Advice for couples about delayed ejaculation

Male Ejaculation Problems

If you’re wondering about how you are going to be able to solve ejaculation problems, rest assured it isn’t difficult.

To start with, you’re going to train your body to respond more rapidly to sexual stimulation, so that you can reach orgasm more easily.

That’s a matter of engaging in some delightful sensate focus exercises with your partner, all of which are designed to increase your sensitivity to physical stimulation.

And that’s important because, at the root of it, all sexual arousal is down to physical stimulation.

You might think that emotional and mental stimulation is a vital part of sexual activity, and it can certainly help you become aroused – however, the real key to sexual arousal is always physical stimulation.

You see, arousal is rooted in the body. At least, the arousal that generates an erection, and the ability to have intercourse, is rooted in the body.

Next, you’re going to be identifying trigger points on your body which will allow you to respond to sexual stimulation with even greater arousal than you usually experience.

Everyone has “erogenous zones” on the body, but very few people take the time and trouble to explore them in detail.

And that’s a shame, because they really can produce a great deal of physical arousal, and for a man with delayed ejaculation, they can help in the process of reaching orgasm.

Third, you’re going to be finding ways in which you can reduce the level of anxiety that you experience around sex.

Often, men with delayed ejaculation are rather anxious about sex, but they’re not aware that this anxiety can interfere with their sexual responses, meaning that even when they have an erection they might not be able to come.

By dealing with this anxiety and encouraging a different mindset around the prospect of sexual activity, it’s comparatively easy to significantly reduce the level of stimulation that you need to reach orgasm.

The fourth line of attack on the problem of ejaculatory delay or anorgasmia is around learning to be fully present when you’re making love to your partner. By fully present, what we mean is that he’s not “spectatoring” ….

Spectatoring?

This isn’t watching erotic or pornographic images of other people having sex!

According to sex researchers Masters and Johnson, it is watching yourself have sex, accompanied by an anxious, internal, self-conscious dialogue.

The internal chatter can include worries about one’s body (“I wonder if he thinks I look fat”) or about one’s sexual performance (“He must be bored, I’m taking too long to come”; “Does he like the way I am touching him?”).

When spectatoring, a person is intently monitoring their partner and themselves….Not surprisingly, research shows that [this] is less satisfying. Women [and men alike] have fewer real orgasms and more fake orgasms than those who have less internal chatter.

This isn’t surprising, given that it’s hard to be orgasmic while … worrying about what your partner thinks about you and your body. Thinking you “should” have an orgasm can lead you to pretend to have an orgasm.

Exploring Your Feelings – Is Emotional Work Really Needed?

Delayed ejaculation, whether lifelong or acquired later in life, can be the result of negative childhood or adolescent emotional and sexual experiences.

It may also be caused by some negative formative event or a traumatic experience which significantly impacted a man’s sexual development.

In other words, the origins of this problem may lie deep in a man’s unconscious mind.

  • Sometimes delayed ejaculation occurs in all situations
  • Sometimes DE occurs in all situations

But however it starts, any problem with ejaculation can produce many emotional and practical difficulties for both the man and his sexual / relationship partner.

The most obvious of these will be the effects of not being able to father a child, but frustration for men and a sense of being unattractive or undesirable for women are also very common outcomes.

If Ejaculation Difficulties Are Mostly Psychological, How Are They Cured?

Various forms of anxiety and fear cause delayed ejaculation.

But you may not even be aware of these things. They are what we call repressed – things which are too difficult to accept consciously, and which may lie hidden, denied or repressed in the unconscious mind.

DE is often caused by a complex mix of emotional issues centering on a man’s masculinity, or some kind of challenge, issue, or problem in that area. This is much more about the psychology of masculinity, and the extent to which man has fully stepped into his power and everything a man is naturally meant to be and do….

Here’s one way to do it…

When a man is unable to ejaculate – video

To fully develop a fundamental sense of masculinity, a boy must separate from his mother and identify with his father at some time between 2 and 4.

Unfortunately, these days fathers are often not around, and even if they are, they probably don’t know what they need to do to ensure that their sons develop into men. They may not even have an adequate sense of masculinity themselves.

How Does A Boy Become A Man?

Often dads aren’t able to convey what it means to be an adult, masculine man and how that looks in relationships with women. (Often they don’t even know what that is themselves.)

So if a boy merges with the feminine, doesn’t separate completely from his mother, or she has some kind of inappropriate relationship with him, he may grow up as a man with an imperfect or undeveloped sense of his own masculinity.

You can see this in the way a man often wants to please women rather than to stand his ground and set firm boundaries with them.

(After all, sex should be all about wanting to take your pleasure as you come inside a woman – as well as pleasing her as you do so….)

Indeed, I’ve observed that many men with DE have a tendency to please women.

This becomes clear during sex when a man’s chief objective is to give a woman an orgasm or make her happy. Where is his pleasure in this?

