We surveyed 1,058 women to answer the question:
Do women like receiving oral sex?
As part of our research, we also investigated 13 other factors related to receiving cunnilingus to understand what leads to a satisfying experience for the receiver of oral and what should be avoided to prevent a lacklustre time (positions, techniques, duration, etc).
In this post, I’m going to share what we discovered.
Here is a summary of our key findings:
1. 90.9% of women enjoy receiving oral sex.
2. However, 79.4% of women have had at least one unenjoyable experience when receiving oral sex.
3. “Bad technique” was selected by 55.9% of women as the leading cause of unsatisfying oral sex.
4. The main reason women enjoy receiving oral is due to how their partner makes them feel emotionally (24%).
5. 51.8% of women had an orgasm during their most recent experience receiving oral sex. When asked, “Have you ever orgasmed during any time receiving oral sex?”, 78.1% of women indicated that they had.
6. 14% of women squirted (female ejaculation) during their most recent experience receiving oral sex. 31.1% of women had ever squirted when receiving cunnilingus.
7. The vast majority (67.3%) of women selected “Lying on my back” as their favorite position to receive oral sex.
8. The 69 position (26.4%) was selected as the least enjoyable position for receiving oral sex by our respondents, closely followed by standing while receiving (25.9%).
9. 8.4% of women prefer receiving oral sex to vaginal sex.
10. 19 minutes and 40 seconds is the average ideal duration women want to receive oral sex for.
11. 92% of women enjoy when their partner uses their fingers on/in their vagina when receiving oral sex.
12. 10.7% of women prefer their partner to have a beard when they receive oral sex. 52.3% indicated that their partner’s facial hair type doesn’t matter.
13. 48.6% of women enjoy receiving anilingus (oral sex in/on/around the anus).
14. 10.3% of women like to receive oral sex during their period.
We have detailed data and information of our findings below and you can find our methodology section at the end of this study.
90.9% of women enjoy receiving oral sex
We started our investigation with a simple yes/no question:
Do you enjoy receiving oral sex?
This figure paints an incredibly clear picture of women’s attitudes towards oral sex and receiving pleasure, 9 out of every 10 women enjoy having a partner that goes down on them. Just 9% do not enjoy receiving oral sex, roughly 1 in 10.
However, this landslide result does come with an important caveat…
79.4% of women have had at least one unenjoyable experience receiving oral sex
While the vast majority of women enjoy receiving oral sex, we wanted to dig in deeper and understand how many women have had negative or unenjoyable experiences when receiving oral sex.
A whopping 79.4% of respondents answered that they had a previous oral sex experience that was unsatisfying or unenjoyable.
Key takeaway: There is a very real possibility that you can give your partner a bad or negative oral sex experience, even if your partner usually likes you giving head to them.
And there are many reasons that lead to a negative experience for the receiving partner, that we explain in the next section.
Side note: This result mirrors the results in our study on whether women enjoy giving blow jobs or not: The majority (92.6%) of women do enjoy giving oral sex to men. But just like this study over three-quarters (76.8%) of women have given a blow job in the past that they did not enjoy.
The most common reason for unenjoyable oral sex: bad technique
Understanding what leads to unsatisfying and unenjoyable oral sex for women is important. This way, you know what to avoid doing when going down on your partner and can instead focus on what brings her the most pleasure.
In this multiple-choice question, bad technique was chosen by 55.9% of women as the reason for their lack of enjoyment during oral sex. This was the most cited reason.
Closely following this was not reaching orgasm (47.7%) and feeling uncomfortable/being unable to relax (47.7%) during oral sex
The experience ending too quickly (17.1%) or lasting too long (14.5%) weren’t as frequently chosen as reasons for an unsatisfying experience. Neither was a lack of attraction to the giving partner, with only 12.5% of women indicating that a lack of attraction leads to unsatisfactory oral sex.
