Are you more interested in your own sexual satisfaction or your partner’s?
Definition of Delayed Ejaculation
Although sex with a partner is seen as the highest point of sex for many men, those men who have difficulty ejaculating may find self-pleasuring more enjoyable.
The American Psychiatric Association Definition
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual [ DSM edition IV ], produced by the American Psychiatric Association, defines delayed ejaculation as “a persistent or recurrent delay in (or complete absence of) orgasm, following normal sexual excitement and sexual activity that the doctor judges to be adequate to normally achieve orgasm, taking into account the person’s age and other factors”.
This definition emphasizes the similarity between delayed ejaculation and failure of orgasm in women, commonly known as female orgasmic disorder.
However, this is a very inadequate description because orgasm and ejaculation in men are two separate phases of the sexual response cycle.
Male orgasm and ejaculation are two separate events
Orgasm is an event which involves pleasurable sensations in the mind, together with the release of physical tension which has built up during sexual arousal in the body.
Ejaculation, by contrast, is a reflex reaction mediated by the autonomic nervous system, and consists of two phases.
The first is emission, during which semen is released into the back of the urethra, and expulsion, during which the contraction of the pelvic musculature forces the semen out of the penis.
To define inability to ejaculate as a male orgasmic disorder is inaccurate and misleading.
The term delayed ejaculation is actually a much better description because it clearly contrasts this condition with premature or early ejaculation, and there’s no guessing at what causes it – not in the definition, anyway!
Also, there is a large range of ejaculatory latency times in the normal male population anyway. So one simple and perfectly adequate definition of delayed ejaculation would be as follows:
When a man finds it difficult or impossible to ejaculate despite the adequate sexual stimulation, an erection hard enough for penetration, and a conscious desire to enjoy sexual intercourse.
As you might guess from the information above, many of the criteria used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual have been criticized for their lack of precision, and their subjective assessment of “marked distress” for the man or his partner.
This is a part of the definition that is felt to be inappropriate by many doctors and therapists.
Furthermore, the proliferation of etiological subtypes – in other words, classifying different forms of delayed ejaculation by their origin – may not necessarily be particularly helpful.
That’s why it’s been proposed that a better definition of delayed ejaculation, or male orgasmic disorder, as it is known in DSM IV, might well exclude these subtypes.
What’s The Way Forward?
Articles relevant to the diagnostic criteria of delayed ejaculation published since 1990 have been scrutinized and the findings summarized in an article written by Robert T. Segraves, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine volume 7, number 2, part 1.
Segraves’ work has made a compelling case that the definition of delayed ejaculation in the DSM manual should be changed in the fifth edition.
He found that if you do a MEDLINE search from 1990 to the present day, there are minimal uses of the term male orgasmic disorder. Also, retarded ejaculation and ejaculatory delay, he says, are old-fashioned and unhelpful terms.
Segraves also suggested that the requirement of marked distress for this condition to be recognized as delayed ejaculation is inappropriate, and that the categories usually used as diagnostic criteria are eliminated.
Some men find that delayed ejaculation is psychologically caused
Certainly his search of the literature reveal very little information about the psychological causes of delayed ejaculation, and indicated that male orgasmic disorder was not a term that had achieved any kind of widespread recognition whatsoever. (J Sex Med 2010;7:690–699.)
In short, he recommended that male orgasmic disorder was an ineffective term that should be replaced with the the more accurate one delayed ejaculation.
And he also said that definition should be based on both duration of intercourse and the severity of the ejaculation delay.
And since many ejaculatory problems are idiopathic [an idiopathy is any disease with unknown pathogenesis or apparently spontaneous origin], he suggested it would make sense for the etiological classification (including both psychological and an unspecified “combination” of factors as the cause of delayed ejaculation) to be eliminated in DSM V.
Delayed Ejaculation And Your Relationship
You’re a man, and you’re having a problem with delayed ejaculation, yes? Then here’s an important question.
Are you more interested in your own sexual satisfaction or your partner’s?
Who’s enjoying sex more – you or your partner?
The point is that in couples where delayed ejaculation is an issue, very often the man seems to be trying extremely hard to satisfy his partner. But he doesn’t seem to think of himself.
The question that always comes up for me is “Where’s your own pleasure in all this?”
You see, sex isn’t just about another person’s pleasure. Truth is, you can enjoy sex with another person just because of the pleasure you get…..
In fact, when you’re completely focused on giving the other person an orgasm, it’s highly likely that your own enjoyment will be quite low. It’s necessary to be selfish sometimes!
