Premature ejaculation is very common, but also very treatable. It can be caused by a number of things such as performance anxiety, biological factors, early experiences with sexuality, or relationship issues. Sometimes it is related to the way that boys learned to masturbate “quickly” in their teenage years. Both men and women tend to have control over masturbating, but the body can be triggered too early with excitement or fear during intercourse.
Things like pornography set up unrealistic expectations for sex and how long it lasts. When in reality, the average intercourse is about 8 minutes! Premature ejaculation averages about 1 minute. This can create certain expectations that men h
ave for themselves which results in pressure and anxiety. This anxiety is often the reason for early climax. With sex, there can too much focus on orgasm, and not enough on intimacy! Being present and focusing on a deeper connection can help.
In this week’s episode, we’ll talk about ways to overcome this problem!
TRANSCRIPT:
Announcer 00:00
The following content is not suitable for children.
George Faller 00:02
Welcome, Laurie. So let’s take our time today. Really stretch out this topic today. premature ejaculation.
00:13
fun topic.
George Faller 00:15
on topic, common topic. common topic. Alright, so let’s get this going as quick as we can. All right.
Laurie Watson 00:25
Welcome to foreplay radio couples in sex therapy. I’m Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.
George Faller 00:31
And I’m George Faller, a couples therapist,
Laurie Watson 00:33
and we are passionate about talking about sex and helping you develop a way to talk to each other.
George Faller 00:39
Our mission is to help our audience develop a healthier relationship to sex that integrates the mind, the heart and the body.
Laurie Watson 00:48
For a great personal lubricant, please check out Uber live.com and use the coupon foreplay to support us at the podcast. Thanks. Before we start, this is January 8, Happy New Year, everybody, we’re excited to be back on our new calendar and 2021 gotta be better than 2020. And we’re looking forward to February 5, for our great love great sex class. So excited about this. And today is I think the last day you can register for our discount, which is 399. And tomorrow, it goes up to 450. So if you want to come and join us and you want to save a little bit of money, please sign up today. Find us at foreplay radio, sex therapy.com Yeah, you know, you can find us just google our names or foreplay radio, you’ll eventually get to our website, and we have our admin Christa helping us do all that. And she’s great. She’ll get you all registered and set up. But we’re looking forward to talking about sex and love and emotions and how it all interrelates Yeah, this
George Faller 01:59
is our first time doing this workshop together. So the creative juices will be flowing. Right? To me, they’re always the best trainings when you’re just coming together and you’re just you Johnny, meet it objective, and you’re not sure what’s going to happen. But you know, we’re talking about a great topic. That’s really important too. So couples comment where you’re going to get something out of this, you’re going to have conversations you’ve probably never had before with your partner. So we really welcome everyone.
Laurie Watson 02:26
I think so too. I think that teaching something new, and certainly our first time teaching together, it will be an exciting time to really get to discover this topic and share it with our foreplay family. So, welcome. Hope you all join us. premature ejaculation. Let’s take our time with this. Funny. Well, I think what what was funny is the idea of Let’s be quick about this, because it is one of the reasons that premature ejaculation begins. You know, young boys often are masturbating and they’re anxious, you know, they don’t want to be discovered. And so they learn to masturbate quickly, and to get it over with so that they’re not found out. Because there’s shame sometimes in families about masturbation or, or they just are afraid of what would happen if they were found out. And that is one of the ways it begins. As they just train their bodies to quickly ejaculate.
George Faller 03:26
Well, let’s let’s add some statistics to this conversation. Because they got I think there’s a lot of faulty assumptions out there. And you’re the sex therapist, so you correct this information. Okay. But the average, I mean, actually, premature ejaculation is is sex less than two minutes.
Laurie Watson 03:46
Right? It’s the ejaculating. Usually within one minute, within one, right.
George Faller 03:52
I mean, but the average is three to seven minutes of intercourse. That’s the average person during during sexual intercourse.
Laurie Watson 04:00
I hear about eight minutes,
George Faller 04:02
eight minutes on average. So that’s what you’re hearing? Yeah. So when we really talk about less than a minute, being premature, and eight being on average. We’re just trying to stretch it out seven minutes here, right, Laurie?
04:17
That’s all we need is seven minutes.
