A man with delayed ejaculation said: “I was always very horny as an adolescent and was never shy to masturbate. I was always easily turned on and still am, and get erect straight away with women from either cuddling, kissing, dancing, etc … even sometimes when talking over the phone non-sexually but simply being excited by the girl nonetheless! Women have even commented on how I’m hard so soon and that they like this because they don’t need to turn me on. 

“The problems started from my first time having sex with a girl. I was SO nervous I got extremely cold and was physically shaking. When I eventually pulled myself together and the interaction with her was building and we were about to have sex, as soon as it became 100% certain and there was no turning back and we were going to have sex, at that moment where I had to step up and insert my penis, I got nervous again and lost my erection.

Orgasm Delay Due To Emotional Pressure

“After that I settled down and the girl wanted to go to sleep, but I got aroused again and was desperate to have sex. But something wasn’t right – I couldn’t even ejaculate during intercourse.

“This exact cycle repeated with other girls. Each time I would beat myself up more and more and couldn’t understand how I could be so aroused but when it came time to have sex it felt like my penis lost all feeling and I completely lost my erection.

“I made it worse for myself by thinking how this delayed ejaculation shouldn’t happen to a man, and telling myself that no-one else suffered from this. It was only as I got more experienced that I realized alcohol plays its part, which even though these early sexual experiences came from nights out and there was drink involved, I dismissed.

“I also discovered through social interactions with girls when they would be talking with either me or their friends about their sexual experiences that they all had stories of the guy just going soft. However by the time this happened the seeds of failure had already been sown.

“Eventually, I had sex with a girl who became my long term girlfriend and this problem went away, however intermittently I would suffer from delayed ejaculation. This leads to huge frustration for me and for the women I am making love to. They all appreciate a man reaching climax and I think when he does not they regard this as partly their fault, perhaps through feeling not being attractive enough.

“Since being single both problems have re-occurred either together or exclusively which has led me to take as honest a look as possible at myself. I want to find out what is going on in my head. I really want the information necessary to understand what is happening to me! Here is where I think my problems stem from, and I would love your thoughts:

• Because of the problems above, I learned to become good at foreplay (I guess as a defense mechanism so that even if I couldn’t perform, I could satisfy her and make her orgasm). I naturally get turned on by her being turned on, which I love. But this leads to me getting in my head and being tied up too much in if she is enjoying it to the point that if she isn’t then neither will I. (This problem is discussed in this book about delayed ejaculation.)
• I got body-shy as an adolescent and thought I had a small penis, as I think I’m a “grower not a shower” so to speak, but when erect I am above average size and had compliments from women which I felt were just kind-hearted encouragement. Does a lack of self-confidence play a part in my delayed ejaculation, do you think?
• I had a deep rooted sense that women don’t enjoy sex and do it as a favor for the man (“lie back and think of your duty” sort of thing), where this came from I can only guess, maybe from the media or women joking about sexually incompetent men, or maybe the stereotype of the woman making the man wait for sex… However, this led me to make the incorrect links and associations in my head. DE is not so simple, I know that now!
• I have my own unique way of masturbating, it.s sort of a fingers and thumb grip, quite hard with no real contact with my palm. The other thing is the rhythm of it, it is normal and then when I get the natural good feelings of arousal up the shaft I follow them up to the head of the penis and change to a shorter more vigorous motion to enhance the feeling. However this has led to problems now because women use a more standard, softer grip with a standard up down motion and obviously they can’t feel those feelings I get in the shaft of my penis so don’t know to change the motion. (Editor’s note: traumatic masturbatory syndrome is a common cause of problems ejaculating.)
• I have always felt embarrassed talking about sex and self-conscious of being some type of sleazy guy around women. When instead I should realize my desires come from the right place and they are healthy and what being a man is all about.
• I have in the past masturbated against my mattress but I can count on my hand the number of times I’ve done this. It leads me to ejaculate quite quickly.
• As I got into my head about needing to be the best at foreplay, I have started to see that I neglected the fact that I need turning-on too, and yet I couldn’t answer a girl if she asked me how or where I like to be touched. I have made the mistake that just because I am erect that I am turned on!
• The big one that I feel really applies to me is that I can’t let go, enjoy the moment and lose myself in the sex, I am a bit of a control freak and perfectionist with myself! Is this the cause of my difficulties with ejaculation?
  I am more in my head than body, wondering if  she enjoys it, am I taking too long to cum, what ‘should’ I be doing next to overcome my ejaculation “slowness”? And for some reason I get really self conscious about how I’ll look and sound when I climax and get embarrassed, ridiculous huh?!
  And this is what I feel is the major issue for me! Rationally I look at it and say, “I love nothing more than to see her cum because of me” but I can’t seem to apply it to the same truth that she is wanting to see and feel me cum, maybe it stems from the ‘women not liking sex’ thing I mentioned before.
  
• I don’t know if it’s related but I also get pee shy at urinals.
   
• When I feel myself not ejaculating, in vain I then try to access my masturbation fantasies but they don’t come to mind.

I feel a lot of these problems have stemmed from me making false links in my head about what I thought sex was and how it was supposed to work when I was younger.

I can rationalize now but this deeper stuff is coming back to bite me on the ass! I am now trying to replace all this negative programming with truth about the actual reality of the situation.

As I wrote before I found that the majority of the techniques need a supporting partner and I am single. But so far:

• I am changing how I masturbate to how a woman would do it;
• Not over-masturbating by just trying to ejaculate as quickly as possible;
• Working on getting out of my head and into my body; and
• Realizing that I need to be actually turned on to ejaculate and simply being erect is not the real sign of being properly aroused.

There’s a book which is very helpful if you want more information. e.g. the right mentality, how to relax into my body and get out of the anxious thought processing that are holding me back, e.g. being self conscious how I look when I cum, etc ….