6.5% of women noted that they had been forced or pressured into being eaten out, which one can naturally assume results in a terrible experience.
5.83% of women selected an “other” reason and provided their own answers, many of which proved eye-opening:
- He didn’t know what TF he was doing and it felt like what one would imagine is an alien probe.
- I told him gently how to (do it), but that apparently went over his head…
- Too much slobber.
- They spit on my vagina and told me there was something wrong with me.
- My partner treated my vagina like it was a construction site.
- He thought he was a weed eater and was too rough, wasn’t enjoyable at all
- They were overly excited as in growling.
The main reason for enjoyment: How my partner made me feel emotionally/mentally
Along with investigating the things that lead to bad oral sex for women, we also wanted to learn the things that make it an enjoyable experience.
For this question, we took a slightly different angle from the previous one. We asked respondents to choose a single answer, the most important factor leading to an enjoyable oral sex experience.
The main reason for enjoyment is how the giver makes the receiver feel mentally/emotionally (24%).
This was followed closely by “I had an orgasm” (21.5%) and the oral sex techniques used (19.8%). Interestingly, an enthusiastic partner is more popular than an attractive partner (16.6% v 12.8%) for good oral sex. One respondent even explicitly mentioned the importance of enthusiasm, “My partner enjoys giving it and that helps me enjoy it.”
From this feedback, we can see climaxing and good technique are certainly important for good oral sex. However, they are not as important as the emotional feelings that the giving partner provides their receiving partner.
51.8% of women had an orgasm during their last experience receiving oral sex
Our survey asked whether or not respondents had reached orgasm during their last oral sex session. Over half reported that they experienced an orgasm (51.8%).
We then followed up with a similar question:
Have you ever had an orgasm during any previous experience receiving oral sex?
78.1% answered yes, they had orgasmed at least once previously during oral sex.
This is a powerful finding as many women in heterosexual relationships struggle to orgasm during vaginal intercourse while their male partners rarely experience this issue (a phenomenon called the orgasm gap).
This would imply that if you are a female reader, currently struggling to reach orgasm during vaginal intercourse, then you may have more luck with cunnilingus.
1 in 7 women experienced female ejaculation during their most recent experience receiving oral sex
Female ejaculation or squirting is a popular and hotly debated topic online, so we decided to include two questions on the subject in our survey.
When recollecting their most recent encounter getting head, 14% of women reported that they had experienced female ejaculation. We then followed up with this question:
Have you ever squirted (female ejaculation) during any session when receiving oral sex?
31.1% reported that they had squirted at least once in a past session when receiving oral sex.
These results seem to indicate that if you are interested in female ejaculation as a woman or helping a female partner experience female ejaculation, then cunnilingus can help make it happen.
Lying on their back is women’s favorite position for receiving oral sex
There are multiple positions in which a female partner can enjoy cunnilingus. We wanted to investigate whether or not there was a preferred position.
While the results were conclusive with 67.3% of women choosing lying down on their back as their favorite position to receive oral sex, the second favorite cunnilingus position was something unexpected…
10.7% of respondents chose sitting on their partner’s face as their preferred position for receiving oral sex.
Some interesting responses from those who chose “Other” as their preferred position:
- Any position where I feel like my vagina is not a spectacle.
- At the top of the stairs on my back with my legs raised and feet resting on the handrails.
- All of the above.
- It’s a tie between sitting on his face and laying down.
- Laying down on my back with a pillow under my bottom and knees to my chest.
69 is women’s least favorite position for receiving oral sex
We also wanted to investigate what positions are least favored by women receiving oral sex.
The results were far more diverse than for the previous question.
The 69 position came in first, with 26.4% of women selecting it as their least favorite position.
Closely following this was the standing position while being eaten out with 25.9% selecting this position.
Sitting on their partner’s face (19.5%), on their hands and knees (12.2%) and sitting down (7.5%) rounded out the top 5 least popular positions.
