Stopping Premature Ejaculation -A Woman's View Question: A woman asks by email: "Is it possible to stop my husband's premature ejaculation, and if so, how? He never wants to make love any more." Answer: Maybe your husband's PE has made him depressed so that he is less willing to have sex with you. Happily, that is a problem which is easily solved. We find that when a man loses interest in sex it is often down to his feeling inadequate because of premature ejaculation, and when he gains greater control, he becomes much more willing to make love. Men who have premature ejaculation often try and distract themselves during intercourse or masturbation, thinking that this will help them last longer. But the truth of the matter is that distraction in this way only makes things worse. PE is caused by a lack of awareness of the body and how sexually aroused it is, not by being too aware. Trying to tune out your awareness only makes things worse, and a man who does this may find that his ejaculation occurs even more quickly than before. The way to stop premature ejaculation is for a man to become even more aware of what his body is doing during intimacy. This may sound strange, but it is only by tuning into his feelings and levels of arousal that a man can know how far away from - or near to - the moment of ejaculation he actually is. This helps him to become more aware of his differing levels of sexual arousal, how he feels as he nears his point of ejaculatory inevitability, and how he responds to differing levels of sexual arousal. This will give him the power to make small changes in what he is doing as he makes love, so that he can prolong the time to ejaculation. The essence of this approach, as you may have seen, is to remain highly aroused without ejaculating. So before we go any further, let's review the stages of sexual arousal. The first stage is the excitement phase in which the man's breathing becomes deeper and his erection develops. Next comes the plateau stage, where the erection is fully developed and there is a subjective sense of being highly aroused. At some point in this process, arousal becomes so great that the man moves into the phase of orgasm and ejaculation. Finally, there is the resolution phase, in which breathing returns to normal and the man's erection gradually dissipates. As you may know, the key to successfully stopping premature ejaculation is to extend the arousal phase without letting yourself tip over into the orgasm and ejaculation phase. Key points for men to stop premature ejaculation:1) do not attempt to control ejaculation with drugs or alcohol - these are unhelpful and tend to add to the distractions which prevent you from gaining greater control over your ejaculatory responses 2) learn to appreciate sensuality over the whole of your body - sex is not a penis-centered thing, even though men often believe that's how it is best enjoyed. However, focusing on the penis is a route to lack of whole body awareness, which is a swift route to premature ejaculation and lack of ejaculatory control. Great sexual experiences involve arousal throughout the whole body, and an awareness of how aroused you are. The key here is around tension: premature ejaculation is very often the result of bodily tension which has no other outlet; when you have some ways to control the tension in your body - or at least to stop it building up too much - you are much more likely to prevent an early climax. So what in fact does "whole body arousal" actually mean? It means a relaxed enjoyment of your sensuality, a state of mind and body in which you are both relaxed and aware, the kind of alert relaxation you feel after a warm bath or a good massage. One excellent way for you to help yourself learn about lasting longer in bed is to have a bath or shower with your partner before you start making love. 3) And although it may sound simplistic, another very good way of learning how to stop rapid ejaculation is to use deep breathing. Many men find that they breathe in a rather shallow way as they get excited, but the "natural" way of breathing as you become more aroused is to breathe more deeply. Letting go of control is really the essence of this process: simply allowing your body to do what it naturally does during lovemaking can go a long way towards establishing greater ejaculatory control and stopping premature ejaculation. 4) There are various ways in which changing masturbation patterns can help you learn greater ejaculatory control. For example, if you masturbate (as most men do) then you can use this practice to develop slower bodily responses to the sexual drive towards ejaculation: start masturbating with a dry hand, and go slowly; don't succumb to the usual rapid dash towards ejaculation; instead, bring yourself slowly towards orgasm, taking your time, trying a variety of moves and strokes to see which are more effective at bringing you towards orgasm. Then back off: stop masturbating, or slow the rhythm down, so that you approach the point of no return but you don't actually ejaculate. Approaching the point of ejaculation and then backing off like this can be very helpful in learning how to stop premature ejaculation. The nest step is to increase the sensuality of the process by using some lubricant - obviously, this mirrors the environment in the vagina more closely and gives the whole experience a degree of sensuality that is missing in "dry" masturbation. You can use your own saliva or some commercial lubricant - whatever you feel comfortable with. Repetition is the key to success here; using an approach which allows you to develop greater ejaculatory control in this way is certainly going to be helpful in discovering how to prevent premature