But what’s the connection with slow ejaculation in men?
Well, men who devote themselves entirely to their partner’s pleasure often feel resentful because they are getting so little satisfaction from intercourse.
Adding to this is the fact the woman often seems to expect her man to be there just to “serve her” (maybe “service her” might be nearer the mark!).
Often there’s not much sense of her being responsible for her own orgasm. She expects the man to “give it” to her.
I’m not saying that this always applies in cases of delayed ejaculation, but it certainly seemed to be something that comes up again and again.
So what would be the effect on most men of a sexual relationship like this?
The obvious answer is that there would be a feeling of frustration, resentment, perhaps even anger. And quite understandably so.
Making love is meant to be an experience which is an equal partnership, and when it isn’t, bad feelings of one kind or another can develop quickly enough.
However, if you’re a man who happens to believe that it’s your job to please a woman during lovemaking, then you probably won’t feel that resentment consciously.
Could it be possible, do you think, that any resentment could show itself in your slowed ejaculation?
To put it another way, do you think you experience a slow ejaculation during intercourse because you feel frustrated, resentful or angry towards your partner?
That might sound unlikely, but think of it this way: if you’re feeling angry or resentful towards somebody, you’re not going to be very turned on by the thought of having sexual intercourse with them.
And if you’re not turned on, which means you’re not very aroused, then you simply might not be able to reach orgasm in the normal way.
Hence, you don’t ejaculate at all. Or you take a long time to reach climax. Or you have a very slow ejaculation. Or it takes you a lot of effort to achieve ejaculation. (Read on below after watching the video.)
It’s a plausible idea, don’t you think? And a lot of sexual therapists have suggested it might explain delayed ejaculation, slowness to ejaculate or difficulty in reaching climax.
But there is a question that comes up almost immediately in the minds of men with delayed ejaculation: “But,” they almost always say, ” I must be turned on because I have an erection.”
And so they do. Often a hard and long-lasting one. So much so that sometimes their partner comes several times during intercourse. But the man still doesn’t ejaculate.
Is it possible for a man to have an erection, which lasts a long time and never falters, and yet not be aroused?
The answer to that is obviously “yes”, as most men will be able to confirm. For example, nighttime erections, and morning erections, are often accompanied by a very low level of arousal.
These are a little bit like the hard erection that occurs in men who have a slow or very delayed orgasm during sex. Here, your erection might be a reflex response to being in an sexual situation with a partner, more than a sign of real arousal.
For while the body is responding, the level of arousal that a man experiences in his mind (or “subjectively”, as the egg-heads might say) is too low to take him to the point of no return. That’s the point of ejaculatory inevitability, where the reflex responses of his ejaculation are triggered automatically and cannot be stopped.
Which brings us on to a question about the nature of arousal.
Is sexual arousal in the mind or the body?
The short answer to that is that it’s in both, but the more reliable route to sexual expression is through physical arousal.
Young men can become aroused very quickly just through the use of fantasy – mental arousal – which essentially is what happens when a man uses porn.
When using porn, a man’s arousal comes from the fact that in some way he’s identifying with the man featured in the sexual activity on camera, putting himself in that man’s place, and imagining what it would be like to be have that experience himself.
However, as you may know, perhaps from personal experience, as a man ages, the bodily response to mental fantasy becomes less and less intense, until it is inadequate to sustain an erection.
At this point, physical stimulation is also needed, and often intimate emotional connection with the man’s sexual partner as well.
Only when all of these criteria are satisfied can a man become aroused.
Often a decline in testosterone is the cause.
So it’s not too big a stretch to imagine that in the case of delayed ejaculation something similar is at work.
What we’re suggesting here is that the mental component of arousal is missing; the physical component of stimulation by the partner is certainly missing; and so the man’s erection represents a reflex response rather than a sign of true arousal.
It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? But it’s much more than just “interesting” to the men who experience it.
A slowed or late ejaculation can cause real problems during intercourse.
So it’s vital that we find an answer for this problem.
Interestingly enough, many of the answers for dealing with delays in ejaculating are about building up the things you’d normally expect in a successful relationship.
These include
There’s also the simple fact that you expect to get pleasure, satisfaction and sexual fulfilment from making love with your partner.
I need hardly add, I suppose, that a couple need to be motivated to make love in the first place.
To be blunt, one of the things that can cure the problem of delayed or retarded ejaculation is an improvement in the quality of the relationship that a couple have.