And to be in his own power, he needs to be psychologically separate and emotionally independent from his relationship partner.

Unconscious, Repressed Feelings And Emotions

The human mind being what it is, when we have unconscious and repressed memories, we don’t know they are there. But they can be triggered – and so can the pain that we felt at the time. (It’s the emotional pain which causes the memory of a negative event to be banished into the unconscious.)

In fact, anything which reminds you of a traumatic event that happened when you were growing up, perhaps something a bad parent or another harmful adult did to you, or an unpleasant experience in childhood, may well trigger emotional reactions and sexual difficulties, including delayed ejaculation.

Therapy – Yes Or No?

The main goal of psychotherapy is to help a man understand where his thoughts and feelings come from.

Other goals are

  • to encourage the open expression of feelings
  • to help a man understand his lack of arousal in sexual situations
  • and to get over the sense that he must sexually perform to a certain standard for the satisfaction of its partner.
  • Therapy involves helping a man see things differently.
  • And it also aims to change unhelpful, misleading or simply incorrect beliefs around the nature of sex and relationships between a man and woman.

In short, therapy is a way of digging out the false beliefs which are running your life and replacing them with ones that are more real.

Some examples of false beliefs which contribute to delayed ejaculation might be – “All women are untrustworthy”; “Women are only out for themselves”; “You can never trust a woman”; “Women just take and take and never give”; “Women are out to get men”; “It always ends badly when I’m with a Woman”; “She doesn’t really want me for who I am”; “It’s my job to make her come”; “I have to make sex good for her”; “I can’t take my pleasure until she’s satisfied”…. and on, and on, and on….

This is called Psychodynamic Therapy. It can be a slow and gradual process, with insights coming over a long period of time. But it can be speeded up by using any technique which helps a man change his mental and emotional attitudes.

With ejaculation problems, there are many ways to approach a cure

But dealing with underlying feelings of aggression, hostility and other unconscious forces, such as guilt, excessive control and poor personal boundaries is a good start.

Therapy which involves a number of approaches is most helpful, so the underlying thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs can be explored.

These things can produce some interesting emotional conflicts – “I love her and I hate her” being a common one.

Hostile or aggressive impulses, feelings of guilt, and rigid defense mechanisms can be explored and dealt with.

Reframing approaches, or seeing things differently, from a grown up point of view, also called decontamination by Transactional Analysis therapists, are all about correcting false beliefs.

This involves teasing out incorrect beliefs or simply providing new information to erroneous ways of thinking.

You and Your Partner – When You Can’t Ejaculate

Many men who have trouble ejaculating somehow think they are withholding something important from their partner and believe they should be more “giving”.

Changing this attitude and emphasizing that it’s OK to be selfish during sex are both important ways to shift the block on ejaculation and help a man overcome his slow, slow progress towards arousal and ejaculation.

The Ideal Form Of Psychotherapy?

Most therapists would take a holistic approach to treatment for delayed ejaculation (also called male anorgasmia or male orgasmic disorder).

For example, they might use guided stimulation techniques to help a man give up his excessive sense of self-control during intercourse.

They might teach him techniques to increase the level of stimulation he receives during sex.

The therapist can help a man to understand that he does not need to be totally in control during sex, and that he can give up his urge to achieve orgasm at all costs.

Of course, such an approach requires great sensitivity, flexibility and creativity. In this way he will soon be able to achieve orgasm. This is all about overcoming the inhibitions that stop him ejaculating.

Your Thinking Patterns and Delayed Ejaculation

Destructive or self-critical thinking isn’t too helpful, as you can imagine. Thoughts about failure, poor performance, and so on, may inhibit orgasm and cause low sexual arousal. Several therapeutic techniques are likely to be successful.

Hostile or aggressive impulses, for example, may indicate strong feelings of guilt or of sexual shame, and these need to be changed for the better.

In this case, counseling or therapy may be aimed at improving the man’s insight into his fears, understanding past traumatic experiences, and understanding how they play out in his behavior in his current relationship.

Often, reframing may be used. A man may be encouraged to acknowledge his lack of desire for sexual intercourse and the question explored of how sexually aroused he is during intercourse.

This approach requires both a readiness to change common beliefs about male sexuality in general and delayed ejaculation in particular.

For example, if a man focuses on his own needs during intercourse, he may be helped to feel his own need for additional stimulation to bring him to the point of ejaculation.

He’ll come to understand how and why he currently stays at a low level of arousal, and how he blocks his own energy flow towards higher levels of arousal and eventually orgasm.

By understanding this, a man who is constantly trying to “achieve orgasm for his partner” becomes receptive to new ways of enjoying sex.

Regrettably many a woman shares the male belief that the man has total responsibility for her orgasms, and therefore sees the man’s slow ejaculation as some kind of rejection.

So therapy needs to involve the partner. She will be more relaxed and less demanding when she understands that the man is trying too hard to achieve an orgasm for her.

 

Making sense of why you have difficulty ejaculating….