Only 3.6% of women choose lying down their back as their least favorite position.
1 in 12 women prefer receiving oral sex to vaginal sex.
We’ve already learned that 90.7% of women enjoy being eaten out. But, as a group, do women prefer oral sex it to regular vaginal sex?
No, for the most part.
Only 8.4% of women prefer receiving oral sex to vaginal sex.
However, 61.1% of women find being eaten out and vaginal intercourse to be equally enjoyable, with 30.5% of women preferring vaginal intercourse. When we remove those who find both to be equally enjoyable, 3.7 times more women prefer vaginal sex to being out.
Based on our findings, we can conclude that the average woman prefers vaginal sex, but that oral sex is a great option for providing her with almost as much enjoyment.
19 minutes and 40 seconds is the ideal cunnilingus duration (on average)
We hypothesized that knowing how long to perform oral sex on your partner would be useful to readers.
With this in mind, we asked every woman what their ideal oral sex session duration is, within a limit of 0-60 minutes.
Based on their answers, the average ideal oral sex duration is 19 minutes and 40 seconds. The median time is 16 minutes.
While this result may be useful, you can see from the scatter chart above, that the individual results were very diverse.
In other words, the question of the ideal cunnilingus duration is very personal to each individual woman.
The vast majority of women enjoy their partner using their fingers on/in their vagina during cunnilingus
We wanted to investigate if there were easy ways to enhance sexual pleasure from oral sex.
We hypothesized that a giving partner using their fingers to stimulate in and around their receiving partner’s vagina would be helpful.
This hypothesis proved to be overwhelmingly true when we asked the following question:
Do you enjoy it when your partner uses their fingers on/in your vagina during oral sex?
A full 92% of women answered “Yes” to this question.
The takeaway: If the giving partner is not already using their fingers when going down on their partner, then they should strongly consider doing so.
10.7% of women prefer their partner to have a beard when they receive oral sex
Another factor we suspected that might play a role in the enjoyment of receiving oral sex was the facial hair of the giver.
We assumed that a giver with stubble or a beard would be a major issue.
For over half of the women polled, facial or lack thereof doesn’t matter: 52.3% of women said it doesn’t matter whether their giving partner is clean-shaven, has stubble or a beard.
26.5% of women prefer their partner to be clean-shaven. But the most interesting finding is that 21.2% of women prefer their partner to have some kind of facial hair.
10.7% of women prefer their giving partner to have a beard and 10.5% preferring stubble on their partner.
We hypothesize that some women prefer a partner with facial hair as it adds additional stimulation. Validating this will require additional investigation.
48.6% of women enjoy receiving anilingus
We wanted to make sure that we also specifically investigated women’s preferences to oral-anal sex (aka anilingus or eating ass) to understand whether or not it is enjoyed by a similar percentage of women
We asked:
Do you enjoy receiving anilingus?
48.6% of women answered “Yes”, with 51.4% of women choosing “No”.
This 50-50 split result underlines the importance of sexual communication with your partner. Rather than assuming they either enjoy or don’t enjoy it, you need to talk to your partner beforehand to learn their preferences.
10.3% of women like to receive oral sex on their period
Men and women have many different views on menstruation and sex during menstruation. We wanted to investigate whether menstruating would impact a woman’s decision to receive oral sex or not at all.
First, we eliminated all respondents who don’t currently menstruate, leaving us with 851 respondents. We did this as we wanted to measure our respondents’ perspectives from the current time and avoid potential memory biases.
From this group of respondents who currently menstruate, 10.3% replied that “Yes,” they do enjoy receiving oral sex during their period. 89.7% of women chose “No.”
While this finding would indicate that the vast majority of women don’t enjoy receiving oral sex during their period, we didn’t ask any follow-up questions to understand why. Perhaps this would be worth investigating in the future.
Conclusion
The answer to the question, “Do women like receiving oral sex?” has been conclusively answered. The vast majority do like it.