Certainly one fundamental aspect of relationship renewal that can solve many difficulties is open and honest communication.
Only by communicating openly and honestly with each other can a couple begin to understand how they feel towards each other, how they feel about sexual intercourse, and how they feel about their respective roles within the relationship.
Only in this way can the causes of delays in ejaculating be dealt with.
But suppose a man happens to think that sex is a burden, or something to be avoided, or something he doesn’t like (or even, god forbid, distasteful), and he’s only doing it because he believes he has a duty to satisfy his partner…. what then?
How is he going to communicate something as profound as that in a way that doesn’t damage or hurt his partner?
And what if he resents her? What if he resents making love to her? What if he resents the demands placed on him by her expectations?
How is he to communicate that?
Well, one way is to go for counseling and therapy, where you can have a space to talk to each other about such profound matters. I agree it’s not easy, but it may be necessary to embark on this journey if the man’s delay in reaching climax is to be overcome.
Retarded ejaculation, as the condition is often known, requires care and attention on the part of both partners.
The problem is, of course, that it’s a symptom of relationship difficulty. It indicates problems that may not be easily dealt with by a couple who are not communicating openly with each other.
You see, the fundamental thing that needs to happen here is a transition from sex being a pressurized activity, all “do or die”, success or failure, “if it doesn’t work I’m a bad lover, and I’ve let her down”, kind of thing, into a relaxed and enjoyable experience where the man can ejaculate in a timely way.
But equally a transition is necessary on on the part of the female partner: she has to stop relinquishing responsibility for her orgasm to her partner, accept that his slow sexual responses are a symptom of some much deeper problem, and start getting actively involved in sex. (And maybe a symptom of problems in the relationship.)
And one of the issues here is that the man’s dysfunction may be hiding a female sexual dysfunction.
For example, is it that the woman actually has difficulty reaching orgasm, and she’s blaming this on the man’s ejaculation difficulties?
Or perhaps she simply doesn’t like sex, and his ejaculatory problems are a convenient way of disguising that fact? I’m not suggesting this is always the case, but these are factors that play a significant role in delayed ejaculation.
What’s Behind Delayed Ejaculation?
When a man has difficulty achieving orgasm, or takes a very long time to achieve orgasm and ejaculate during intercourse, we say he has delayed ejaculation.
Although sex with a partner is seen as the highest point of sex for many men, those men who have difficulty ejaculating may find self-pleasuring more enjoyable.
Unfortunately there isn’t a great deal of research which explains why delayed ejaculation (also known as DE) occurs, and it’s not something many men like to talk about.
That’s a bit odd, really, considering the fact that around 10% of men seem to be affected by DE. (And among those taking SSRIs – a common form of antidepressant, that percentage goes up to around 33%.)
So I’d like to emphasize first of all that if you have difficulty reaching orgasm and ejaculating during intercourse, there is absolutely no reason to feel any shame or guilt about it. You are not alone!
Sadly, part of the expectations we hold about men in our society is that they should be sexually competent, able to satisfy a woman, and “perform” well in bed.
And it’s very unfortunate that we think like that, because it means that men who have difficulty ejaculating often feel somehow inadequate, and tend to experience anxiety, lack of confidence, low self-esteem and poor sexual satisfaction.
So I want to tell you, right here, my message to you is a simple one: there are solutions you can use to end this problem, and with a bit of effort and dedication – with a clear intention to overcome the problem, really, more than anything else – you can easily deal with delayed ejaculation and enjoy sex to the full once more.
I know that if you’re in a relationship, you may find it easier to masturbate to orgasm when you’re on your own than to have sex and ejaculate when you are with your partner.
And, quite understandably, this is something which upsets a lot of men and their partners (if they know about it).
Delays in reaching orgasm – or not reaching it at all – can lead to a low sexual self-esteem.
Indeed, not being able to ejaculate during intercourse can result in low sexual satisfaction (quite obviously) but it can also affect your psychological well-being, disrupt relationship intimacy, and of course, perhaps more importantly than anything else, at least for some couples, it can frustrate any attempts at having a baby.
Well, over the years, it’s been used interchangeably with other expressions such as delayed orgasm, inhibited ejaculation, retarded ejaculation, and even ejaculatory incompetence.
And of course the common factor in all of these terms is the absence of an orgasmic or ejaculatory response to sexual stimulation in a man.
That’s a very scientific way of putting something that can affect men very deeply. It’d be a lot more direct to simply say you can’t come during sex. Or maybe only with difficulty.
