The Guide to Getting It On (118 page)

Here are some things I’ve learned that might help the partner married to someone with this problem:

• DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU! I am a skilled and experienced lover and have never thought that my vagina wasn’t tight enough or I wasn’t sexy enough to please him. Also, he had this problem with all previous lovers.
  
• Don’t decide it is a sickness or a pathology. In one of the articles that Paul mentions, the author talks about a bell curve of sexual responsiveness on which men and women naturally fall. Some men and women orgasm extremely easily and some orgasm with a lot of difficulty. Most are somewhere in between. Rather than thinking there is something wrong with your partner, try to think of DE as something he is born with, like dark hair or intelligence or needing glasses.
  
• Don’t marry him if you need him to change. It may be impossible and it’s better to go into it knowing that.
  
• Use your sexuality as an opportunity to develop greater intimacy. Talk to each other, use the ideas that are in this book, improve communication, have fun. Focus on loving your partner and feeling emotionally connected and physically close.
  
• Don’t fall into the trap of “goal-oriented” sex instead of “pleasure-oriented sex”. Goal oriented sex says that all good sex ends with orgasm. Pleasure-oriented sex says that any sexual behaviors that feel good count as sex.
  
• Count your blessings and enjoy the fact that you will never be able to do “cookie cutter sex”. Use it as a way to rebel against the Hollywood myth of perfect sex and keep it creative and fun.
  
• Don’t tell too many friends about this. They will never have heard of it and will think it is really weird and will make you feel worse, most likely.
  

Looking Under the Hood of Delayed Ejaculation

Delayed ejaculation used to be known as retarded ejaculation, until we decided that calling a man a “retarded ejaculator” was a bit harsh. While modern medicine still calls the condition retarded ejaculation, some people refer to it as inhibited ejaculation. People who are trying to sound medical refer to it as a DED, diminished ejaculatory disorder. Honest.

How many men have delayed ejaculation? We aren’t really sure. The guesses range from 1% to 3%, but even if it were only 0.5%, that’s still a lot of guys whose corks won’t pop.

This condition can present itself differently in different men. It can be intermittent or it can happen every time. It can be lifelong or something that crept up along the way. It can be mild, moderate, severe, or super-severe.

If you are stopwatch obsessed and hellbent on quantifying delayed ejaculation, consider that an average guy lasts somewhere between three and eight minutes during intercourse. One researcher has cooked the various standard deviations of how long an average intercourse lasts and suggests if you can’t come after 25 to 30 minutes of thrusting, then you probably qualify as having delayed ejaculation. But here’s a problem: for some couples, 25 minutes is just getting warmed up, while for others 25 minutes would be a nightmare of excess. So in order to declare a man has delayed ejaculation, both he and his partner need to consider it a problem. There are also situations when a man is able to come after fifteen minutes, but his partner wishes he were done after five.

Forget calling it delayed ejaculation if the problem only happens when a man is using a condom. If that’s the case, a dab of water-based lube on the head of the penis before sliding the condom down the shaft might help increase sensation.

What’s particularly fascinating about delayed ejaculation is that the majority of men who have it are able to ejaculate when they masturbate. It’s when you put a flesh-and-blood partner between the guy’s hand and his penis that he usually has the problem. It can get so bad that his intercourse partner is able to figure out the plot lines to her next three novels before he’s even close to coming.

As you’ll see, there can be numerous factors that contribute to how fast or slow a guy launches his load, from the biology he was born with to how he processes things like excitement and anxiety. Please keep in mind that while one man with delayed ejaculation might respond to X, Y, or Z, another man might do better with A, B and C, and a third won’t respond no matter what. So we’ll take a shotgun approach and mention a number of possibilities. Your job is to decide which, if any, apply to your situation.

Biologically Delayed vs. Faster Than a Speeding Bullet

Let’s start with biology. A man might be pre-disposed to delayed ejaculation if he has a slow stick for a penis that’s not as sensitive as most other guys, or if his body is wired in such a way that he needs to reach a higher level of excitement than others before his ejaculation button gets triggered. He can’t do any more to change the way he’s wired than you can blink and your Ford turns into a Maserati or your Suburban into a Prius. So what we’ll focus on are some of the possible work arounds that you might consider.

On the other hand, if you have premature ejaculation and come faster than Hans Solo in a Millennium Falcon, you might be thinking, “What’s the big deal—I’ll trade my premature ejaculation for his delayed ejaculation in a heartbeat.” But unless you’ve been there and done that, it’s hard to understand just how cumbersome or what a burden on a relationship delayed ejaculation can be. It can make sex hard work for both partners.

Although premature ejaculation and delayed ejaculation are on opposite sides of the cum spectrum, they both result in the man’s ejaculation taking center stage. Instead of his being able to have fun with his partner and sharing pleasure, sex becomes more about his equipment and its failure to ejaculate when he wishes it would.

Reverse Misogyny

Here’s a caution about delayed ejaculation that you won’t read elsewhere. Not many years ago we used to say that a woman who couldn’t have an orgasm from intercourse was “frigid.” We would give her a medical diagnosis as if she had a disease. While “frigid” is nicer than “retarded,” we now consider ourselves more enlightened. We tell people today that a lot of women can’t have orgasms from thrusting alone during intercourse and that it’s completely fine and normal if they have their orgasms from masturbation. In other words, we’ve tried to make the female orgasm something a woman is allowed to have by her own hand, rather than it being an experience she needs to put on parade during intercourse.

We are neither as kind nor as generous with men. If a man can come only from masturbation but not intercourse, we call him a “retarded” or “delayed” ejaculator. He feels horrible about himself, and his partner is sure it’s because he doesn’t find her sexually appealing. Or she doesn’t feel like she can do anything good for him in a sexual way. So sex can become a source of dread and anxiety for both partners.

