Category Archives: delayed ejaculation

delayed ejaculation, sexual satisfaction, what men want in bed

Treatment for delayed ejaculation

How To Overcome Your Problems Ejaculating

Over the years therapists have come up with two main categories of reasons for delayed ejaculation: the first is the inhibition of sexual drive, and the second is a lack of sexual desire, which is also called a “desire deficit”.

Both of these approaches to explaining delayed ejaculation (DE) come from therapists who have worked in the area and achieved considerable fame with their theories.

You might think, and you’d probably be right, that these look like extremely different approaches to delayed ejaculation. That doesn’t mean that either of them is wrong, because it could well be that delayed ejaculation (DE for short) has more than one cause.

What Does Delayed Ejaculation Mean?

Using the “inhibition of sexual impulses” approach, Helen Singer Kaplan suggested that one way to encourage a man to reach orgasm and ejaculate during sex was to stimulate his penis with extreme force by hand.

The idea is to get his penis as near to his partner’s vagina as possible in the moments before he ejaculates. Then, at the last moment before he comes, he or his partner could push his penis into her so he ejaculates intravaginally.

Getting a man aroused with hand stimulation, then pushing his penis into his partner’s vagina at the last minute is not a sophisticated form of therapy. The extraordinary thing is, though, that sometimes it actually works. (It helps a man to ejaculate normally during intercourse.)

Now that could be because using force to overcome a man’s inhibitions about ejaculation is an adequate approach for some men. It may get them over a fear barrier, perhaps. Or it may simply allow them to experience ejaculation inside their partner and find that this feels OK. After that, whatever was causing the blockage to their ability to ejaculate inside their partner is removed.

 But it doesn’t work for everyone, and it’s quite aggressive. Whether the limited success it produces justifies its use or not is another issue. 

I suppose men who can’t ejaculate in a partner, and who are desperate to do so, would be delighted to have any treatment which works. So if it actually results in them being able to ejaculate in the vagina, it’s fine, regardless of whether commentators like me call it “aggressive” or not!

But what about the men for whom this DE treatment doesn’t work?

These men require a combination of therapies. You see, problems with ejaculation almost always involve some unconscious beliefs and thoughts about sex. That means a man won’t usually know why he can’t ejaculate.

And certainly some of the men with delayed ejaculation prefer sex with themselves to sex with women or indeed any partner. And you have to see that psychological position – which is called autosexuality – as rooted in some traumatic experience in childhood.

But many men with delayed ejaculation don’t really want to look into their childhood for traumatic events. That’s true even when this may explain the origins of delayed ejaculation. What they want is a cure.

One successful and popular approach is to sensitize a man’s body to the sexual stimulation he’s receiving so that he becomes more aroused more quickly. Delayed ejaculation is almost always characterized by a man having a low level of sexual arousal during intercourse. This is true no matter how long foreplay or intercourse may continue.

And in fact it’s not that a man’s point of ejaculatory no return is somehow “set” too high. It’s much more that he doesn’t reach that point, because he simply never gets aroused enough.

That implies that the roots of issues with reaching climax during sex lie in something that’s stopping the man becoming sexually aroused. Or, more exactly, sexually aroused enough to ejaculate.

And very often that something turns out to be a disconnection from his body, or disconnection from the process of sexual arousal.

Again, that’s almost always the result of some kind of traumatic experience in childhood. But one of the interesting things about psychological healing is that it can take place just through the act of living, where we’re all presented with opportunities to grow and develop.

So many men can “retrain” their bodies to respond to greater sexual arousal without looking at the past. And this is done through a process called sensate focus. While I wouldn’t claim that it is successful in 100% of cases, it certainly works for a heck of a lot of men.

Video – Delays In Ejaculating

  

 And so do other techniques that are aimed at increasing arousal, like using porn, or finding orgasm triggers on the body such as nipple stimulation or anal stimulation. And this includes incorporating into the couple’s sex life those things which the man (and the woman!) find particularly arousing. You can read more about this in this book. 

But of course this isn’t really going to work where a man has some fundamental issue about the relationship that he’s in, or about sexuality, or about sex with a woman, or about femininity.

