Analysing Physical Factors in Delayed Ejaculation

Posted March 28, 2012 by admin
Categories: Delayed ejaculation causes

I’ve already stated that I believe delayed ejaculation rarely has a physical cause. However, if a man has never ejaculated in his entire life, has never had a nocturnal emission, and has never managed to reach orgasm through masturbation, then it may well be that this is an issue of sexual development which needs medical attention. In general, however, the truth is that most of the men seeking help for retarded ejaculation through my online service are sexually active, have been throughout their entire lives, can masturbate orgasm and ejaculate when they are doing it themselves, and are extremely frustrated about the lack of pleasure that they are receiving.

Nonetheless, using a vibrator on a man’s penis which provides extreme stimulation is one way of demonstrating whether or not the nerve pathways that produce ejaculation intact. It doesn’t tell you much about the origin of the man’s complaint that he can’t ejaculate, so a little bit of logical thinking is required. Clearly if a man is having nocturnal emissions, there is no physical problem; if he’s able to ejaculate with some kind of sexual stimulus – which often amounts to extreme hard-core fantasy and probably the use of porn in many cases – then it’s clear that the foundations of sexual arousal and orgasm are intact, and what is necessary is some degree of what I term “refining” of his ability to respond to sexual stimuli.

And at this point I feel it’s necessary to also add that if a man is clearly able to enjoy sex with certain women but not perhaps with his regular partner, then he can hardly be said to have a case of delayed ejaculation: you could call it something like inhibited ejaculation, and it’s no doubt due to relationship difficulties which may or may not be resolvable.

 

Comments: Comments Off

Delayed Ejaculation & One Approach To Treatment

Posted March 27, 2012 by admin
Categories: Delayed ejaculation

Before treatment of delayed ejaculation can be successful, or at least as a corollary of treatment, a couple must have an open and healthy attitude towards their own sexuality and their own bodies, which basically means dispelling sexual shame. The reason for delayed ejaculation in the majority of cases that the man is actually not very sexually aroused, even though he has a hard erection.

This seems to be the outcome of two different factors: the desire or compulsion to please his partner, and resentment or the inability to become sexually aroused. Often a man with DE can only reach orgasm during sex by using some seriously “heavy duty” sexual stimulation which often takes the form of hard-core fantasy.

Now clearly there’s a problem here because the man isn’t being aroused by the presence of his partner, or what she does to him (and indeed, the same is true of, sexual partnerships), but by what’s going on in his head. This is a very unreliable method for men to become sexually aroused – and the older they get less reliable becomes, thereby compounding the problem as time goes by.

It’s perhaps a fact that is not often appreciated, but sexual arousal begins and ends in the body, and therefore one of the major aspects of delayed / retarded treatment is to shift the man from becoming aroused by using fantasy to a place where he becomes aroused by what’s happening to his body. This requires a fairly major shift in attitude and approach, and it certainly requires a willingness to be open and connected to his partner. Another element that is critical is the ability to be in the moment, without worrying about delayed ejaculation, or indeed anything else.

So at this point you may be to see that the treatment approach will involve relaxation, reduction in anxiety, establishment of great emotional intimacy, and techniques to ensure physical arousal whilst simultaneously reducing the pressure that a man feels to pleasure a woman (which generally means bring her to orgasm).

Comments: Comments Off

Delayed Ejaculation As A Masturbatory Problem

Posted March 26, 2012 by admin
Categories: Delayed ejaculation treatment

Although we think of delayed ejaculation in the much more obvious context of a man who cannot reach orgasm and climax inside his partner during sexual intercourse, it’s also true that retarded ejaculation, or to put it more simply, the inability to ejaculate, can be a problem during masturbation.

For men who have great difficulty ejaculating in both sex and solo pleasure, delayed ejaculation can be a massive emotional problem. I think, however, the number of men in this category is rather small: it’s much more common for a man to be able to ejaculate on his own, even if it takes quite some time, than it is with his partner. In many of these cases a common observation is that the man concerned used a method of masturbation during his adolescence which was very hard and forceful.

A very common technique is to masturbate by thrusting against the mattress whilst lying prone face downwards; it’s highly likely that such masturbation techniques raise the threshold of sensitivity of the penis or (and much more likely, in my opinion) the threshold of arousal in the mind necessary for a man to achieve orgasm. This technique of masturbation strongly suggests to me that the adolescent – or indeed the older man – practising it has a high level of inhibition around the expression of sexual impulses, or again to put this more simply, he has a high level of sexual shame or guilt around sex. It’d be interesting to do a study with men who want treatment for delayed ejaculation just find out what their experiences of sex were while they were growing up. Fortunately, however, it’s not necessary to know these things to offer an effective delayed ejaculation treatment which will overcome the man’s complaint that he is unable to ejaculate.

Comments: Comments Off

Treating Delayed Ejaculation by Treating the Relationship

Posted March 24, 2012 by admin
Categories: Delayed ejaculation

One of the first things to look at when a man asks for help with his inability to reach orgasm and ejaculate during sexual intercourse is the relationship he has with his partner. On some rare occasions, some simple education about sexuality has been adequate to resolve the issues, but I generally found that curing DE requires the following:

1) real determination on the part of both partners to make the relationship work and to overcome the problem

2) excellent communication and openness about the issue and sexuality in general between the partners

3) a willingness of both partners to co-operate in therapy, including a discussion around what they want both in terms of the relationship and in terms of sex

4) and a willingness to engage and practical activities and exercises that are necessary to reduce the man’s anxiety, anger or hostility, and to establish greater intimacy between the couple.