Over the years, many people have tried to define DE in precise terms. One reason for this is that there are some men who actually fall within the range of normal human variability for ejaculation time, but are convinced that they have a problem.
Some men reach orgasm quickly, some slowly – but how slow is “slow”?
(Sidebar: the average time from penetration to ejaculation for a man is 5.4 minutes. The time women say is “ideal” for intercourse is, on average, 10 to 13 minutes.)
So with that in mind, let’s look at the three criteria which have been used extensively to define this problem:
1 There’s a persistent and frequent delay in reaching orgasm, or the complete absence of orgasm, even when a man has received enough sexual stimulation to take him to orgasm, allowing for his age and sexual fitness.
Which means, even when you get sexual stimulation that “ought” to take you to orgasm, you just don’t get there.
2 Having difficulty reaching orgasm is distressing to you and/or your partner.
You and your partner will have to overcome any issues that arise between you as a result of ejaculation difficulties.
The implication of this is that your delayed ejaculation causes you distress. Broadly, I agree. Couples where the man has difficulty reaching the point of ejaculation, or simply can’t reach orgasm and ejaculate, and where he and his partner aren’t upset about it, must be few and far between!
3 There is no other explanation for the delay in ejaculation such as drugs or medication or a general medical condition.
And this is a criteria that puts delayed ejaculation firmly in the category of a psychological problem or a physical problem which is clearly identifiable.
But even this is a problem. If you make love for 20 minutes before you ejaculate, is that normal?
I’m sure there are couples where such a situation would be hugely satisfying, and therefore very desirable. But 20 minute sex certainly wouldn’t suit the majority of couples, because we have some very clear research which shows that as far as women are concerned, the “ideal duration” of intercourse is between 10 and 13 minutes.
You’d be fortunate indeed to have delayed ejaculation and to meet a woman who thought this was a good thing.
And yes, I know some women do like it – what they tell me, when they and their partners come to see me about this problem, is that the man’s ability to make love for a long period of time before he ejaculates allows them to have one or more vaginal orgasms.
Fortunately, this is one problem which can be solved at home.
However, because you’re here reading this website, I’d be prepared to take a guess that you are having difficulty with your sex life, or your relationship, or you can’t conceive a baby and you want to, or there is some other important factor caused by your delayed ejaculation which you want to sort out.
So I’d like to reassure you before we go any further that in the majority of cases there are solutions you can use at home, without consulting a doctor, that will significantly improve the speed of ejaculation for you.
In truth, you can do a great deal of work on delayed ejaculation at home, without delving deeply into your past in the way a therapist or counselor might.
Reestablishing intimacy is a vital part of overcoming delayed ejaculation.
There are techniques you can use to re-establish intimacy and increase sexual arousal which generally work very well for men and women.
These technique allow the man to ejaculate in a timely fashion, and by doing so let him and his partner get all the pleasure and satisfaction which sex in a loving relationship can offer.
There are several different types of DE, so the treatment program I provided on this website has been designed to deal with as many of them as possible.
Very briefly, they are something like this.
First of all there’s primary delayed ejaculation, which is also known as lifelong.
As you can guess, I’m sure, this means a man has experienced problems ejaculating from the very first time that he had sex.
It’s odd, isn’t it, because we expect most men to ejaculate very quickly the first time they have sex!
But the reality is there is a significant number of men who don’t find it easy to come, and have never have found it easy to come.
Self-pleasuring may be the easiest way for a man with this problem to reach orgasm.
Generally speaking – although it’s not always the case – these men find it much easier to ejaculate during masturbation than during any other form of sexual activity.
Another important form of the problem is called secondary or acquired delayed ejaculation – and this is much more common.
This seems to develop, for some reason, later in life, perhaps in a second or subsequent sexual relationship, or at some other point in life which is completely unexpected.
Again, the majority of men are still able to reach orgasm ejaculate normally through masturbation, as their problems manifest within the relationship with their partner.
Here, as you might guess, it’s often got something to do with the dynamic of the relationship, either because there’s antagonism or bad feeling between the partners, or because somehow the sexual relationship has triggered a man into some painful memory or painful feelings about his past, perhaps some aspect of his sexual upbringing which didn’t go very well, or which was even traumatic for him.
Sidebar: many cases of slow or difficult ejaculation result from the use of prescription medicine, in particular the SSRI drugs, and which are commonly used as antidepressants. These and other physical causes are described here.