 In those cases it’s hard to see how the condition can be cured without addressing the underlying emotional and psychological issues. This is where men can heal wounds – i.e. emotional wounds – suffered at the hands of women (obviously, usually their mothers).

Densensitization As An Approach To DE

Men with delayed ejaculation often have a particularly “firm” way of masturbating which they learnt in adolescence. And this “death grip” may get a man accustomed to a high level of stimulation. This can mean the more gentle stimulation provided by a partner later in life isn’t enough to make him come. And neither is the much gentler stimulation of oral or vaginal sex. There’s a lot more explanation of these issues in this book.

That’s why it’s essential for men in this situation to enjoy desensitization, and also to practice masturbating with a lighter touch. It helps if you abstain from sex for some time so that your sex drive is higher than normal. It also helps if you find the “orgasm triggers” on your own body. Anal stimulation can be helpful, but there are many more. These orgasm triggers are what we could call erogenous zones.

What about the psychological issues around slow or late ejaculation?

A lot of men who have delayed ejaculation want to be in control. That’s because control is a psychological mechanism which protects a man from situations that once were harmful or threatening. 

The mind assumes anything which frightens an individual in childhood has to be avoided or protected against. And the mind does that very effectively, keeping us away from the specific event that caused the original trauma, and away from anything vaguely related or similar to it. And it does this for the rest of our lives. So a man who experienced any negative emotional experience at the hands of a woman (shame being high on the list) may well be wary of getting close to a woman in the future. And there’s no getting closer to a woman than sharing the intimacy of sex! Read more about the psychology of delayed ejaculation here.

This can explain why some men don’t get aroused enough to come, which is the main cause of delayed ejaculation: avoiding arousal means avoiding the intimacy of sexual intercourse.  Especially the most intimate moment of all – the moment of orgasm, when you lose control completely.

Men with delayed ejaculation (DE) sometimes have a certain mindset about sex and their role within it. They often see themselves as good “providers” of the female orgasm, and having a great ability to pleasure a woman. And some women in relationships with men who have DE are enjoying multiple orgasms. But many more, however, find the isolation and lack of intimacy very distressing. This is where communication between partners is essential.

delayed ejaculation, satisfying a man, sexual satisfaction, what men want in bed

Advice For Women – When A Man Has Delayed Ejaculation

Delayed Ejaculation

In essence, delayed ejaculation appears to be the opposite of premature ejaculation. This is confusing: a man appears to be aroused, and have an erection very suitable for intercourse. But no matter how long sex continues, he may be unable to ejaculate at all, or he may only be able to do so with great difficulty. How may this be explained?

On the face of it a condition such as delayed ejaculation  goes against everything we expect during sex. For most men, the prospect of vaginal intercourse is so attractive and so arousing that it promotes a quick orgasm. (Often far more rapid than either the man or his partner want.) How is it, then, that some men not only don’t ejaculate prematurely but simply can’t ejaculate during sex? 

It’s an interesting question, to say the least! Some cases of delayed ejaculation are caused by drugs that interfere with the ejaculatory mechanism. Others are caused by the man actually not being very aroused at all during sex, despite the fact that he has an erection. His low sexual arousal is not sufficient to get him to the point of ejaculatory inevitability.

Sexual arousal is product of both physical arousal in the body, together with mental arousal caused by fantasy, anticipation of sex, and the memory of previous experience of sex.

Both of these are necessary to get a man to the point where he’s ready to ejaculate. An absence of either source of stimulation will stop him from ejaculating in the normal way.

Video – male sexual arousal

But why would a man not be aroused during sexual intercourse, and why would he not not realize that? It seems the answer to that question lies in the man’s disconnection from his own sexuality. We talk, almost as a cliché, about men being cut off from their feelings, but it seems that there is a lot of reality in this for many men around sexual issues.

Previous bad experiences, childhood abuse, emotional wounding by those who shamed or made a child guilty or anxious about sex. Adult experiences of sex that go badly wrong in some way. All these can contribute to a man cutting himself off from his awareness of his sexuality, his sexual arousal, and his sexual connection with his partner. It’s what’s known in psychological terms as a defense mechanism.

