderful man and missing out on orgasms is a small price to pay for being with him.

What the expert says: 
Sex therapist Samantha Tipples (www.samanthatipples.com) says, 
After a long relationship it would be brutal to just come out with it and say ‘I’ve been faking it all along’. However you don’t have to resign yourself to never orgasming again. 
In this couple’s case they have a good foundation for being able to achieve a satisfying sex life – they like each other, love each other, find each other attractive and can communicate about other things. 
It could be that Katie has unresolved guilt about achieving an orgasm first with a different partner – she has no need to. It could be that she doesn’t want to take into the bedroom something she learnt with someone else. 
However it can be useful to cast your mind back to a time when you were very aroused and see if you can identify what it was and whether you can introduce it into this relationship too – for example a smell that she associates with good sex or a way of being touched that she could guide her partner to do. Is there a film she could watch with him that she finds erotic and explain why?
Equally a change of mindset would be helpful, if you have conditioned yourself to think you won’t achieve an orgasm then it’s unlikely that you’ll have one. It’s important to stay in the present and focus on what you’re feeling in the here and now. If she does then hopefully he will follow her lead and it will become more mutually satisfying. 
Just because you haven’t reached an orgasm yet – it doesn’t mean you never will.