Orgasm and ejaculation are separate and different events. Orgasm occurs in the mind, while emission and ejaculation occur in the body. That is why the European Association of Urology has defined male anorgasmia (lack of orgasm) as “a man’s inability to reach orgasm” and delayed ejaculation (DE) as “a condition which requires excessive and possibly abnormal levels of stimulation of the erect penis before orgasm and ejaculation can be achieved”.
Yet men with delayed ejaculation (DE for short) know they have it – regardless of a definition! They cannot come easily during intercourse, and they suffer because of it!
Sure, most men with this problem can reach orgasm and ejaculate through masturbation.
But only half can have an orgasm when stimulated orally or manually by their partner. And of course, intercourse is even harder….
Back in the 1950s, Masters and Johnson observed that ejaculatory incompetence, as they termed it, can be a source of pleasure because it allows prolonged periods of intercourse.
We should remember that some women may find prolonged intercourse pleasurable.
This is a point we should keep in mind: that if a woman is able to reach a vaginal orgasm through prolonged thrusting she may be delighted with her partner’s stamina and ability to satisfy her without reaching orgasm himself.
(Or she may be extremely frustrated and sore, lacking lubrication, and feeling alone and isolated. Not a great choice, eh?)
Relationship problems almost always arise with ejaculation problems, especially if a couple wish to start a family. And in many cases a woman may think her man doesn’t find her attractive or arousing.
So why do men take so long to come?
How long is long, though? Well, as it happens, the normal range of intercourse is between 2 and 9 minutes. That is a broad guide obtained by asking the man’s partner to use a stopwatch… yes, indeed. How romantic. This is the intra-vaginal ejaculatory latency time or IELT, as measured with a stopwatch.
Anyway, how long is normal for sexual intercourse depends on your definition of normal, but there is a kind of consensus that between 4 and 9 minutes is somehow “average” for IELT.
And of course, the average ejaculation time is very different in different groups of men. For example, it’s just over 2 minutes in young men – no surprise there!
You also need to remember that how long intercourse lasts depends on many other factors:
Studying the causes of delayed ejaculation is sometimes tricky, that’s for sure!
But somewhere between 10 and 12% of men seem to experience it – an astoundingly high proportion, of whom very few seek treatment.
*In a research project entitled Sexual Dysfunction In The US: Prevalence and Predictors, almost 8% of men had some degree of difficulty with ejaculation.
Prescription Drugs, Porn and Perceptions
Causes of Delayed Ejaculation
Read more about the physical causes of ejaculation delay here and here.
Ian Kerner is a sex therapist who’s written a great deal about how men can pleasure women in bed. And that’s great, because many men still don’t know how to bring a woman to orgasm (click here to find out!)
But now, Kerner has turned his attention to men who have difficulty reaching orgasm and ejaculating.
In a conversation with sex therapist colleague Michael Perelman, Kerner outlined his thoughts about the causes of delayed ejaculation.
First up, then, is the use of:
And Kerner’s absolutely right – these drugs can certainly stop a man coming any time soon. (But many other medicines do the same. Are you taking anything prescribed by your doctor?)
Sometimes anti-depressants greatly increase the time to ejaculation, sometimes they stop it altogether. Kerner says these drugs are one of the main reasons for the recent increase in men with problems reaching climax.
Maybe. To be sure, we’d need to compare the increase in prescriptions for these SSRI antidepressants and the increase in delayed ejaculation over the same period of time. I don’t think anybody’s done that.
However, we do know that more men are seeing doctors for delayed ejaculation, and we also know there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of SSRI antidepressants being prescribed.
Like I said, that does not necessarily mean the two things are linked; it could just be that more men are finding the courage to talk about delayed ejaculation.
Even so, we do know that SSRI antidepressants can interfere with sexual function, and if you’re on these drugs, or for that matter any prescription drugs, go and see your doctor. You may find there’s an alternative medicine which will allow you to ejaculate normally.
Next Kerner talks about something even more controversial:
Does Internet Porn cause delayed ejaculation?
I’d go so far as to say all the men I know are using Internet porn. I know that many like using it and feel guilty about it, but they still use it. So what, you may ask?
What if porn use means you can’t come so easily during intercourse? What then?
But, you may ask, how on earth could porn use be related to delayed ejaculation?
Well, the truth is this: easy access to porn can “divert” a man’s attention from sex with a partner to solo masturbation. And a lot of masturbation makes it harder to reach orgasm with a partner.
But there is another reason too: with so many intense varieties of porn available, the brain adapts to a high level of stimulation.
