Advice: The Catholic Mind

Q:
I find myself in a very awkward situation and I am in need of your knowledgeable advice... I am a 23 year old female in a relationship with a wonderful man who makes me very happy. There is nothing more in this world that I want more than to be with him, but I have a personal problem that I need to sort out before I can commit myself to being in a "true" relationship with him (long term). Ever since I can remember, I've had issues with men and their ideologies about women being objects of gratification. I was raised Roman Catholic and found that it was very difficult as a woman to be given any leeway when it came to sexuality or sexual gratification. As I grew older and found myself desiring self gratification, I found that my thoughts during masturbation were not those of a woman receiving pleasure from a man, but those of a MAN GIVING PLEASURE TO A WOMAN! I have never been able to orgasm from sexual intercourse, and even when I'm having sex with a man I still find myself thinking about what the physical discourse is from their perspective rather than my own. Now I am in a relationship where I can not orgasm from sexual intercourse with the man who I truly feel is the "one for me", and to make matters worse when I masturbate to thoughts of him I can not achieve an orgasm unless I visualize my pleasure from his perspective (penetrating my body with his member, "coming through him" as it were). I know for a fact that I am a heterosexual woman, with no desire myself to be a man; I love my female body and would not trade it for anything in the world. I guess what I would like to know after explaining all of this is if there is any way to "re-train" my thinking so that I would be able to climax as a woman in my own mind, rather than being dependent on the pleasure of a man's orgasm for my own gratification?

A:
There can be reasons other than your "confusion" that you are not having orgasms during intercourse. It's just not unusual for a woman to need other forms of stimulation to climax.

As to your issue though with viewing the pleasure you receive through the prism of a man's perspective, I admit I am at a loss, and hope there will be some comments on this one. My sense is that you are overthinking, perhaps, and should just accept the pleasure in whatever way it comes to you. In other words, if you climax, you are climaxing as a woman regardless of what happened in your mind to get you there.