George Faller 04:18
All right, seven minutes. And I do that
Laurie Watson 04:21
I think that you know, there’s technical ways to think about that minute you know, if it’s too early and if it happens even before the man has sexual intercourse or when he first enters her or you know, he can last a little bit. All of that. I think the problem is what men tell themselves about it adds to the anxiety and and men climax for two reasons. Men climax because of anxiety. Their body is just a trigger, you know and kind of excitable and so if they’re too anxious they can climax and erotic feelings. And thoughts. That’s another way that men build arousal and climax. And of course, what we really want is men to experience kind of the best sex right, which is emotional connection, eroticism shared with their partner, not being anxious about their own erotic thoughts, being able to look at and enjoy the eroticism of the body’s body to body without any kind of fear that would excite their body to trigger too early. Women again, we hit this a lot in the podcast, most women don’t climax with sexual intercourse. And I think one episode you asked me, you know, then why do women want to have sexual intercourse? And so why does premature ejaculation matters to some women? It really doesn’t? I mean, because they don’t climax that way. I mean, it really doesn’t matter. And I tell men all the time, listen to what your partner is saying, does she care about long intercourse? Does she care about eight minutes or whatever? You know, porn has set up this terrible expectation that sexual intercourse should last for an hour, 30 minutes. And then all men stay hard during that 30 minutes, which is totally false. And that’s about something unusual. That’s about medication that’s about a film. It’s, it’s false. And so I think men have these expectations for themselves. And some women don’t care. But a lot of women do love sexual intercourse. It’s so intimate, whether they climax or not, they do think about the sexual experience as including sexual intercourse. So they want to feel their partner inside them. They want to have it lasts long enough that that it’s pleasurable it. They experience pleasure that way. And they experience deep body intimacy and deep emotional intimacy with sexual intercourse. So it does matter.
George Faller 06:56
Yeah. I appreciate using the word expectations, because so often, that’s what’s getting in the way with premature ejaculation, right? feeling like you’re not meeting expectations. And yet some of these expectations are inaccurate. So I think some basic psych Ed, something as simple as seven minutes is helpful to start getting, you know, men to start coming up with a plan, what can I do? to relax more? Because that’s the whole key, and how do I be get more into my body and not so focused on my penis? How do I let myself feel my heels on the ground? Like so many men, his strategy is to just think about anything else they start, so they’re not going to orgasm, which again, makes them not present. So I remember, you know, one of my friends said he would go through the alphabet backwards, right, just as a way of trying to distract himself from but again, all these moves, winds up making the problem worse, because it’s, it’s quickly can go from premature ejaculation to Ed, right? And yes, your your, your, the ability to perform, you’re right, they’re often correlated with each other,
Laurie Watson 08:07
they are correlated. And one often the strategy that a man uses to manage premature ejaculation, that de irata sizes, the experience can lead to EDI later on in life. Or even earlier, I mean, and you just think about this guy, right? Instead of being able to your friend instead of being able to feel and think erotic thoughts. He’s kind of his mind is elsewhere, you know, that he’s disconnected. He’s, he’s even disconnected from sex at all, you know, he’s thinking about the alphabet, or I’ve heard the multiplication tables, or, like my patient said, You know, I gotta think about dead kittens, you know, so that I don’t climax too quickly, you know, and then with Ed, hot women, you know, it’s just this swing and, and in no place, are they entering the body. And that’s what we want men to be able to experience is a full connection with their own bodies, being present in their body, not feeling anxious about, Oh, my gosh, I’m going to come too quickly. And then they are more able to be present with their partner and her body. We’ve been talking about what men tell themselves about it and, and a little bit about what women tell themselves about it, I think would be important to mention. I mean, sometimes I think in a more negative cycle, women start to say, you know, he doesn’t care enough about me to solve this problem. You know, I’ve told them over and over again, why don’t you go to your urologist? Why don’t you go to a sex therapist? You know, she’s essentially pursuing him to get this fixed but I think men feel so much shame about it. You know, telling a doctor you know, a woman doctor or a male doctor, right? Oh, you know, I I climax too fast. You got any fixes Hear that that just feels untenable to a lot of men. I don’t, I don’t want to tell anybody about this. It’s bad enough that I do it with my partner and she’s unhappy and, and the women are saying, You don’t care, you don’t care about our sex life, you don’t care about me, you don’t care about my pleasure.
George Faller 10:16
You don’t care about how I pay RB. It’s bad timing, right, but it’s gonna take a while for women to warm up, and it’s over before she even gets warmed up. And there’s no reciprocation. And you know, that’s gonna feel pretty terrible.
Laurie Watson 10:31
I think sex so often ends when men are finished. Once a man climaxes, the sexual experience is often over. And if a man climaxes too quickly, and he’s ashamed and humiliated, you bet he’s going to get out of bed, or he’s going to turn his back, which may mean, she doesn’t orgasm, they don’t continue a pleasurable experience, they’re not connected. So it’s more than just he didn’t have sexual intercourse with me for long enough. But it’s like, you know, the sex ended. And so of course, she’s often frustrated, angry, she feels shut out. And oftentimes in the negative cycle, she contributes to that right with her anger, her criticism, and he keeps hearing, you know, my penis isn’t lasting long enough. I’m not I’m not doing it well enough. And, you know, his shame, he could push back with anger, too, you know, I didn’t have this problem with other women or, you know, many, many ways that kind of a withdrawing partner might push back to, you know, get their partner off their back, or just clam up, not say anything, just get out of bed, feel embarrassed, feel ashamed, say nothing. And there’s nothing going on between the two of them anymore. That is sexual, let alone connected.
