Delayed ejaculation

Coping strategies men use when they have delayed ejaculation.

Find a new partner

If you’ve tried this, then I hope it worked for you, and I hope you found it helpful in curing delayed ejaculation. But the chances are that it didn’t – and even if it did, where does that leave you when you go back to your full-time partner, the one with whom you originally had the problem? Even if you now suspect the problem lies with her, not you, this is still something you now have to deal with.

Try Viagra for a firmer erection

Depending on the circumstances, this can actually be a satisfactory answer. I had a friend who found a younger girlfriend when he and his wife split up. Unfortunately she was obsessed with sex, wanting intercourse many times a week (well, to be accurate, a day).

While this sounds like an older man’s dream woman, it wasn’t long before he found he was too exhausted to get an erection – and after discovering he couldn’t become erect  on one occasion, the same thing happened next time….and the next…….and the next. After an agonized phone call to me and a quick dose of Viagra as a result, he found his penis hard and his erection surprisingly long-lasting next time. That was all he needed to restore his confidence and get him back to full working order.

Video – delayed ejaculation

New sexual “pleasure”

Watching porn and masturbating to it, “talking dirty” during sex, getting her to wear “sexy” clothes, using extreme fantasy, oral pleasure, trying BDSM….all this, and more, can be a way of stimulating yourself when you experience erectile failure. After all, it seems logical: the more stimulation you get, the more aroused you’ll be, right? Wrong.

The fear that lies behind your delayed ejaculation, and your fear about not being able to have sex, may be so great that when you do have sex you just ejaculate quickly.

Or you feel very unfulfilled after you’ve ejaculated, perhaps because you were more obsessed with the process than with your partner. Sex without emotional connection, as we all know, is not as good as sex with an aroused, engaged partner. Indeed, it’s little better than vaginal masturbation.

Avoid sex altogether – that way there’s no problem with delayed ejaculation!

Men are not designed to go without sex. It’s part of who we are at our most fundamental level, and I don’t believe a man can feel complete unless he is able to have satisfying sex. 

Your partner must be willing to help you work on delayed ejaculation

What this means in practice is that your partner needs to have a good relationship with you and you must be willing to work on the problem with her. Clearly this will not go well if you aren’t happy in your relationship or you don’t really want to be with her or having sex with her.

If your relationship is having problems that are non-sexual, you may need to work on those problems before you start dealing with your erectile problems.You are not less of a man because you have delayed ejaculation; nor should you feel yourself to be so if you cannot have sex with your partner because of it.

It’s a problem if a woman buys into the myths around male sexuality that suggest he should be ready willing and able to enjoy sex a moment’s notice! 

One way that you and she might be able to resolve this difficulty is for her to see a therapist who can help her to separate you as a man from your delayed ejaculation. I’d argue that you’re not even a man with a sexual problem – you’re a man who is experiencing some short term sexual challenges. If she sees it differently, perhaps believing that it is part of a man’s role to be more sexually expert and skilful than woman, then she imay need to be brought into your confidence. Alternatively you may wish to seek help from a book which describes strategies to overcome delayed ejaculation. 

(Find the UK version of this book on delayed ejaculation here.)

She must also be willing to put her own sexual needs aside while she helps you to overcome your delayed ejaculation. She may be required to have sexual contact when she isn’t in the mood, and she may be required not to have sexual contact when she is in the mood. She must be patient and respectful of the time it takes to work on your erectile issues. This applies both when things are going well and when they are not going so well.

You must want to solve your delayed ejaculation

If you’re just not interested in solving your delayed ejaculation problem, then you are unlikely to succeed in curing your delayed ejaculation.

Reasons why you might not work on your delayed ejaculation:

You might not care. This could be because you have lost interest in sex, or because you have lost interest in your partner. Or because yo have some issue that seems more urgent than the sexual problem (like a health problem).

You might not think you really have a problem. If you genuinely don’t see that you have a problem, then you won’t feel very motivated to work on it. And oddly enough, if a man’s libido diminishes in mid-life, he may lose interest in sex so much that his lack of erections doesn’t bother him. One way to deal with this is to take testosterone replacement therapy, which restores libido and erections (if necessary, in conjunction with Viagra).

You think your delayed ejaculation will disappear by itself. Well, it might – but then again, it might not.  However if you are under stress from your job, from your finances, and from other sources, like family illness, then you might find that when the stress is reduced, the delayed ejaculation resolves spontaneously.

You might not want to work on delayed ejaculation with your partner because you’re not committed to the relationship. This is more complicated, but if you don’t feel intimate or emotionally close enough to you partner, then you may not wish to open up the issue and all that lies behind it with your current partner. (This is clearly the case if you have no delayed ejaculations with anyone but your current partner.)

Regrettably it is also possible that you find your partner unattractive because of her weight or appearance. The male sex drive is a powerful thing, but it can’t always overcome aversion caused by appearance issues. 

You might suspect that your delayed ejaculation is related to the sexual behaviour that you and your partner engage in. If so, you may need to confront her about what it is that you  like and what it is that you don’t like. If you think this may bring bigger problems into awareness, then those are the problems that perhaps need to be addressed before you start working on your erection.

You don’t want to see a therapist. This might be because you see it as too embarrassing, or because you think the problem may not be solvable even if you do start to work on it. Rest assured that in the vast majority of cases, delayed ejaculation is completely curable and that any trained sexual therapist will be relaxed and comfortable to work with you – no matter how embarrassed you might be.