The Effects Of Premature Ejaculation On Men and Women
Mariano Sotomayor has considered how premature ejaculation affects men who experience it. He observes that premature ejaculation is under-detected and under-treated, while men who have this condition often feel stigmatized and embarrassed by the condition, and unable to discuss it with doctors.
In addition, they often perceive themselves as having little or no control over their ejaculation, a fact which is reflected in the lowered satisfaction with sex that they and their partners experience. Indeed, it’s noticeable that many men who have premature ejaculation are in a relationship with a female partner who also experiences female sexual dysfunction.
His basic thesis is that it’s essential for the purpose of developing effective treatment for premature ejaculation to consider how it affects the man concerned. A great deal of information about premature ejaculation is entirely subjective, so to the extent that any man sees himself, or his sexual performance, as different from the majority, he could be considered to have the condition.
Unfortunately, the difference in perception as to what actually constitutes normal ejaculatory latency time between countries is so great that it makes diagnosis, and by implication treatment, of premature ejaculation much more difficult.
Time Between Penetration and Ejaculation
It has been found that European men think that an average time between penetration and ejaculation is 9 to 10 minutes, but even within this reasonably unified geographical area, there are large differences in perception of what constitutes normal: for example, in the UK, 9.9 minutes is considered normal by men, whilst in Germany, 6.9 minutes is considered normal.
What’s noticeable in almost every country is that female perception of the time between penetration ejaculation – ejaculatory latency time – is actually both lower and more accurate, strongly suggesting that men overestimate their ability to sustain intercourse.
In attempting to establish how many men in the population actually experience something that could justifiably be called premature ejaculation, a research panel in the United States asked 2,056 men a number of questions about their experience of sexual intercourse.
32.5% of men said that they ejaculated before they wished to do so the majority of times they had sexual intercourse. Therefore, from this subjective point of view, we could say that PE’s prevalence in the general population is around 32.5%.
There was a follow-up question as well, which asked these men how much of a problem premature ejaculation was for them. Of the 32.5%, about half said that the speed of their ejaculation caused “little or no problem”, whilst just over a third said it was “somewhat” of a problem, and the remainder said it was a major problem for them.
This work established a baseline against which the researchers could test other measures of premature ejaculation symptoms of premature ejaculation including the level of ejaculatory control men felt they had during sex.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of men who reported themselves as dissatisfied with their ejaculatory latency time said that they felt they had little control over ejaculation. But slightly surprisingly, perhaps, men who see themselves as coming too quickly don’t always express dissatisfaction with sexual intercourse.
The correlation between ejaculation speed and level of sexual satisfaction is much lower than it is between ejaculation speed and a perception of lack of ejaculatory control.
The same is NOT true of delayed ejaculation, where the delay before ejaculation is so long that few men will be unaware they have a problem. This is slightly surprising in view of the fact that clinicians and sex therapists who deal with men who have premature ejaculation know that men are frequently extremely eager to find a solution.
Of course one of the reasons that this anomaly appears in scientific research is the fact that so few men who ejaculate quickly are willing or able to seek advice or help about the speed of their ejaculation.
The same, incidentally, is true of men who have delayed ejaculation – very few of them seek help for the problem, perhaps because of the shame and embarrassment that surround the problem. Read more about the causes and treatment here too.
Self-help treatments used by men who ejaculate too quickly include using multiple condoms, masturbation before sexual interaction, trying to use mental distraction, and thrusting harder and faster in an attempt to sexually satisfy their partner. The regrettable thing is that many of these techniques actually make premature ejaculation worse because they ignore the sexual sensations (the premonitory sensations) that need to be controlled in order to improve ejaculatory latency time.
Premature Ejaculation
There is a big distinction between the number of men who think they have sexual dysfunction and those who seek help for it: in the UK, one survey found 64% of men with sexual dysfunction wished to obtain some kind of therapeutic assistance, but actually only 6% did so.
One of the reasons for this, as far as premature ejaculation is concerned, is that there is a clear stigma to the condition, which labels men as either inadequate lovers or lacking in masculinity.
Even if a man is courageous enough to go and speak to a doctor about his “condition”, the embarrassment for both the man and his doctor may prevent effective and useful discussion taking place.
In the circumstances it is no surprise that men find it easier to persuade themselves that the condition is temporary, or psychological, or that it will go away with time, or that it doesn’t actually need treating.
It is arguable that delayed ejaculation is a condition which requires treatment, even when men refuse to admit that their sexual performance is unsatisfactory to their partners. This is because there can be much more serious consequences – a lack of pregnancy, difficulty with achieving orgasmic pleasure for the woman, and emotional self-denigration for the man.
In the end, most men who seek help do so because the level of distress, frustration, stress, and effects on partner dissatisfaction is so high that the relationship may be threatened.
The Emotional Burden of Ejaculation Dysfunction
This is mostly shame, low self-esteem, embarrassment and feelings of inferiority compared to other men. Anxiety is also common.
his is the danger of premature ejaculation: danger that is not often recognized in the jokes that are commonly applied to it: that it continually reduces a man’s sexual self-confidence and self-esteem.
In research work, almost 70% of men with PE speak about their confidence being lowered by PE, and that’s not just in sexual situations, but life in general. 36% of men speak of anxiety accompanying their tendency to ejaculate too quickly.
In fact, anxiety is both a cause and effect of premature ejaculation; depression, too, is also associated with the condition. This is not surprising when you learn that it’s a common finding that men with PE are almost 3 times more likely to be diagnosed with depression, an emotion that may be a consequence of mutual mistrust and sexual dissatisfaction within the relationship.
In most cases, advice about how to avoid premature ejaculation is discussed within the framework of male and female heterosexual relationships, and comparatively little has been written about gay relationships.
What we know is that within the male-female relationship, a woman’s emotions about her partner’s problems can range from compassion and understanding to anger, recrimination and frustration. A woman may perceive the male partner to be selfish.
Why? Well, the lack of communication within most relationships becomes very clear when one learns that most women are surprised to discover that their partner feels bad about his lack of control in bed.
It’s unsurprising in relationships where the man ejaculates quickly that sexual pleasure is diminished in this way, nor is it surprising that there is a correlation between female anorgasmia and male rapid ejaculation.
Unfortunately, one of the things that confuses treatment and diagnosis of premature ejaculation is that many of the men who have it, think that they actually have some kind of “quality-of-life” issue. Some scientific research evidence suggests that this is because PE is often associated with lifestyle and personality issues such as recent divorce and levels of education (men with less education are more likely to ejaculate quickly, it transpires).