ejaculation. So do this over several sessions until you have developed a real sense of greater control over your arousal and orgasm. There is plenty of information on whole body sensuality on the internet if you wish to find out more about it. But, taken with the greater ejaculatory control you can develop using the masturbation process described above, this is a good foundation for the next stage of the treatment - which involves you and your partner. This is a variation of the approach to controlling premature ejaculation known as the stop - start technique. You can arrange a signal which will tell your partner when to stop stimulating you: this might be a tap on the back, for example, or simply the word "stop". You can use the word "go" to tell your partner when to start stimulating you. Here's how it works. Your partner starts by stroking your penis while you lie still, until you signal that you are getting near your point of ejaculatory inevitability. Then you signal them to stop, and you both remain still, with your lover holding your penis, until your urge to ejaculate has diminished. During this time, you should breathe deeply and keep your body as relaxed as possible. When you are happy that you can continue without any danger of ejaculating, you signal your lover to recommence her stroking of your penis and she continues this until you are once again near your point of no return. If you repeat this between five and seven times in a period of time between fifteen and thirty minutes you should be able to rapidly develop greater control of your sexual responsivity and arousal. As you may have realized, the focus here is on the male partner. It is up to him to control the process and keep it working for his benefit: but of course it is also important that the female partner's sexual needs are met, so don't forget to make sure that her desires are fulfilled. The next step of the process is to repeat the stop-start process with fellatio rather than masturbation from your partner. You start by lying still on the bed and enjoy her caresses as she pleasures you. Make sure that you stop her before you ejaculate! Repeat this process just as you did for the masturbation-by-hand-caresses. What you should hopefully find as you practice this over a period of a few weeks is that you rapidly develop greater control. It's a tried and tested way of stopping premature ejaculation. More suggestions for stopping premature ejaculationThe man-on-top sex position can be exciting, but it's a position which makes it harder for most men to control the speed with which they reach orgasm. The excitement of deep thrusting, combined with the tension involved for the man in holding his own weight up on his arms makes it difficult for him to control his arousal. A much better option is the woman on top position, where there is much less tension on the man. Another great idea is to make some noise. Noise helps men keep in control during sex - it reduces tension and lets out the sexual energy which can otherwise build up in the body. Of course, learning to control premature ejaculation takes time and effort, and there will be "accidents" along the way. But if you can maintain a sense of humor about these, they will seem much less significant and won't impede your progress unduly.A word of advice: don't use creams which contain anesthetic lotion, as these will dull the sensations in the penis and lower your awareness of the feelings. The best way to learn how to stop PE is for the man to be aware what his body is telling him - to become more familiar with what he is feeling so that he can slow down or stop sexual activity when he nears the point of climax. It's an interesting point that when a man stops premature ejaculation, and gains greater sexual power, his lover is much more able to enjoy physical intimacy in a relaxed way - it's almost as though the anxiety and tension which results from the man's fear about coming too soon conveys itself to the woman and stops the harmonious flow of energy between the couple. And women may well prefer whole body sensuality and sexuality to genital focused sex. Women tend to find that men are too rushed and become too aroused too quickly, so that they want to ejaculate long before a women has even begun to get properly aroused. Women frequently complain that men seem to be exclusively interested in their breasts and genitals, when they would prefer a much slower approach to lovemaking, including a gradual build-up towards the sexual areas. So, as man, remember that women appreciate genital contact when they are more aroused. For a woman, her whole body is a sensitive playground, and she would like it all to be used in this way - as a sensual playground. Remarkably, if you think of your penis in the same way, you are much more likely to be better able to stop premature ejaculation. So this means regarding your penis as a playful, sensual organ which would appreciate a slow build up and a relaxed an intimate style of caressing and kissing before it gets down to penetration and intercourse! The rushed approach puts a lot of time pressure on the penis and makes it all too eager to spurt! What this all amounts to is that if men made love the way women like, and the way men could learn to appreciate, women would have fewer issues with the way men make love, and men would experience far fewer sexual problems, including premature ejaculation. Another question about controlling ejaculation A man nearing his thirties sent an email: "I don't last very long when I make love but I can last just about as long as I want when I masturbate. In my previous sexual relationship, I discovered that in regular sex, I could continue making love for three minutes