Headphones turn on and off when I turn it around

Hello everybody,my problem is that I have been using a headphone set that for the past few months it had what I had consider to be a minor problem in that when I adjust the headphone cord the audio would switch from the headphones and into the laptop's speakers. well this morning that problem became a lot bigger and I had to move the cord around a lot so that I could hear the audio in the headphones. I then decided to use another set of headphones that I had stored and had just taken out of the box because I thought using another headphone would allow me to hear the audio but instantly it suffered the same problem as the last headphone and I had to move the cord around a lot so that I could be able to hear the audio. At this point I'm not sure if there is something wrong with the headphones or if there is something wrong with the headphone ports in my laptop,
My computer is Gateway NV57H77U and I'm using windows 7