Needless to say, these criteria can test a relationship to breaking point if the reason for the delayed ejaculation is some profound sexual difficulty and/or the expression of an unexpressed emotional hostility or resentment. As a psychotherapist, I would argue that the relationship ending when these issues are exposed to the light of day may be a more desirable outcome in many cases than struggling on with the issue of delayed ejaculation, which can become the proverbial “elephant in the room”!

Comments: Comments Off

Causes of Delayed Ejaculation

Posted March 22, 2012 by admin
Categories: Delayed ejaculation, Delayed ejaculation causes

Although it would be appealing to think that delayed ejaculation mostly had a physical origin, such as an insensitive penis, or a high threshold for orgasm and ejaculation in a particular individual man, the truth is that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that delayed ejaculation has a physical origin.

It’s certainly true that there are some scientific studies which purport to demonstrate variations in levels of serotonin in the brain, and then associate those levels with delayed ejaculation difficulties. The problem is that this is an association, not a demonstration of a correlation, and certainly does not constitute scientific proof that ejaculatory response times are connected to serotonin levels in anyway.

We’re on much firmer ground when it comes to speculating about an emotional or psychological origin or causation for delayed or retarded ejaculation. This again is somewhat circumstantial, but it’s an observable fact that the men was delayed ejaculation do tend to have certain personality characteristics in common.

One of the easiest way to approach the issue of delayed ejaculation causes is to consider these commonly found characteristics.

Years ago it was said that men with delayed ejaculation had a controlling personality, and that their inability to ejaculate during sexual intercourse was related to resentment and anger against their partners. The reality is actually somewhat different in my opinion: men with delayed ejaculation often appear very vigourous and masculine, but they tend to be rather rigid in outlook and set extremely high standards themselves which they have difficulty living up to. For example this may concern the level of pleasure that they need to give their partner during sexual intercourse. Often associated with such an attitude is a degree of resentment, if not outright hostility, and it seems to be this mix which causes a man to have difficulty in ejaculating.

A common observation is that men in this situation have a rigid erection with which they can make love for a long period of time, but they’re actually not very sexually aroused emotionally.

Factors that lead to this situation can be as diverse as a strict upbringing where sexual shame was installed in an individual; anger at women, whether consciously or unconsciously, because of experiences in previous relationships and particularly with female carers during childhood; vaginal aversion; the belief that a man must pleasure his partner before he takes his own pleasure (i.e. reaches orgasm), and that he must “give” continuously during sex; and a high level of resentment which indicate that man does not actually wish to be in the relationship in which he finds himself.

In the past it was also proposed that factors such as fear of getting a woman pregnant could delay (by which we mean prevent) ejaculation, but I do not believe this

 

Comments: Comments Off

Delayed Ejaculation – What It Is – And What It Means

Posted January 6, 2011 by admin
Categories: Delayed ejaculation treatment, Uncategorized

So you may be asking yourself what delayed ejaculation actually means. The answer is that it’s a condition, a male sexual dysfunction, in which a man has great difficulty reaching orgasm and ejaculating during sexual intercourse, or sometimes during masturbation. (Note: delayed ejaculation is sometimes referred to as retarded ejaculation, although this term has generally passed out of use.)

Clearly this can cause some fairly major problems: if a couple trying to have children, there is the obvious issue of infertility. More commonly, there is the simple lack of orgasmic pleasure which is the natural end point of sexual intercourse for the majority of couples. The fact that this can have on a man is probably fairly obvious – lack of sexual satisfaction, frustration, and perhaps a lowered self-esteem and feeling of impotence as a man. What is less well appreciated is the fact that delayed ejaculation can have a massive impact on the man’s partner as well. This is because many women regard being able to excite their male partner as a fundamental element of their sexual self-esteem. In a woman’s mind there is often an association between delayed ejaculation and her own lack of attractiveness, even though in actual fact this is extremely rarely the case. Clearly delayed ejaculation will always produce a lack of intimacy, and possibly more serious emotional distress to a couple, and it’s for this reason that it’s important sexual dysfunction needs to be resolved.

It’s also a hidden sexual dysfunction, for even though it occurs in about one man in 12 in the general population, it’s very rarely spoken about, there are few therapists and specialists who know how to treat it, and it may baffle the man and his partner – as you can see from the number of posts on Internet message boards that have accumulated over the years about delayed ejaculation.

Everything that we know about delayed ejaculation goes against the expectations we have of men as highly sexual creatures who wish to engage in sexual intercourse at every opportunity, and frequently ejaculate far too quickly for their partner’s (and their own) liking.

Over the years that I’ve been dealing with sexual issues with men, and men’s emotional difficulties in general, I’ve come to understand a great deal about delayed ejaculation, and in this blog naturally setting out some of the basic facts about delayed ejaculation and delayed ejaculation treatment.

Comments: 1 Comment