Causes of premature ejaculation

What Is Premature Ejaculation - And What Causes It? 

The famous sexologists Masters and Johnson said that if intercourse did not go on long enough for the woman to reach orgasm 50% of the time, then the man was ejaculating prematurely. But the problem with this definition is that many women never reach orgasm through vaginal intercourse. A totally different approach to defining premature ejaculation was suggested by Helen Kaplan, who defined it as the lack of voluntary control over the ejaculation reflex. But there's a problem here, too: some experts don't think that the ejaculation reflex is voluntary. At best, it's partially under voluntary control, like a sneeze.

The American Psychiatric Association's definition of premature ejaculation emphasizes the fact that the man concerned ejaculates before he wants to. This is an important point, which can be illustrated by a hypothetical situation in which a man and a woman make love for an hour by touching, kissing, caressing, enjoying oral sex, and masturbation, during which she or he or both have one or more orgasms. He then penetrates her and comes within one minute - is that, then, premature, when he is so aroused and ready to explode? Or does the definition of premature depend on whether she is satisfied before he ejaculates? There's no clear answer to any of these questions, but they do serve to put into context the fact that a man and his partner might not consider themselves to have a premature ejaculation problem if they are both happy with the way their sex life works out, regardless of how long he can thrust inside her before he comes. 

But suppose, in contrast, that in order to delay his ejaculation by ten minutes, a man has to wear two condoms, spray his penis with a desensitizing spray, think about his tax return and enter his partner as soon as possible during sex so that he is not very aroused. By doing this he may indeed last ten minutes before he comes - but this might actually be very premature because neither he nor his partner are likely to be particularly aroused before he ejaculates, and the whole experience might be very unsatisfying for them both. 

Some studies claim that the rate of premature ejaculation among men now is much less than it was in 1958, when Alfred Kinsey put together his famous research work showing three quarters of men ejaculated within three minutes of entering their partner's vagina. However, the truth is a little different: a study at the university of Koln has found that the average time from penetration to ejaculation among men who do not consider themselves to have a problem with premature ejaculation is actually only three minutes and one second! Among men who do think of themselves as having premature ejaculation, the average time is two minutes thirty two seconds! Not much difference, really, between 1958 and 2004.

And some authorities have said that the quick ejaculator tends to be a young man. It does seem to be true, from my own research, that the time between penetration and ejaculation increases as a man gets older, but the perception of an individual man as to whether or not he has any control over his ejaculation does not change much: so unless a man takes steps to learn how to delay his orgasm he will always feel that he has little control over his ejaculation, and he will still see himself as ejaculating faster than he wishes, whether or not he is in fact able to thrust in the vagina for much longer before he reaches orgasm than he could as a young man. 

There's much debate about the causes of premature ejaculation. Some writers have put the responsibility firmly on the actions of the subconscious mind, and some psychological theories have plenty of suggestions about why a man might ejaculate quickly, such as fear of women, or fear of being psychologically engulfed by women, and so on. The problem with ideas like this is that they are impossible to prove, and even if they could be proved they would not help the average man with premature ejaculation very much. Few people have the time, inclination, or money, to delve so deeply into their psyches in pursuit of mysterious psychodynamic forces.

Other therapists have suggested that an over-sensitive penis is too blame, though quite what this means in reality is a little hard to work out. Surely the sensitivity of a man's penis is not the relevant factor? Isn't it how the nerve impulses from the penis to the brain and spinal cord are processed that is important? What seems more likely is that the nerve signals from the penis trigger an over-sensitive nervous system too strongly, too quickly, thereby setting off the ejaculation reflex before it is appropriate. The cure for premature ejaculation in these cases lies in turning down the sensitivity of the nervous system so that it can take more stimulation without the man ejaculating.

The irony here is that anxiety - fear, worry, call it what you will - about ejaculating too soon, and so failing as a lover, actually stimulates a man's level of nervous system activity so that he is actually likely to ejaculate even more quickly!

So relaxation, or at least some way to help lower a man's nervousness, anxiety, and emotional arousal during sex is part of the answer. There are many strands to this, including the confidence about sex which comes with experience.

Young men are more likely to think of themselves as bad lovers if they ejaculate more quickly, but less likely to care. Older men have had more time and experience to put their performance into context and judge how well they make love against what they believe is expected of them. Young men are usually very sexually excited and aroused, and may not have the opportunity for sex very often - so the chance of sex means their nervous systems are on a state of high alert, which makes them likely to come more quickly when they do get the chance of sex.

For all men, young and old alike, certain sexual positions help to slow down ejaculation, since they reduce muscular tension in the body. (Muscular tension can feedback to the nervous system and add even more stimulation to an already overloaded nervous system. This can make a man "cum" even more quickly.)

It's been suggested that young men learn to masturbate in a furtive and hurried way, in case their parents catch them, and that this quick sexual responsiveness carries over into sexual relationships as an adult. At first hearing this sounds plausible, but it turns out men who are premature ejaculators and men who are not both seem to have had pretty much the same experience of masturbation as teenagers. This doesn't mean teenage masturbation habits aren't a factor in developing a quick sexual response as an adult, but most sexologists don't think they're especially important.

Of course, biologically speaking, the quick ejaculator would have a survival advantage (less time mating means less time being vulnerable to predators) so it's possible we men are simply fighting against the evolutionary pressure of thousands of generations of quick ejaculating ancestors! Fortunately, we can develop a very significantly slower ejaculatory response if we choose to do so by using a suitable premature ejaculation treatment.

What does seem to be different between men who come too soon and those who do not is their ability to keep track of their arousal and keep it below the point where ejaculation becomes inevitable. A man who's getting near the point of ejaculatory inevitability can lower his arousal by, for example, slowing down the rate of sexual activity (such as vaginal thrusting) and hence reducing the stimulation he is getting.

A man who comes quickly may find his ejaculation is upon him before he knows it, and even when he realizes it is going to happen, he cannot then slow down sex quickly enough to reduce the stimulation he's receiving below the point where he will no longer ejaculate. It all fits with the idea of an over-sensitive nervous system - an observation  which is borne out by watching people in every day life, for it is obvious that we all have different thresholds of stimulation which we find acceptable or pleasant.

Read more about what ejaculation is and how it works here.

The causes of premature ejaculation - why you come too soon