1 in 3 women are faking orgasms for this very sad reason.

Image: Save that performance for the Oscars, lady.

Okay, friends, we need to have a little talk about orgasms. More specifically, those orgasms that don’t actually happen, but we pretend they do. It’s the Easter Bunny schtick all over again.

Although you might not have faked an orgasm before, it seems the majority of women have. In a new Cosmopolitan surveyof 2300 women, 67 per cent admitted to, ah, putting on a performance (a very convincing one, no doubt).

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What’s particularly saddening is that 27 per cent of these women said they did it to get the whole sex thing over and done with, because they couldn’t see an orgasm happening at all.

Click through to see the most famous fake on-screen orgasms. As in, scenes in which actresses fake faking it… (post continues after gallery).

Sure, it’s kind of understandable to want to speed things up sometimes; maybe the finale of Scandal is about to come on TV, or you’re already running late for another commitment. But as a reflection of the sexual satisfaction women are — or aren’t — experiencing, this phenomenon is also quite alarming.

“That’s where the fake orgasm comes into another interesting issue — why are all these women so unsatisfied that they feel like sex is just a chore and they’re faking an orgasm because they just want it to be over and done with?” relationship expert and sexologist Dr Nikki Goldstein asks.

Dr Goldstein believes this statistic raises two important issues about women and their sexuality. The first is that many women haven’t yet learned exactly what it is they like, whether that be through personal experimentation or experiences with a partner; in which case they might feign climaxing to put an end to unsatisfying sex.

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Then there’s the question of what actually determines ‘good sex’, and how it lines up with our expectations.

“You can have great sex without necessarily having to have an orgasm, but then what happens is that a lot of people get into this model of ‘there’s an end goal’, and that’s when it gets dangerous with sex,” Dr Goldstein explains.

“There isn’t an end goal for sex; unless you’re trying to get pregnant it shouldn’t finish when someone has an orgasm. So I think a lot of women get frustrated because they’re taught that in order to have good sex they’ve got to have an orgasm and make their partner think they’re having good sex, so they’re going to fake it.” (Post continues after gallery.)

On the other hand, the constant discourse surrounding clitoral orgasms vs. G-spot or vaginal orgasms can also be a little misleading. According to Dr Goldstein, while it’s common knowledge the majority of women can reach orgasm through clitoral stimulation, there’s a lingering belief that it’s only possible to achieve one kind or orgasm or the other.

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“I think those stats should be rewritten to say that [for] the 80 per cent of women who can have a clitoral orgasm, it is easier to have an orgasm that way,” she says. “So you might go, ‘Okay, it’s easier for me to get a vibrator and put it on my clitoris and have an orgasm that way than it is to start discovering what I can do with this G spot’ — but you can have a G-spot orgasm. It will just take maybe a bit more creativity and experimentation and often we’re so pushed for time, it’s like, ‘let’s just do what we can in the time that we have.'”

That’s not the only common reason for women to feign an orgasm. In the survey, 28 per cent of the women who had done so said they did it to spare their partner’s feelings. This feeling can be closely tied to a woman’s own sense of self, and her worry of being judged by her partner.

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“Especially if she’s with a new partner or a casual partner, a woman might think, ‘Oh god, there’s something wrong with me, I’m a freak, I can’t have an orgasm’, and she may be paranoid that that’s what he’s going to think as well. Therefore her faking an orgasm is nothing to do with his ego — it’s actually to do with her fear of not being accepted or negatively judged by him,” Dr Goldstein explains.

Knowing the motivations behind faked orgasms is one thing; knowing exactly how to broach such a delicate topic with a partner is quite another. Although owning up to the truth seems like a logical and sensitive first step, Dr Goldstein suggests taking a more practical and instructive approach instead, using the 'sandwich' mode of communication — sandwiching a criticism with a compliment and a suggestion.

"[Otherwise] you're going to just kill his ego right there. You need to be able to discuss with him that you'd like maybe to try a few things and up the ante in the bedroom, but you need to assure him that you're attracted to him and want to be with him," she advises.

RELATED: 10 health benefits to having sex more often.

"It's really about making it clear — 'I really like you, I find you really sexy, but I need a little more to get me over the edge. I am enjoying our sex life but maybe we can incorporate clitoral stimulation during penetration.'"

By leaving your partner with a suggestion and clearly communicating what satisfies you, you're giving them hope that there's something achievable to work towards. If you simply confess 'It's not working for me', your love interest will put the onus entirely on themselves to make it happen, which in turn can become a source of anxiety.

"Dropping a bombshell like that puts a lot of pressure on a guy and can actually impact his sexual performance because he's having an internal freak-out about delivering those pleasures," Dr Goldstein says.

You can find Dr Nikki Goldstein on her website here, and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.