So have you found that porn gets you more aroused than being with your partner? Hmm… makes you think, doesn’t it? You see the point?
When you have porn of such extreme kinds available on the Internet, real-life sex can look a bit, well, boring. In fact, porn can stop you reaching high levels of sexual arousal with a real person.
Another factor in play here is that men who watch porn a lot tend to become “disconnected” (emotionally, that is) from real-life sex partners.
They find there just isn’t enough stimulation with a real partner to make them reach a high enough level of arousal to ejaculate.
And while we’re on the subject of mental distraction, let’s not forget that stress of all kinds can cause ejaculation problems.
Believe it or not, men who are anxious about the economy, job loss, or under financial pressure, seem to experience more delayed ejaculation than other men.
Stress of any kind kills sexual desire.
In addition, of course, delayed ejaculation is becoming more widely known because it’s becoming more widely talked about.
Bizarrely enough, it turns out that Viagra and similar medications have a role to play.
You might have thought they were just about getting an erection. And so they are, but the point is that once a man’s got an erection, he might conclude he’s turned on enough to have sex.
In fact, having an erection might mean you’re physically aroused, but it doesn’t mean that you’re emotionally or psychologically aroused, and it certainly doesn’t mean that if you start having sex you can ejaculate any time soon.
As you know, you gotta get aroused in your mind as well as your body before you can come.
It’s no surprise that your emotions are extremely important in causing DE.
To take only one example of this, religions that have strict laws and conventions about sexuality — including masturbation and sex outside marriage — have the effect of stopping men (and women) from learning about how to get sexual pleasure.
Religious teachings may also make men and women alike feel guilty about sexual self-expression, even when it’s a natural time for a person to become sexually active.
And shame and guilt caused by religious fundamentalism or religious orthodoxy can stop a man fully engaging with his sexuality or with the experience of sex. The resulting low level of arousal means no or slow ejaculation.
But of course shame and guilt around sex don’t necessarily come from a religious upbringing; they can come from an upbringing where sex was disapproved of, or seen as shameful, or where there was some other taboo or problem around sex — and that includes sexual abuse.
What Does DE Mean To You?
Whatever you feel about the idea of ejaculating inside a woman during intercourse, it is the natural outcome of sex, and that in turn is a very natural aspect of being a man.
So if you can’t reach orgasm during intercourse, and/or you find the idea uncomfortable, then it’s quite reasonable to assume that something, somewhere along the line, went a little bit wrong with your sexual experience.
The object of treatment is to put that right. The good news is you don’t need to delve deeply into your past and figure out every bad experience you ever had: instead you can use some simple techniques that give you the capacity to enjoy sex right now.
Even better, opening up to the pleasure of sex will actually “release” you from the hold that any past negative experiences still have over you.
And that’s really helpful if you prefer sex on your own (aka masturbation) to sex with a partner, or if you find aspects of the female body distasteful.
We’re talking about vaginal aversion, to be exact….. and while this isn’t a problem for all men with DE, it is a problem for some, and it needs to be acknowledged and dealt with.
The good news is there’s a simple enough way of sorting it out, regardless of the cause.
You might have difficulty ejaculating because when you were a teenager you learned to masturbate using hard pressure and fast movements on your penis, perhaps by thrusting against the bed, so that now you can never get enough stimulation during intercourse to reach the point of ejaculation.
It’s also possible that if you have a slow ejaculation you were brought up by parents or carers who found sex disgusting, shameful, or negative in some other way.
Inevitably you would have incorporated those attitudes into your own way of looking at sex, and as a result you might have some inhibitions that hold you back from really enjoying intercourse.
I’ve heard a lot of stories from men who’ve had bad experiences with women in their childhood, and who as a result find it very difficult to trust women.
Since sex is one of the most intimate things that two people can do, it’s no wonder that men who have good reason not to trust women find sex difficult.
That moment of orgasm, when you let yourself go, when you lose control, requires a great deal of trust in your partner.
Don’t worry, though, because of if this applies to you, trust can be rebuilt.
Unfortunately it’s also true that some men don’t want to have sex with their partner because they feel detached, angry, hostile, unappreciated, distant, unattracted or even repelled by her…. and of course there are many other words you could end that sentence with. Choose your own!
So a vital part of getting over retarded ejaculation is dealing with any relationship challenges you may have.
There’s a lot of information in my treatment program about how to do this, just read the sections that seem most relevant to you.
