Open and honest communication is essential to end delayed ejaculation

Men, as we know, are not always open to frank communication about emotions and feelings. Women, as we also know, tend to love this form of communication. The challenge for a man to open up and reveal how he feels is so great that my advice is to start a discussion with your partner at a prearranged time and decide in advance what you want to say.

That way you won’t be stuck for words when an emotional discussion begins to develop, and you stand a better chance of being able to talk to your partner about your fears and doubts without being stopped in your tracks. Having said that, emotional communication is not always easy for a man, and it requires tolerance and understanding from your partner to ensure you are able to express your feelings.

If you sense your woman is putting her own issues forward and stopping you, then you must challenge that and bring the conversation back to the points you wish to make: which, I assume, will be something about the way your delayed ejaculation makes you feel, your desire to do something about it, and your need for her assistance in stopping it.

You no doubt know the worst times to bring up sensitive subjects: after you’ve had an argument, in bed after you’ve failed to get an erection, when either of you is busy, when either of you is stressed….and so on.

One of the things that may happen if you have delayed ejaculation is that your partner may seek to reassure you that all is well by saying such things as “Don’t worry about it.” “It’s OK, really.”

Remarks like these are unhelpful, and for a man who can’t ejaculate, they can be hurtful and insulting – they really don’t show any empathy and they don’t convey that a woman has any sense of how you are suffering. You need to tell her this, to make her understand that actually, no it isn’t OK at all. But you need to do this without anger and without attacking her insensitivity.

Equally, if she is emotionally upset, you may need to acknowledge her feelings, to let her discharge the emotional energy around your erection problems. It’s helpful to remember that when a woman gets emotional, what she says isn’t necessarily expressing what she’s thinking, it’s expressing what she’s feeling, and if you can avoid over-reacting to her emotional responses, that may well help to stop an argument developing over such a sensitive subject as your lack of erection.

Direct communication always helps when you’re talking about sex

When you have something important to say about sex in general or your delayed ejaculation in particular, say it as soon as possible, say it directly, and say it clearly. When your partner has something to say, hear her without prejudice, without interrupting her, and with respect. Many women fear that when they talk directly they may be met with stonewalling or anger from their partner.

The most respectful answer you can give her is the truth in a clear, direct, non-blaming and non-judgmental way. Above all, don’t try and pretend that the problem doesn’t matter to either or both of you. It does, and it needs to be solved if your relationship is to be successful.

What if your partner doesn’t want to help stop your delayed ejaculation?

Obviously the first step is to find out why not, which you can do by framing questions about her resistance in a non-blaming way: “I feel upset/rejected/angry that you don’t want to help me work on improving our sex life, and I’d like to know why. Can you help me to understand this?”

Then you can try and work out why she is resistant to helping you. Many of the reasons why she might not want to work on your erection problem will include fears about opening up relationship issues that might lead to you splitting up, fears about having to face her own sexual issues, and so on.

Is she angry because her frustration about the problem has never previously been expressed, and this is the first time she’s had the chance to express how she feels? Is her resistance a sign of her anger? Does she simply not care about you or the relationship? Does she actually dislike sex? Bringing any of these things into the open will force you both to deal with delayed ejaculation that, until now, you have kept quiet about.

If it’s something as simple as her embarrassment about having to be more physically and emotionally intimate with you (e.g. when it comes to handling your penis and her vagina during the exercises described below), then this is easy to deal with – just reassure her, tell her that such things are normal and can be quite relaxed and easy in the context of a loving relationship between a couple who have each other’s best interests at heart.

If your partner’s frustration comes out in below-the-belt comments like “No other man I’ve been with hasn’t been able to get his cock hard” (or worse), then try and understand her anger and frustration rather than responding to her apparent vindictiveness. Of course, if you think she really means it, then maybe the best thing you can do at this point is start working on the relationship issues between you with a counselor, perhaps with a view to splitting up.

And don’t forget that you can directly ask her to help stop your erectile problems. It’s perfectly OK to tell her how this makes you feel and to ask her to help stop it.

And a few other points….

Sometimes you may have decided to deal with your problem but you need a bit of time to come to terms with some aspect of it. Something as sensitive as erectile problems can feel like a wound to your heart (or maybe your balls) and it may take time before you are actually ready to do the work needed to stop the erection problem. Maybe you’d  even like to wait a while to see if the problem goes away by itself. Unfortunately, these are often ways in which you can stop doing anything about your situation. My advice is to simply get on with the treatment for impotence.