holy crap…man and women are soooooooo different! You give up on an orgasam and just go to bed!!! As a man, that thought is just so alien to me!
I’m quite floored myself. I never knew this about women and I’m 34!!
Cold start… yeah, five to ten minutes sounds about right, provided I pull out some standard fantasies and I’m not sick/distracted/blah/etc. It’s usually a little orgasm, though. The big ones take more workup.
BTW, the male reactions to the “Fuck it, I’m going to sleep,” little factoid above amuse me. A lot. 
Yeah, me too. I never thought of it any other way. Sometimes it’s just not worth it!
Wow giving up on an orgasm, its like giving up on a child…
Now that some of us have shared, can I ask–how long does your friend take?
That’s why we’ve instituted my own personal ‘No Child Left Behind’ program at our house…
snort
Very good.
'Bout ten minutes, unless I’m really, really horny, in which case it can take as little as two minutes. But if I’m really, really tired, sometimes I’ll doze off in the middle, wake up, remember what I was doing, and resume. When this happens, and I doze off a couple of times, it could take up to an hour.
Like others, there have been (rare) times when I’ve realized it just ain’t gonna happen, and go to sleep.
Cold start, masturbation, not very long, 5-10 min. maybe.
With oral or sex though, for freakin’ ever. I don’t know why, exactly, but sometimes it takes me 30 min. or more. Maybe I’m just indulgent.
If horny, 5-10 minutes. If, “Oh, I’m a little tense, maybe I should use Rysler-Brand-Sleep-Aid,” 30-45.
Been there.
Good to know I’m not the only one. 
So let me get this straight…
NOT ONLY do you sometimes just give up on an orgasm but, on occasion, you fall asleep while doing it!?!?!
::wanders off wondering how members of the same species can be so different::
When masturbating (without toys ) it takes me maybe 4-5 minutes to orgasm… then I’ll wait a minute or two and have another, wait a minute or two and have another, etc., etc. Masturbating with toys takes a little longer.
If it took me 45 minutes to orgasm with masturbation I wiouldn’t even bother!!
By myself? 3-7 minutes.
With a partner? Um…well…it’s been so long, I can’t remember.
During oral sex? Climax then? That happens? I mean, it feels good and all, but an orgasm? Really?
90 seconds to 30 minutes. it just depends.
i’ve actually fallen asleep while masturbating.
poor, poor me.
To all the ladies that answered this, thanks very much for your imput. It’s really appreciated. My friend has had issues regarding this (in terms of insecurities) and just wouldn’t accept that she was “within the norm” like I kept telling her, but it was really doing a number on her self esteem.
(And to answer the question asked, she has apparently never been able to do it by hand, although I attribute that to her ridiculous impatience, but with a vibrator it apparently varied along the same sort of time periods mentioned here. That is, from several minutes to never. The biggest problem I think she had was that sometimes it just DIDN’T happen, and I guess she questioned her sexuality).
Not reading anyone else’s reply as requested, cold start, favorite toy included, about 5 minutes. Normally not a cold start, though - and feel frisky first, in which case it is rare to be more than 3 minutes. Anything other than that toy, at least 10 minutes, cold start or not.
If I am already revved up from having read or seen something that is stimulating, I’m on a hair-trigger, and it doesn’t take more than thirty seconds to get to the Land of Aaahs.
If I am just lying there with no particular stimulus on my mind, it usually takes about five minutes.
Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. The ultimate rejection: you’re doing yourself and it’s so dull that you fall asleep.