If you are a man or a couple with this problem, why not at least try to remember that there are plenty of ways you can enjoy intercourse and sexual intimacy without needing an ejaculation to signal that you are crossing the lovemaking finish line. What if you agree on a sign your partner can give during intercourse for when she or he is satisfied and wants to stop? This takes the pressure off of both of you.

Women invented and have been using a special “I want to stop having intercourse” signal since the beginning of time. It’s called faking an orgasm. Unfortunately, a guy can’t get away with that on a regular basis. If he could, few people would know there was such a thing as delayed ejaculation.

Beyond the Basic Symptom

Let’s look at some of the possible causes and treatments of delayed ejaculation with an emphasis on the word “possible.” That’s because much of the current information is based on anecdote, which means if it is real science, it’s only real science by accident. Please keep in mind that what follows is strictly for informational purposes. This is not meant to take the place of a meeting with your healthcare provider, although few health care professionals will have a clue on how to deal with delayed ejaculation, aside from eliminating various medical causes.

It’s important to be sensitive about the couple aspect of delayed ejaculation. A couple’s chemistry, ability to talk it over, and willingness to deal with the matter are all important if they hope to make progress. And if a man’s partner tends to be passive during sex, helping him deal with his delayed ejaculation may require that she step outside of her comfort zone.

Patience, Prudence, Drug Side Effects and More

If you’re the kind who’s looking for a magic pill, it’s unlikely the ejaculation gods will be blowing too many sticky kisses your way. If you want it to be like TV talk shows where patients solve massive problems in the span of two commercials, forget it. And good luck if your goal is to be like porn stars—where the male actors are human thrust-and-come machines who have no emotions or need for feedback and communication with their partners. Actually, at least one sex therapist believes a lot of male porn stars suffer from delayed ejaculation; they’ve just managed to make a career out of it.

Speaking of magic pills, you want to rule out the possibility that the ejaculation problem is a side effect of any drug or medications you are taking. Anti-depressants are at the top of a list of possible causes that includes antipsychotic medications, methadone, heroin, opiates, other analgesics, tranquilizers, sedatives, medications to lower your blood pressure, various muscle relaxers, pregabalin, gapapentin, benzos, GHB, poppers, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, and possibly cigarette smoking.

Don’t assume that drugs will include delayed ejaculation as a possible side effect on their warning labels. There are medications that don’t list heart attacks as a possible side effect when they probably should, so don’t expect them to put “delayed ejaculation” on the side of the box even if they truly do cause problems with ejaculation.

If your problem with delayed ejaculation hasn’t been lifelong, try to think back to when it was that your ability to come suddenly went. Were any new medications introduced around that time? Likewise, delayed ejaculation can be secondary to erection problems, or these conditions can occur in tandem. So if you aren’t having good erections, see if your healthcare provider can help you with that.

You also want to be sure that delayed ejaculation isn’t due to neurological problems, multiple sclerosis, spinal-cord injury, diabetes, thyroid issues, prostate-related problems, certain surgeries, or other pelvic unpleasantries. Low testosterone can also be a suspect. While most cases of delayed ejaculation don’t appear to be caused by drugs or disease, it’s important to rule out these possibilities.

Religion, Abuse, and Other Possible Semen Stoppers

You might explore whether there were any traumatic psycho-social events that occurred around the time when you started to come slower than a slug in Super Glue. Did you come home unexpectedly to find your wife and best friend going at it with her screaming, “I’ve never come like this with that loser husband of mine!”?

Religious prohibitions about sex can be a contributing factor for men with delayed ejaculation. One study found that a disproportionate number of men with delayed ejaculation were raised in conservative religious homes or had conservative religious beliefs. Even without a conservative religious upbringing, guilt and shame can keep a man’s semen parked in his pelvis.

Another possible psychological semen stopper is if a man is having fears about his partner becoming pregnant. Other issues that might be getting in the way include deep-seated anger and having a withholding personality.

On the other hand, if anger, conservative religious upbringing and fears of getting your partner pregnant were sure to cause delayed ejaculation, almost all men would suffer from it at one time or another.

Is Your Penis Lying?

The erect penis of a man with delayed ejaculation sometimes lies. This can be confusing, because when a guy is sporting a seriously hard penis, you’d normally assume he’s highly aroused. But that might not be the case. Even though he’s really hard, he might not be allowing himself to experience as much sexual excitement as other guys with hard-ons. To use psychological terms, his erection might be out of sync with his internal state. If that’s the case, he may need to work on increasing the level of sexual excitement that he allows himself to feel. Focusing on the sensations that make him feel good sexually might be helpful.

Sometimes men with delayed ejaculation appear to be so focused on giving their partner pleasure that they won’t let themselves be aware of their own sexual excitement, or they don’t take in enough pleasure to reach the ejaculatory point of no return.

Too Much Focus, Too Little Excitement

There are situations in which the man is trying so hard to ejaculate, often to make his partner feel better, that he’s focused on his penis at the expense of the rest of his body. This makes him even more numb to his own sexual excitement.

So consider doing a lot of exploration of the man’s body from head to toe—and not just trying to find some magic spot or button that makes him ejaculate. Try to discover some of the subtle things that feel good, and work on talking more easily about them. For some men, this might include long lingering kisses up and down the side of the neck or on his chest, nipples, or back, or maybe a finger up his bum. Experiment and explore. Or you can get seriously Cosmo and run silk scarves or soft make-up brushes up and down his body. You might try to stimulate his genitals at the same time that you are kissing his neck or nipples. This can help him double up on the excitement and sensation he is feeling.