These defense mechanisms are, as the name suggests, all about defending oneself from further psychological hurt. It makes sense not to feel much during sex if you’ve previously been hurt during sex.

Some men with delayed ejaculation are so committed to their partners’ well-being that they continue to attempt to satisfy their partner without realizing that their own arousal is very low.  

This may happen because their underlying hostility or resentment or fear or anger or guilt or shame needs to be brought out into the open and discussed between the partners. 

Once intimacy has been established, the man can be coached in achieving sexual pleasure for himself. Some of the fats that might be releavnt are listed below.

Some facts you may not know abut your penis and sex!

  • Men over thirty may need physical stimulation of their penis to get an erection.
  • Men can have intercourse with a partial erection.
  • Erections come and go during sex.
  • Men often lose their erection when enjoying oral sex or putting on a condom.
  • Men don’t always want sex – it’s OK to say “no”!
  • You may not get an erection if you don’t want sex with a particular woman, even if you’re naked in bed together.
  • For men in mid-life or later, sexual urgency and desire may decrease, but perhaps the most important change for them is that their erections become more elusive. Often direct physical stimulation is needed to get it up – a far cry from the days of youth when his erections popped up all over the place for no apparent reason at all!

Delayed Ejaculation Treatment

First of all, it’s important to realize that delayed ejaculation (DE) is not rare (you can read more on this here). DE is the third most common male sexual dysfunction, and it seems to affect about one man in twelve in the general population across all age ranges.

This means that it is a very significant cause of difficulty  in relationships, sexual dissatisfaction and disappointment, and low self-esteem on the part of the men who experience delayed ejaculation.

The majority of cases are caused by psychological factors, and with commitment and motivation from the man concerned (and possibly from his partner as well), a cure is actually not too difficult.

Treatment will center on several things: one of them is establishing good communication between the two partners in the sexual relationship. This is because there are many misunderstandings about each other’s needs which contribute to faulty beliefs and wrong assumptions.

For example, the man may assume that he has a responsibility to satisfy his lover sexually. The woman may assume that because the man cannot ejaculate he is not attracted to her. And so on.

Once a man and a woman in a sexual relationship begin to communicate fully and openly, intimacy is restored between them, and the first step has then been taken to establishing physical intimacy. It’s important that this process is done with clear guidance, otherwise the eruption of hostility and anger may be more destructive than constructive.

Secondly, it is necessary for the man who has delayed ejaculation to understand that something has gone wrong with the process of his sexual arousal. Although he appears to be aroused, with an erection, he may in fact have little desire to have sexual intercourse with his partner. 

This may be because of some disruption of the relationship between them, or it may be because of previous associations with sex and sexuality that have left him psychologically disturbed by sex. Shame and guilt are high on the list, and they often come from childhood experiences.

There is however nothing to stop events in adult life leading to delayed ejaculation, in which case it’s known as acquired delayed ejaculation. Lifelong delayed ejaculation, fairly obviously, would be a condition that a man had experienced from the time of his first sexual encounter.

Education videos on delayed ejaculation can be found here. 

Thirdly a program of physical intimacy exercises, called sensate focus exercises, will re-establish sexual and physical intimacy between a couple, and allow the development of true sexual arousal in the man. Once he becomes highly aroused, he will find it easier to reach the point of ejaculatory inevitability, which is the point that every man must reach in terms of sexual arousal before his ejaculation reflexes are triggered.

delayed ejaculation

Delayed Ejaculation & Intimacy

Advice For Couples Experiencing Delayed Ejaculation

It’s a common misconception, particularly on the Internet, that delayed ejaculation is a difficult problem to solve.  The reality is that most failed attempts at treatment result from a lack of understanding of what actually caused the problem in the first place.

It’s also partly the result of the fact that so few men seek treatment for the problem, mostly because they feel really embarrassed or perhaps ashamed about it. And that’s not too surprising. But it is a common problem, as you can see when you read this information about delayed ejaculation.

If you feel very different from other men – which is how a lot of men who can’t ejaculate during intercourse do seem to feel – you probably would want to keep it to yourself. Regrettably, however, a lot of men with this problem don’t talk about it even to their partners, and that’s where the trouble starts. You have to communicate if you want to save your  sex life and relationship. 