Of course, it’s more of a self-help program than a formal treatment of the kind you might get from a doctor.
It requires you to take responsibility for wanting to solve the problem and then acting on this wish by doing something.
“Retarded” and “delayed” ejaculation mean the same thing: a long, often very long, delay before a man ejaculates. And sometimes no ejaculation at all.
This problem can be caused by both physical and psychological issues, though these are not completely separate.
Here, we’re going to look at the physical causes.
There are other pages on the physical causes of delayed ejaculation (DE): Physical causes 2 and Physical causes 3
A slow male ejaculation may make it impossible for the woman to reach orgasm or even enjoy intercourse.
When problems develop later in life there are some particular things to look for: medication such as SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants may be responsible for inhibiting ejaculation, as can the antipsychotics and anxiolytics.
We’ll come back to this in a moment.
Also, we know that testosterone deficiency due to aging can be responsible for a slower sexual response.
As a man ages, his sexual organs shrink, attaining full erection and sustaining a good quality erection become more problematic, and his testosterone levels drop, producing lower desire and arousal.
Men also say they feel less at the time of ejaculation (because of the less powerful muscle contractions in the PC muscle).
There is also an attenuation of responsivity because of some degree of degeneration of the neurological reflex arc responsible for the ejaculation reflex.
This is because the fast conducting peripheral sensory axons are lost progressively from 30 years of age onwards. Also, collagen infiltrates the myelin sheath of the nerves, and skin (cutaneous) sensory units degenerate, and there is some degree of dermal atrophy.
There may be lower penile sensitivity, reduced spinal stimulation, and an increased sensory threshold. And there is even evidence that the bulbo cavernosus reflex (aka glandipudendal reflex) doesn’t work in around twenty percent of men who have complete primary ejaculatory failure.
Prescription meds may cause delays in ejaculation
As you can see, these age-related degenerative changes will all make it harder to reach the ejaculatory threshold as a man gets older.
And other things don’t help: peripheral vascular disease, psychiatric problems, diabetic neuropathy, and social or emotional problems….
SSRIs, which are serotonergic drugs used as antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs are associated with a tenfold increase in risk of mild or moderate DE.
Why? Because they slow down or inhibit the ejaculatory reflex by increased central serotonergic transmission.
And while men who come quickly might think that useful, depressed men who receive SSRIs or other serotonergic drugs, delays in ejaculating can be a major problem.
Serotonergic drugs can induce various degrees of impaired ejaculation and also low sexual desire, a connection which is not often made by the patient, and sometimes not by his doctor.
In addition, as you might expect, traumatic or surgical spinal injuries that damage the lumbar nerves can be responsible for failure of, or delay, in ejaculation.
Natural variability between men in the time taken to ejaculate is quite normal.
Some couples think they have a problem with delayed ejaculation even when man comes within the normal timescale.
(How’s that measured, you may ask – well…. with a stopwatch, is the answer, starting when the man penetrates his partner, and ending when he ejaculates. The time between vaginal penetration and ejaculation is called the Intravaginal ejaculatory latency time or IELT.)
You see, there is of course a natural human variability in time to ejaculation. If some men come in two minutes, others will come in twenty. The average, should you be interested, is 5.4 minutes.
So when does a man go over the “normal range”?
The reality is that this is also about difficulty in reaching orgasm, not just the time taken to come. And yes, both factors are important.
However, how important? Some work on rats (yes, rats) can give us a bit more insight.
Marcel Waldinger has conducted experiments around retardation of orgasm on rats and has observed that there is always a certain percentage of the group who display very rapid sexual behavior, and another group who always display rather slow sexual behavior.
Around 70 to 80% of rats will successfully copulate within more or less the same period of time, with another 20% of the population which definitely diverges from the average.
So Waldinger wondered if there might be a natural biological variation in ejaculation time amongst men. In other words, is delayed ejaculation just another aspect of normal human variability?
And it’s a reasonable idea, isn’t it, to suggest that a wide range of IELT naturally occurs in the human population, as it does in rats.
Does natural variability between men explain the long time taken by some men to reach orgasm?
Maybe, but there is also the question of how easy it is for them to ejaculate.
If so, it wouldn’t be surprising to find some men are extremely slow to reach orgasm, and a few are unable to do so at all.
Waldinger looked at male anorgasmia in 490 men and discovered that there is indeed a large variability in time between penetration and ejaculation among men in the general population.