or so. I have experimented with many things to delay my ejaculation, including extended foreplay and lots of oral attention to my partner's clitoris so she reaches a powerful climax before me, but that has never satisfied my desire to be a good lover. I am really perturbed by the fact that I cannot last longer than three minutes in bed. When I'm masturbating, I can make a session last for as long as thirty minutes before I ejaculate, and I don't think it is expecting too much to last for the same length of time during sexual intercourse. "As you can see I have much more control when I masturbate than when I am making love. Incidentally, I still have my foreskin, which I keep over my glans penis during lovemaking. Even so, after penetration, my penis appears to be so sensitive that the merest feel of the warmth and wetness of my partner's vagina means I cannot stop my ejaculation. There have been many occasions when I have ejaculated just after making a few penile thrusts. And I am embarrassed to admit that more than once, just entering her has made me ejaculate, and so has withdrawing from her in an attempt to lower my level of sexual arousal. "Now, here's the problem: I want to give my girlfriend the best possible experience in bed. I care about her a lot, and want her to have the same pleasure that I do. How can I make my penis less sensitive so that I don't ejaculate as quickly, while still getting the same level of sexual pleasure from intercourse with her, and perhaps even allowing her to enjoy an orgasm during intercourse? In other words, how can I stop premature ejaculation? "The way I see it, if she is completely ready and highly aroused before I enter her, we may be able to ensure she has an orgasm during the time my penis is in her vagina and I am thrusting. She may even come in less than two minutes. This is more or less equivalent to getting her on the brink of orgasm and then sticking my penis into her so that as she begins to come, I ejaculate and we reach orgasm together. That's OK I suppose, but it would be much better to be able to make love for as long as we wanted before I ejaculate. I have even tried masturbating before we make love, but all that does is make me less firmly erect when we do have intercourse, which produces more anxiety and makes me ejaculate even more prematurely!" Answer: "Most women, I think, would like a man to bring them to orgasm and then take his own pleasure rather than have a man who is just selfish, enters, thrusts, ejaculates, and then leaves the woman hanging before her orgasm, unfulfilled and unpleasured. Many many women don't want a guy thrusting away in their vagina for prolonged periods of time. They would much rather have an orgasm by oral sex or mutual masturbation, then have him come in them, even if he doesn't last very long, because that way both are satisfied and the woman can enjoy the feeling of having him inside after she has climaxed. It's really good for a woman to have a partner who enjoys foreplay and then knows how to pleasure her before taking pleasure himself: if a man indulges a woman with lots of sexual attention, she will be motivated to do all she can to make his time in bed really rewarding. If this is true, then premature ejaculation is not so much a problem as a condition to be worked around, something a couple can work into their love play and which really doesn't affect the degree of sexual pleasure which a couple get if they both accept that the guy is going to ejaculate quickly. In any case, once the
excitement of a new relationship has reduced, and you begin to know each
other's bodies better, you may find that the time for which you can last
before you ejaculate increases anyway. And as time goes by you may find
that you last longer in bed each time you try having intercourse - and
as you are giving her pleasure by masturbation or oral sex, it
won't matter how long you last. I know they say men tend to lose
interest in sex after they have ejaculated, but if you can, go back and
give her more attention after you have come - that way, you will be her
sexual hero! Furthermore, most women are actually very excited that a man finds them so sexually attractive that he can't hold himself back from ejaculating - it's actually quite a compliment, you know! And most women love being intimate, not necessarily enjoying penetrative sex as much as men - often the pleasure they get from it is often about seeing their man happy. And that makes me wonder if you know that very few women actually reach a climax through penetration and thrusting. I wonder if you have discussed all this with your girl, or are you just assuming that she will want certain things from you? And on a practical level, have you thought about using a condom? A condom may reduce the amount of sensitivity in your penis so that you don't come quite as quickly. And above all, talk to her - you know that good communication is essential in any relationship, so that one person isn't making assumptions about what the other wants." The man who raised the questions writes back: "I agree with much of what you say, but there are several points which some up for me. First, yes, I do know that few women reach orgasm during intercourse but I also believe that the ones who have experienced it want it more, and I think it is a delightful idea for the man and women to achieve simultaneous orgasm. I have heard it said that this is not important and that it even distracts from the enjoyment of intercourse. Well, maybe, but then again, what could distract more from the the enjoyment of sex than premature ejaculation, even if the only person it leaves unsatisfied is the man? I hear what you are saying about rapid ejaculation not mattering