And even if you’re not in a relationship you can still make significant progress on dealing with the emotional issues that lie at its root. You see, a problem that seems very complicated  only looks that way because it’s caused by several factors working together. 

Video – relationship issues in delayed ejaculation

The first things is to think about your relationship. How do a couple feel towards each other?  How does the man feel about his relationship to his own sexuality? How does the man feel about the way he and his partner make love? These are just some of the many questions that have a clear role to play in understanding the origin of ejaculation problems.

Video – Origin of Male Ejaculation Problems

 

If, for example, one of the aspects that’s causing delayed ejaculation is lack of intimacy between partners, which in turn is leading to poor communication, the solution involves these problems. 

Essentially getting over it is about learning a new behavior which bypasses the old one. So as far as intimacy is concerned, there are some very good techniques you can use to develop a close relationship. Once you feel physically close, it’s possible to be intimately close.

Over the years therapists have come up with two main categories of reasons for delayed ejaculation. The first is the inhibition of sexual drive, and the second is a lack of sexual desire, which is also being called a desired deficit.

Both of these approaches to explaining delayed ejaculation (DE) come from therapists who have worked in the area and achieved considerable fame with their theories.

First was a woman called Helen Singer Kaplan, who was the originator of the inhibition model. The second was a man called Bernard Apfelbaum, who came up with the desire deficit or “lack of sexual desire” approach.

You might think, and you’d probably be right, that these look like extremely different approaches to the same condition. That doesn’t mean that either of them is wrong, because it could well be that the condition has more than one cause.

So using the “inhibition of sexual impulses” approach, Kaplan suggested that one way to “encourage” a man to ejaculate during sex was to stimulate his penis with extreme force, getting it as near to his partner’s vagina as was possible just before he ejaculated, so that he could push it in at the last moment and ejaculate intravaginally.

You might think this is not a very compassionate or sophisticated approach. The extraordinary thing is, though, that sometimes it actually works. Now that could be because using force to overcome a man’s inhibition about ejaculation is actually an adequate approach for some men. It may get them over a fear barrier, perhaps, or it may simply allow them to experience ejaculation in such a way that whatever was causing a blockage to their ability to ejaculate inside their partner is removed.

But it doesn’t work for everyone, and it’s quite aggressive. Whether the limited success it engenders justifies its use or not is another issue. Men who can’t ejaculate, and who are desperate to do so, would be delighted to have any treatment applied that actually results in them being able to ejaculate, regardless of whether it’s regarded by commentators like me as “aggressive” or not!

But what about the men for whom it doesn’t work? What you tend find here is that they require a combination of therapies. And certainly when that’s the case, you can bank on DE having a complicated origin, and the various threads that come together to cause it may need to be teased apart and dealt with separately. 

Delayed ejaculation is almost always an unconscious process. That means a man won’t know why he can’t ejaculate. Indeed, it would be quite extraordinary if he did, although I have come across men with great self-awareness who have a basic understanding of what’s going on. 

For example, some of them have a fear of women, some of them don’t like the partner they’re with, some of them have great resentment towards women, some, possibly, have a fear of femininity or are more oriented to same sex sexual activity.

And certainly some of the men with delayed ejaculation prefer sex with themselves to sex with women or indeed any partner. That psychological position is probably rooted in some traumatic experience in childhood.

And that’s one key to this problem: looking back into childhood. But the thing is, most men with delayed ejaculation don’t really want to look into their childhood for traumatic events that may have rendered them sexually incapable in adult hood. What they want is a cure. Regrettably it isn’t really as simple as that for the majority of men.

Nonetheless there are strategies that can be used, and, as in  Kaplan’s work, they are sometimes successful – even without delving into the subconscious. For example, one approach that is quite popular is to sensitize a man’s body to the sexual stimulation that he is receiving so that he becomes more aroused more quickly. 

For the fact of the matter is that delayed ejaculation is almost always characterized by a man having a low level of sexual arousal during intercourse, no matter how long foreplay or intercourse may continue.

In fact it’s not that his point of ejaculatory inevitability – the point of ejaculatory inevitability – is somehow set to high: it’s much more that he can’t reach that point, because he simply never gets aroused enough. That in itself implies that the roots of the condition lie in something that stopping the man becoming sexually aroused. And that turns out to be very often a disconnection from his body, or disconnection from the process of sexual arousal.