We’ve also investigated and discovered many preferences when it comes to enjoyable cunnilingus: positions, ideal duration, cunnilingus during menstruation, use of fingers during oral sex, facial hair preferences and views on anilingus.
The results of this study generalize women’s preferences towards oral sex. However, we advise that you talk to your partner to learn her unique preferences rather than assuming these generalized results apply individually to her.
Methodology
We began this survey by collecting basic demographic information. Those who had never received vaginal-oral sex were disqualified, as were non-female respondents. All respondents were over the age of 18. All respondents indicated that they have a vagina with no respondents indicating otherwise. After this filtering process, we were left with a total of 1,058 respondents:
- 867 women identifying as heterosexual
- 123 women identifying as bisexual
- 12 women identifying as homosexual
- 19 women who specified alternative sexuality to heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual
- 37 women who declined to provide their sexuality
These remaining participants were asked a variety of questions to assess their sentiments and preferences on the topic of receiving vaginal-oral sex aka cunnilingus.
Our survey relied on participants’ anonymous recollections and preferences. While they were encouraged to tell the truth and accurately represent what they had experienced, the data is nevertheless self-reported and there is the possibility of some inaccuracy.
Related Studies
Anal sex – We surveyed over 1,200 women on their attitudes towards anal sex and learned that many women do like anal sex, 63.3% of women to be exact.
Performing fellatio – We learned conclusively that the vast majority of women like giving blow jobs (92.6% of women).
This is an excellent study, however, I think you are only scratching the surface of what this data can provide. Are there any papers that have been published as a result of this? How much research has been done to investigate correlations between questions? For example, if feeling relaxed is key, this might relate to their menstruel position. Also, your advice on “communicating” prior is potentially misleading. Part of the skill of any sexual act and especially giving oral sex, is empathy and reading your partner’s feeling and reactions as you go along. Having a straight forward discussion before hand can sanitise the event, removing the passion that can be such a turn on for the recipient.
There is no woman in the world and no man in the world who doesn’t like oral sex when is done properly and patiently. Is human anatomy and physiology which can’t be ignored or underestimated. Clitoris has thousands of nerve receptors. So when the man’s tongue stimulates these receptors properly how is on early possible the woman not to like it or not to have an orgasm? is just not possible, unless of course there is a medical problem like e.g. diabetes
I challenge you to talk sexy rather than ‘communicate’. Nobody said straightforward discussion but you.
I found that out from Sean’s writings in the first chapter.
Maybe get the series for your partner and see.
Honestly, he’s helped me alot!
excellent study
Thanks!
I’d love to know the age groups that responded to each type of questions…that would be nice to know 😁😁😁 just to get a better understanding of women’s general preferences as they age 🤷🏽♂️
Great point. I may add a follow up exploring this as we collected everyone’s age
I am 49 guy I love eating my wife pussy all the time one problem when her pussy get wet she jut want me to fuck her hard but I relly enjoy eat pussy alot I wish I eat alot different women pussy 🤪
68 years old female happy as can be from all stats! They all run true for me.
Not kidding! Widowed, hip replaced. Thought it all was over. Nope.
6 years without and now… I am back, happy, in shape and luv again…did I mention happy?
Ps thanks Sean.
I like blow jobs and handjobs over vaginal sex and love eating a good vagina especially when it tastes clean and don’t stank. The pleasure is more personal and when you explode there is nothing holding it back. A good handjob can make me produce a lot of cum, sometimes I can fill up a wine glass.
i’m a male senior citizen, divorced, age 76. how do women my age feel about having sexual activity?
63% of women like anal? Sounds like bs to me. I doubt most women even do it. Anal is very degrading to women.
where did you find 63? it’s 49% and it’s not talking about anal intercourse, it’s anal stimulation with finger which is very common.
I bet that’s very accurate. Maybe a bit low. They say no way at first because what it might imply to people. But after they get comfortable with you it’s always the same. “I’ve never done this before, but do you wanna!”
