In a study of more than 200 college students, 25 percent of men and half of the women reported that they’d acted out an orgasm during sexual activity. The biggest motivation to fake it? Wanting sex to end without the awkwardness of hurting their partner’s feelings…

The participants who faked shared a common sexual “script,” the authors wrote, in which both genders feel pressure to orgasm during intercourse, with the woman orgasming first. In some cases, people are so wedded to this script they pass up the chance to orgasm for real in order to fake orgasm at the “right” time. The study found that 20 percent of the women pretended to orgasm because their partner seemed about to.