My five day orgasm (and why I wouldn't recommend it)

The details of my intense sexual response to my psychotherapist touching my hand are mortifying to share, even a decade later–even with the hindsight I recently gained about what was really happening in my body. I only came to the realization of what actually happened about a year ago, but first I want to tell you how it felt in the moment, without context, about 11 years ago.

Six weeks after I met my creep psychotherapist, I fell into a trance-like state in his office, telling him about the weekend shortly after I turned 16 years old and learned that my father was cheating on my mother. My father had been having an affair with a female coworker. My mother and I left him and moved into a studio apartment over a garage until we could find a permanent place to live.

I told my creep therapist about this during the session before he left for vacation for 10 days. My husband would also be out of town for most of this time and I would be alone while suicidal and in the middle of changing medications. As our session came to an end, I was scared.

During our 6 weeks of treatment, the creep therapist and I had developed a ritual, a sort of grounding exercise, where I would take a bunch of books off of the bookshelf next to me at the beginning of the session and hold them to my chest like I was hugging a giant teddy bear. Something about it made me feel less panicked and more present in the room with my creep therapist. At the end of sessions, he would kneel down on the floor next to me and we would put the books back on his bookshelf together–side by side. It was sort of like he was helping me put my psychological baggage back on the shelf until we could meet again.

A bookshelf (not “THE” bookshelf) (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Roman Eisele)

As we put the books back on the shelf this time, he stroked the back of my hand with his index finger slowly from knuckle to wrist. He did it twice. That’s how I knew it wasn’t an accident–because he did it twice. I was frozen and did not look at him when this happened. I got up to leave, gave him his check, and walked into the hallway. He called me back into his office and closed the door and looked in my eyes and said “I just really want to make sure you’re going to be OK while I’m gone.”

I said I would be, and left.

I went to my car and sat there and stared into space for a few minutes as heat started to pour over my body. I smiled to myself. I felt SO CARED FOR and warm, like there was sunshine in my veins.

That night I went to the grocery store and I sat in the parking lot for about 30 minutes staring into space thinking about how he had touched my hand, and how he’d called me back into his room to make sure I was OK. The warmth in my body turned into something else.

My vagina started contracting–on the inside. It was pulsing. It was like a slow, strong heartbeat that pulsed every couple of seconds. It was an orgasm. I wasn’t touching myself. I wasn’t touching anything. I was just sitting with my hands on the wheel of my car in a grocery store parking lot having an earth shattering orgasm.

I wasn’t wildly writhing around with pleasure like Sally in the “When Harry Met Sally” diner scene. I was just sitting in my 2003 beige Mazda Protege, stunned, with a wildly pulsing vagina, waiting for it to stop. After about 30 minutes, I realized I was sitting in a sketchy parking lot in the middle of the night and probably should move. I got out of the car and went into the store while the wild pulsing continued. I collected what I needed from the store in my basket. I think I waddled a little bit as I walked around trying to keep my pants from rubbing too close to my skin in case that made things more intense. I hoped no one could see what was happening. It seemed like no one did.

A 2003 Mazda Protege, similar to the one in which my five day orgasm started, pictured above

The pulse got stronger–uncontrolled spasms.

My husband wasn’t leaving town until the next day, and it was like he could feel the heat coming off of me when I got home. We had incredible sex for the first time in months. I had had no sexual desire during my intense depression so it was an exciting and happy moment for both of us.

When I woke up the next morning, I was still pulsing. I thought it must be some sort of miracle breakthrough–what my creep therapist had done with his hand. It was like he’d pluck a string on an instrument and it was vibrating endlessly. I hoped it never stopped.

By the third day my sexual organs started to hurt. The muscles had been spasming for days now. I was sore and wanted it to stop. My husband had left for his work trip and I was waddling around the house trying to enjoy the sensations when I could, but feeling deeply confused.

On the fourth and fifth day, there was more time between the spasms but they were still happening. Eventually they stopped, but my whole body still felt like it was humming for days. I was relieved the pulsing had stopped but also scared I could never get it back. My whole body felt alive.

I should say that I had always been someone who usually felt cut off from my body. I remember the creep therapist asking me to identify how my sadness and panic manifested itself in my body–like, where did I feel it? I told him I didn’t know. I told him I didn’t feel things in my body. I felt them in my head. I told him that I often thought of myself as a head on a stick with no body. He said that was sad.

By the time the creep therapist returned from vacation and I went for my next appointment the orgasm and the humming and all of it was over. I don’t remember what I said to the creep therapist that next session, but I know I said absolutely nothing about the sexual reaction I’d had to him touching my hand. Part of that was because I was extremely embarrassed to tell him. I thought he would be freaked out. I was freaked out.

Another part of me wondered if it would happen if he touched my hand again. At the end of the session, we put the books back on the bookshelf again. There was no stroking of the back of the hand this time. I think I was probably sad about that.

In my mind, a narrative took hold: the creep therapist held the key to my orgasms. He was the person who could help me “feel my body,” and no one else. I told myself he could bring on an orgasm with the touch of a finger. He must be some sort of magical healer, I thought.

Now, no matter how bad the therapy got over the following years, no matter how depressed I got, no matter how graphic and intense the suicidal thoughts got, no matter how much money I gave him without feeling better, I couldn’t stop seeing him. I had to keep chasing that stroke of the finger on the back of my hand so that I could feel that way again.

It was two years before I told the creep therapist about what came to be known in my lawsuit as “the five day orgasm.”

There were days our hands would touch at the end of a session and I’d feel elated. Most days, they didn’t touch and I felt even more depressed. The orgasm never returned.

When, after over two years of therapy, I told the creep therapist that I couldn’t see him anymore, he asked why. I said because I wasn’t getting better. I was getting worse. I had been suicidal for years. Every morning I woke up in Hell.

I told the creep therapist that I was sexually attracted to him and that that was getting in the way of me doing any meaningful therapy. He said it was “brave” of me to tell him about my attraction, but it in no way meant we had to stop therapy.

A few months later, I told him about the orgasm, and things got even worse.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every Tuesday, so please subscribe.

A little something extra for paid subscribers:

I eventually figured out where that “earth shattering orgasm” in my 2003 Mazda Protege came from, and it wasn’t my creep psychotherapist. Eventually I’ll tell that story, but if you want to know “the secret” advance, become a paid subscriber and you’ll get a bonus post!