Video – low arousal in delayed ejaculation

So for some men it may be sufficient to “retrain” their bodies to respond to greater sexual arousal. And this is done through a process called sensate focus. 

Video – Delays In Ejaculating

And so do other techniques that are aimed at increasing arousal, like using porn, finding orgasm triggers on the body such as nipple stimulation or anal stimulation, or basically incorporating into the couple’s sex life those things which the man (and the woman!) find particularly arousing.

But of course this isn’t really going to work where a man has fundamental issue about the relationship that he’s in, or about sexuality, or about sex with a woman, or about femininity.

In those cases it’s hard to see how the condition can be cured without addressing the underlying emotional and psychological issues. For those men and women who don’t want to explore psychological issues, it could well be that there isn’t a great deal of desire to restore or develop an intimate and loving relationship. It could even be of course that people in this situation don’t fully understand what an intimate and loving relationship is in the first place.

Densensitization As An Approach To DE

That’s probably why sex therapists have resorted so much to desensitization as a way of retraining the man to ejaculate. This will probably work well if it’s applied with dedication in cases where there is a considerable level of anxiety on the part of the man.

Because desensitization is an effective treatment for anxiety, and it’s certainly true that a great many men have a lot of anxiety around sex, which can be eradicated just by giving them confidence. So desensitization would basically work by having a man masturbate to orgasm with his partner initially some distance away. Over a period of time, she will come nearer and nearer while the man masturbates to the point of ejaculation, although it’s absolutely essential that he takes the time and effort to learn relaxation and to ensure that his anxiety is reduced as much as possible by relaxation the nearer his partner gets to him when he is engaged in sexual activity.

Eventually, if this process is done carefully, he will reach a point where he can ejaculate with his partner beside him. And at that point, the next step may be the most difficult, potentially: to allow his partner to masturbate him to the point of ejaculation.

That can be tricky because men with delayed ejaculation often have a particularly “firm” way of masturbating which they learnt in adolescence. It follows that if you actually learn to masturbate using what’s been described as a “death grip“, it’s highly likely that you’re going to get accustomed to a high level of stimulation which will render you incapable ejaculating with either more gentle stimulation provided by partner, or the much less fierce stimulation of oral or virginal sex.

That’s why it’s absolutely essential for men in this situation not only to practice desensitization, but also to practice masturbating with a lighter touch. That process can be aided if they abstain from sex for some time so that their sex drive is actually higher, and if they find the orgasm triggers on their own body – anal stimulation being a particularly good one.

 

delayed ejaculation

Pleasuring A Man Who Has Delayed Ejaculation (2)

A man who feels inhibited in talking to you about his inability to ejaculate may want to get professional help instead.

Getting help with delayed ejaculation (DE)

There’s some helpful information about DE here. That may help a lot. And you may also want to get some counselling. So to put this into context, lifelong or chronic delayed ejaculation is more common than most men realize. It’s also different for each man who has it: a different combination of factors has caused it, and a different approach to treatment will cure it.

There are two basic models of treatment for male anorgasmia. These are called the “inhibition model” and the “desire deficit model.” Don’t worry about these terms, they are just scientific language for some simple ideas…..

Inhibition Model

The so-called inhibition model and the approach to treatment which comes from it was promoted by the famous sex therapists Masters and Johnson, and Helen Singer Kaplan.

This approach to curing delayed ejaculation assumes that a man is not receiving enough sexual stimulation – in either quality or quantity – to reach his orgasmic threshold, his point of no return, also known as the point of ejaculatory inevitability, so he is not able to ejaculate.

Obviously, the idea here is that if a man’s level of sexual stimulation can be increased above his ejaculatory threshold, then he will be able to ejaculate. However, what if his ejaculatory threshold may be so high as to make this impossible? Is this a case of inadequate stimulation or does it mean he has a high stimulation threshold?

These are actually quite different things when you think about it. For example, the high stimulation threshold concept might mean that a man’s issue with delayed ejaculation comes from some inhibition of his orgasmic capacity. Maybe he is consciously or unconsciously expressing resentment or anger by withholding his orgasm.