to most women, but it matters to me, and that is why I want to do something about it." A doctor specializing in the condition replied on out behalf: "I don't actually think there is a problem here, and it sounds like you are being very hard on yourself for not being able to last longer in bed. First of all, the basic problem in discussing the subject is that everyone has their own idea of what actually constitutes premature ejaculation. So let's begin by defining it. I think one useful definition of PE is that a man comes before either he or his partner wish him to do so. The good thing about this definition is that it takes account of the possibility that a man might not always last for the same length of time - sometimes he comes sooner, sometimes slower, and the pleasure he and his partner get from sex varies according to each sexual experience. Only if they are consistently dissatisfied with the sex they are having can they really begin to think of his rapid ejaculation as a problem. And what about you? It sounds to me like you are thinking more of your lover than you are about yourself, and while you ensure she has great pleasure, you don't allow yourself to enjoy your orgasm as much as you might because you are being too self-critical. The most important issue might be something different to how quickly you ejaculated - it might be how much you and your girlfriend enjoyed yourselves in bed. Here are some definitions of premature ejaculation from the internet:
Definition of premature ejaculation There is no widely agreed definition of what constitutes premature ejaculation. However, think of it as the inability of a man to determine the point at which he ejaculates, so he basically comes too soon in relation to his own expectations, or the desires and wishes of his partner. So what distresses one individual and seems like coming so fast a man needs to delay his ejaculation may be totally fine with the next man and his partner. Indeed, research has shown that the time between penetration and ejaculation bears little relationship to the way a man describes himself (i.e. as a premature ejaculator or not). As we all know, the excitement of a new relationship means you are almost certain to come sooner than you want to do and ejaculate faster than you would like. the novelty factor of having a new partner whose responses are unknown to you and whose body is a new and exciting thing makes you more aroused and quicker off the mark. In addition, there is an inevitable degree of anxiety associated with having a new partner, and anxiety is notorious for prompting a faster ejaculation. If you can last for as long as you describe when you are masturbating, by using some kind of stop-start technique, whereby you periodically reduce the level of stimulation you are getting - you might wish to apply the same level of self-control and self-discipline to your sexual activities with a partner. This may be harder, since there are different pressures on you when you are with a partner, but you can still practice stopping and starting every time your arousal gets too high. It is having the self control not to continue thrusting which is essential, since you might be tempted to continue until you ejaculate. There is also the possibility of using masturbation as an aid to prolonging the time for which you can last in bed, by, for example, masturbating before you have sex or having your partner bring you off before you enter her. That will almost certainly help you last longer. You must remember to be as attentive to her after you have ejaculated as you would have been if you had not! I'd also like to mention the possibility that you could use a desensitizing cream. Although these have got a bit of bad press, they can actually be useful. If you numb your penis with one and then allow the cream to dry, before washing your penis, you will not desensitize your partner's vagina, but you may find you can stop premature ejaculation. Try it, at any rate - but don't deprive yourself of the sexual pleasure that is your right. If you find the sensations of your orgasm are significantly reduced, this may not be the best way to deal with your rapid ejaculation. You can also try putting desensitizing creams on the glans and then wearing a condom, so that none of the cream goes into your partner's vagina. Bear in mind that being able to last a long time when you masturbate does not mean anything about whether or not you are conditioned to ejaculate quickly during intercourse. In any event you do sound like a caring lover and provided you can establish better communication about this with your prospective sexual partners, you should be able to overcome your preconceived notions about how long sex should last and what a man has to do during sex to be a good lover! Other things to be aware of:
Responses from the original questioner. My point is that premature ejaculation every so often may be no big deal, but every time we make love, it becomes embarrassing, and if she gets excited during penetration and wants hard thrusting for a longer time, then I can't do it. Good ejaculatory control isn't an option for a good lover, it's essential. I certainly don't just want to thrust for half an hour without any pleasure for either of us, but I want good lovemaking with intimacy and emotional connection. Being a longer lasting lover gives one more options and makes this easier. I am glad to hear that you don't think I am going to be judged by my performance in bed, and this has taken some pressure off me. Meanwhile, I would like to try the creams to apply to my glans to make me a bit less sensitive to sexual stimulation! I think you all for your advice and for putting things into perspective." |