But so what? The problem is that we just don’t know what this natural variation between men means. In fact, there’s a shortage of good scientific studies on lifelong DE (which means a man has had slow ejaculations from the time he first became sexually active), and that makes any definite conclusions harder to reach.
Nonetheless, delayed ejaculation can produce many emotional and psychological difficulties for both partners in a sexual relationship, so any clues which can be gained from studying IELT in the whole population are potentially useful.
What this all means for you is not certain, I accept that. Scientific research does not directly help you ejaculate! So, if you want to discover how to get over the problem of your own delayed ejaculation, please have a look at the treatment program which you can see at the top right hand column of this page.
Read more about the physical causes of orgasm delay here and here.
Delays in ejaculation may mean a man is slow to reach (or cannot reach) his point of no return – that’s the moment when he knows he is going to ejaculate and nothing can stop him doing so.
Just why do some men have difficulty reaching the point of no return during sexual arousal? That’s what this DELAY problem is all about.
The point of ejaculatory inevitability is where you know you are going to come and nothing will stop it.
The point of no return is also called the point of ejaculatory inevitability.
As I said, that’s where you know you are going to come – and nothing will stop it.
The automatic ejaculation reflex should be triggered at a certain point in your sexual arousal, but men with delayed ejaculation somehow never quite get there…..
We tend to think of men as always ready to have sex, and as ejaculation as easy….. but, as you know, sometimes it can be extremely hard to come.
Love may be stretched to breaking point when physical intimacy is not possible.
Needless to say, delays in ejaculation – or no ejaculation at all – can leave both partners unhappy. man and woman unfulfilled.
We live in a culture in which ways to control premature ejaculation are openly discussed, and medications are freely available for this problem.
There’s no problem explaining rapid or premature ejaculation: it’s usually emotional in origin – in other words, it’s caused by fear, anger, sexual shame, guilt, and so on. (See this if you want more information on premature ejaculation.)
But it may be harder to find an emotional and psychological framework for the difficulty and slowness some men have around ejaculating.
In other words, why do some men have difficulty reaching orgasm?
Here’s a video which goes some way to explaining it.
Common sense suggests that men who ejaculate prematurely are too aroused, too quickly. Could this possibly mean, therefore, that men who have delayed ejaculation (DE for short) are not aroused enough?
There certainly seems to be a lot of evidence to support this idea.
If it’s correct, however, then we need to explain why men with DE often have a hard and long-lasting erection.
I mean, an erection is often a sign of a state of high arousal in men.
Another viewpoint is that maybe that some men are just inherently less sensitive to sexual stimulation, and they simply never reach a point of arousal at which their ejaculatory reflex is triggered.
You can probably see already that the causes of this sexual dysfunction are naturally dividing into two categories: the psychological causes, and the physical causes.
The truth is, of course, that both physical and psychological issues could be at work in the origins of delayed ejaculation, and much remains to be investigated.
Nonetheless, it’s possible to divide the causes into two broad categories: psychological and physical. Within each of these categories there are a number of other categories which look like this:
Sometimes these factors, and also others not mentioned here, may be playing a part in the slow or late ejaculations you’re having…. but….
Another possibility, according to some therapists, is that there is nothing abnormal about this problem.
They say ejaculation times in the human population naturally occupy a range from one extreme to another, generally in the shape of a normal distribution – which you can see below.
Number of men vs time taken to ejaculate – could it be normal for some men to have a very long time to ejaculation?
The IELT – intra-vaginal ejaculatory latency time – is the time between penetration and ejaculation.
In this case, men with delayed ejaculation are seen as one end of a normal distribution, the other end being characterized by men with rapid or premature ejaculation.
Men with normal ejaculatory latency (the time between penetration and ejaculation) are in the middle of the normal distribution.
These men do not consider themselves to have any difficulty in maintaining intercourse for reasonable duration, which may last from as little as 3 minutes to as long as 9 minutes of intercourse before ejaculation.
If you look at this graph, you can see about 10% of men have what might be called delayed ejaculation.
Needless to say, the causes may have a significant bearing on the treatment strategy that is adopted to cure it.
However, as we shall see, most treatment protocols are aimed at direct intervention where possible, such as relationship therapy.
This is actually because medical intervention to alter the sensitivity of the penis, the activity of neuronal circuitry, or the ejaculation reflex, is simply not possible.
What is possible, as part of any treatment, is altering the sexual behavior of a man or his partner (or both), so that he receives more sexual stimulation and is able to ejaculate more easily.
Source: OvercomeDelays (OvercomeDelays.com)