'I own over $5,000 worth of sex toys. They helped me orgasm when nothing else would.'

A couple of years ago, I finished having sex with my then-partner, and promptly burst into tears.

Not happy, post-orgasmic tears of joy, but tears of utter defeat.

Just a few weeks after starting antidepressants, I’d lost my ability to orgasm.

I’d tried using more lube, dedicating more time to foreplay, and paying extra attention to my clit, but nothing worked. Even my favourite porn couldn’t get me off.

I felt utterly broken.

Sex worker, Samantha X shares her tips on how to have better sex. Post continues after video.

And as a sex writer, I was conflicted. While I’d spent much of my career advocating for sex not being all about the “end goal” of reaching climax, I was now experiencing firsthand the emotional toll of no longer being able to achieve my own.

Suddenly, I was eating my own words. Having an orgasm was important – without the release I'd become accustomed to having at the end of sex, I felt empty and defeated.

And so I sobbed, openly, in front of my partner, as I rolled away from him in bed, pulling the sheets around my naked body to conceal my shame.

“Have I hurt you? What’s wrong, darling?” he asked anxiously, gently placing a hand on my shoulder.

“This is the tenth time now we’ve had sex without me being able to orgasm,” I cried.

“I know it shouldn’t matter, but it does. I feel so lost,” I confessed, using the bed sheet to blot my tears.

“What will help?” he asked back, moving in closer to wrap an arm around me.

“I don’t know. It’s like I’ve lost all sensitivity. Short of having a power tool down there, I don’t know what would work!” I exclaimed.

“What about one of your vibrators? Why don’t we start using that?” came his response, without missing a beat.

“You mean, you wouldn’t mind if I used one during sex? You wouldn’t be… offended?” I asked.

“Of course not! Whatever helps is what I want you to do. Plus, it’s kinda hot watching you use your toys,” he smirked.

It was a few hours after that conversation that I got my orgasm back, via a clitoral suction toy I held against myself while straddled over my partner. We both came long and hard just a few minutes in, and afterwards, I cried again. But this time, my tears were ones of relief.

The perception among men that sex toys pose a ‘threat’ in the bedroom is changing, almost as rapidly as the stigma around women owning such products is eroding.

Where once sex toys seemed to reside exclusively in the world of porn, they’re now a staple in most couples’ households.

In my own bedroom, nestled in every drawer, nook and cranny, there’s easily over $5,000 worth of sex toys. (Yes, you read that right; no, it wasn’t a typo.)

Given, I’m a sex columnist, so an undeniable perk of my job is the near-constant stream of adult products I’m gifted in the mail on a weekly basis (I’m pretty sure my postie thinks I’m running a sex dungeon, but that’s for another story). However, many of the toys I own were purchased out of my own pocket. A few years ago, I dropped almost $200 on a crystal dildo (because, why not, right?), and even shelled out a similar amount for WeVibe’s panty vibrator (which, let me tell you, was worth every cent).

You might think spending that sort of cash on a sex toy is exorbitant – wasteful even – but the fact is, we’re happy to part with just as much money when it’s for our car, or a nice birthday dinner with friends, or that handbag we’ve been eyeing off forever.

We’re happy investing our cash in paying the mortgage so we can own a nice home, seeing the doctor so we can take care of our health, and buying good food to nourish our bodies. So why not nourish our sexuality, and invest in a product guaranteed to bring us arguably more pleasure and mental health benefits than any house, car, or fancy dinner ever could?

Side note – we explore everything there is to know about the female orgasm on the Sealed Section podcast below. Post continues after audio.

That’s certainly the attitude we’re moving toward as a culture, as sex toy brands shift their focus from sex to holistic sexual wellness. Sex toy brand Womanizer markets its best-selling clitoral suction toys from a humanitarian standpoint, with the slogan, “Every woman deserves the right to orgasm”, and their new-age focus has worked. The brand’s products regularly sell out online and their unique “Pleasure Air Technology” has seen the retailer amass a cult following.

This success might also explain why the company’s latest product, the Duo, is flying off shelves, despite its hefty $325.95 price tag.

“I wouldn’t put cheap, poor quality makeup on my face, so why would I put a cheap toy inside my vagina?” a friend recently put it to me, after bragging about all the orgasms her new designer sex toy was giving her.

And she has a point. While our cars eventually need to be traded in, and handbags fall apart, we only have one vagina. So, why put anything less high quality in it than we’d put on our skin?

They say money can’t buy happiness, but soaring sales of sex toys and the women gleaning on-demand orgasms from them beg to differ – among them, women like me, who’d once written off their sexual pleasure to medication, or menopause or illness.

Any guilt I once held around the amount of money I’ve forked out on my own sex toy collection over the years has now evaporated.

The fact is, a sex toy literally gave me my quality of life and my connection to my partner back. And there’s no price you can ever put on that.

This article was originally published on August 8, 2019 and has since been updated.

For more of Nadia’s sexual musings and opinions, follow her on Instagram.