On the other hand, inadequate stimulation might also result from a man having an insensitive penis or penile nerves. Perhaps he learned to masturbate as an adolescent with an unusual technique such as thrusting his penis against the mattress without using his hand.

Obviously this line of reasoning suggests that treatment methods for DE might either

  • aim to increase sexual arousal through intense stimulation;
  • or they might aim to interpret and resolve conscious and unconscious impulses and neurotic defense mechanisms;
  • or they might, of course, aim at both these objectives.

Video – treatment for delayed ejaculation

If a man has a lot of anxiety around sex (and especially around his sexual performance as a lover), then increasing stimulation thresholds may simply increase a man’s anxiety even further. After all, the problem is the result of performance anxiety in the first place.

So any kind of harsh treatment (increased physical stimulation, for example) is likely to be counter-productive. It certainly sounds counter-intuitive to suggest a scheme like this for a man whose symptoms are probably rooted in anxiety anyway.

The desire deficit model for dealing with delayed ejaculation

In sex therapist Bernard Apfelbaum’s view, DE suggests there might be some deficit of arousal or desire. These deficits which need to be understood and therapeutically investigated. That way, a man can take responsibility for dealing with the unconscious conflicts which have caused his delayed ejaculation in the first place. (You can read more about this problem in this book.)

Apfelbaum described this as “counter bypassing”. He suggested that treatment for delayed ejaculation should explore a man’s lack of desire for sexual intercourse and his lack of arousal. After all, it is these which lead to his inability to ejaculate during sex in the first place.

Some men with delayed ejaculation do indeed feel they are withholding something from their partner. They feel that they should be more “giving”. This implies that changing a man’s beliefs around sex in general and his difficulty ejaculating in particular are important in treatment. 

When a man has delayed ejaculation, he may often have a long-lasting erection, which he can maintain for hours – but this is not a sign of his arousal.

Indeed, many men in this situation have very low desire: they do not actually want to have sex, they do not desire their partner, but they feel at the same time compelled to have intercourse to please their partner.

However, some therapists have observed that many men with ejaculation problems may also experience some degree of obsessive-compulsive disorders, paraphilia, anxiety disorders, and even various personality disorders. In such cases, DE is not just caused by inhibited arousal and desire in a partner-specific context. It is also backed up by other psychological issues that could benefit from therapy.

Apfelbaum also suggested that in cases of slow or non-existent ejaculation, the man only finds his own touch erotically arousing. This suggests he is “autosexual” (i.e. masturbatory) rather than heterosexual or homosexual.

But what if idiosyncratic masturbation simply means a man can only reach orgasm through masturbation? it may not be a sign that he only finds his own touch arousing (though of course the latter statement might also be true).

In other words, DE is not necessarily a sign of autosexuality, or autoeroticism, and this will be especially true when a man is clear that he wishes he could ejaculate during sex. 

However, in practice there is no clear division between different approaches in the treatment of delayed ejaculation. Any treatment will probably open up the subconscious drives and inhibitions which affect a man’s sexual relationship with his partner.

From this point of view, the open expression of feelings, awareness of lack of arousal, and the ability to indulge one’s own desires rather than focus on the needs of one’s partner, are all clearly highly desirable objectives. And that is true both within and without the framework of professional therapy. 

Video – healthy selfishness during sex

A final word about professional therapy

In therapy, the facilitator will offer or stimulate different interpretations of the sexual beliefs held by the man and his partner around sex and intercourse. This is a kind of reframing approach which allows men and their partners to “see things in a different light”, a kind of decontamination of the beliefs which the man holds.

There may be some powerful insights which have an impact on the cognitive level almost immediately – others, more deeply rooted in the unconscious, may take longer to change. Surrogate therapy with specially trained partners has also been helpful too.

What all this tells us is that all treatment approaches reflect some reality for one man or another with delayed ejaculation. Apfelbaum and Kaplan look at different sides of the same coin: on the one side, the unconscious aggression and hostility that makes a man experience low arousal with his partner. On the other, feelings of guilt, shame, a tendency to excessive giving during sex, and so on.