That is not in this article. You may have misread something.
Some of these numbers don’t seem to be that reliable.
8.4% of women prefer oral ?
It’s more likely that is more than 50% IFthe oral session is proper.
And no .. Not the 92% of women enjoy to give oral .. Nope ..noway.
It’s a trend these days due to porn and of course american movies wich are about bjs all the time. European cinema is more on real sex or cunnilingus actually ,so the feel obligated to present themselfs ad trendy ..
The “statistics” here look more like a guy’s fantasy rather the reality..
Why?
I LOVE PLEASING MY PARTNER 1ST; SHE LOVES THE FOREPLAY AND LEADS TO MULTIPLE ORG. AND SQUITING.
TAKE YOUR TIME; ENJOY 😉
Never had a blow job from my wife I have eaten her pussey 200 times
You have a note asking them to add a citation.
Thanks for spotting this!
It’s rare the man that can feast with patience & skill. I’ve been extremely lucky to have had 2 amazing lovers ( currently married to one of them ;)).
My favorite is when he eats me so deep that his face is buried deep. I get so wet and it turns him on so hard. I always climax and he loves finishing inside me where it’s hot, tight and dripping wet.
I only get into girls that like on top oral sex positions at least as an option, nothing wrong with the regular lay down position but that can strain the neck a bit. Everybody likes to call it facesitting but that is not what it really is. Maybe for some I suppose… but I just view it as more of a face or tongue ride lol. I love it especially reverse with a headboard (ironically) for her balance and you can get some handjob action from her in there and her orgasms come with it as she can control the pressure and movement she likes which I love, it is a big turn on to me. Start slow and licking the entire vagina, tease the clit, even penetrate with you tongue a little and she starts getting more amped up and gradually transition to full tongue action on the clit with her controlling how she wants to ride it. Trust me, she will start to go for it once she is heated up enough. Probably my favorite position for sex, but have had girlfriends that get tentative about it for some reason or just not interested. Those are former girlfriends. lol Why would you turn down this level of pleasure? In this position, I don’t think it typically takes 20 minutes, more like 10 to 15.
I love to eat very hairy pussies. When I was 35 I ate a girl of 48 who was yelling happy asking for more and crying that she never knew about something so beautiful.
I’m African American, 72, unusaully fit and only had sex with african american women. Had sex with 9 over the last 55 years. The last 5 really enjoy me giving them oral sex but don’t want me to over do it. They don’t like giving oral sex as they indicate to be spiritual. I can relate to the above research but african american seem to like me giving oral sex as much as vaginal. They love it all ways including coming in from the back but they must be clean. I’ll suggest they use a medicated pad to wipe their anus ‘before’ which they appreciate the advice. I can also suggest increased enjoyment by them if they pee in front of their man so the stream is visible. Then he might naturally go down right after. I’m a retired health professional and can say being reticent to give your female partner oral sex is being out of date.
The only observation I have as a 50 years old male is I cannot believe only 8.4% prefer oral.
If partner knows and make them feel free its more than 50% for sure ..
They have just learnt to be pleasers …
Society’s orders
Well I belive that alot if women like oral because they have multiple organism and I’m finding out more women like their anal stimulation. Man that’s a turn on for me. Right after a good shower. It hits them and you send the locks to the clit to the anal hole. They like that tip of the tounge right in the hole. All you hear is “OMG” over & over again. I stop keeping time once she has that felling it’s like keep going don’t stop. And that the big turn for me because I’ll know I’m doing it right & I’m 65. At times it’s a game changer for me also because I get rock hard from all the moans of OMG.
You got that rite and when you get finished then they say oh my gosh, what have you done to me? I have never had anyone that made me chm so much and so many times that she couldn’t keep up with how many times she came and they were so intense and she loved it more than anyone has ever made her feel when giving her oral sex. I love doing it