George Faller 11:54
And that’s too much focus on the orgasm. Just because your orgasm doesn’t mean the sex of the intimacy should stop or it’s over with. Right and like, okay, you had an orgasm. So how do we reciprocate? How do we kind of continue to focus on the connection, good being more in our bodies and our hearts and our minds and our spirit, all that comprehensive, holistic, full, integrated sex that we’ve been trying to talk about here with premature ejaculation? It’s not the it’s not the orgasms. The problem is what happens afterwards. Right? That’s the shame. That’s the rolling over. That’s the disconnection, there’s a lot that actually makes it a bigger problem than actually the orgasm itself.
Laurie Watson 12:35
Mm hmm. And I think if couples can get on the same page, where they can think about their sex life as a joint issue, you know, we we talk often about how if they can take ownership together, about what happens and doesn’t happen between the two of them as our problem, our issues, it’s actually one of the easiest sexual problems to solve, George. I mean, usually six months into the tips, six months of therapy. Okay. George, I want to talk to you about Uber lube. I’ve had two people call me about it, that have started using it. And one of them was a girlfriend who said, I have menopausal pain is just a big problem. And she started using eberly, no pain. And then a patient told me that she had pain intermittently with sexual intercourse. And she couldn’t depend on her own natural lubrication. So she started using Uber lewd, like I told her to every single time, don’t trust at this point that your body will do everything it needs, just use it. You know, it’s fun, it’s extra. She’s using it, no sexual pain, starting to really enjoy sexual intercourse. So I’m excited about this product. I have used it for years and recommended it for years to couples. It helps with the experience, especially if there’s any kinds of problems and just for fun,
George Faller 14:04
that’s right, Laurie, whatever we can do to increase our pleasure and connection. Use all those tools. And Uber lube is a great way of enhancing that emotional bond.
Laurie Watson 14:15
It’s a good lubrication, and most people it helps with touching right in the beginning, it’s it’s important to make sex as pleasurable as possible. So Uber lube, you know, silicone based, doesn’t stain anything. You want to wipe off your sex toys. If you use it with that though, and it’s clear it’s a great bottle hulu.com with the coupon for play.
George Faller 14:37
Yeah, that’s good stuff.
Laurie Watson 14:40
Hey, join us on Instagram. We’re running a contest. If you tag five of your friends, we are going to send you the manscape lawnmower. Thank you manscape.
George Faller 14:51
Very excited, Laurie. Upcoming Couples Retreat weekend. Great love, great sex. Whatever. opportunity for couples to work on that sexual and emotional cycle.
Laurie Watson 15:05
I know I’m so excited we get to partner together to actually teach and share with couples. It’s going to be on Friday, February 5, and we’re really encouraging you to take the weekend away together to do this material with us. We’re going to have interactive parts, talking about the emotional connection, the cycle, asking your partner questions, we’ll have little breakouts, we’re going to keep it fun, keep it hot. It’s going to be a fast day. We’ll start at 10am Eastern Standard Time, February 5. Great love great sex. Find us on the website for play radio, sex, therapy.com and sign up.
George Faller 15:42
We don’t give many guarantees. But if you show up for this retreat, you will have conversations you’ve never had with your partner before. Got a G spot is a sentimental one. Why don’t we close our eyes where we sleep when we cry? When we imagine when we kiss when we pray? Because the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen with your eyes. It must be felt with your heart. All right, Laurie. So you promised our listeners, this is one of the easiest problems to fix. I love the the reframe you said this is if couples see it as our problem. This is something we’re working on together. It’s so different than just kind of blaming a person and kind of kick it in those defenses. So let’s what what are some of these strategies?
Laurie Watson 16:31
Yes, a sexual problems happen between people. It’s often not just in one person’s body, there’s there’s usually a dynamic that supports the sexual problem as an ongoing issues. So we need to step back and think of it and that’s what therapy helps with his thinking about things dynamically. You know, the difficulty is maybe this is a long standing problem, and you’re asking a partner who’s already angry with you to help you. And how can the two of them kind of work through the resentment, maybe it’s been years of resentment, so that they’re willing to fix this problem, because like I said, so easy. Two big problems in sex, are her not being able to have an orgasm, and him coming too quickly. And both of them are easy, easy fixes that most sex therapists have a lot of experience with and can fix. premature ejaculation is not even an every week therapy appointment. It’s like once a month for six months, we give exercises, it’s just getting the couple to the point of being willing to do the exercises that helps.
George Faller 17:38
So what are these exercises,
Laurie Watson 17:40
so for? To begin with. You know, a man has to be able to masturbate for a period of time for longer than seven minutes so that he can hold on to his ejaculation during that time, not being too sensitive, and his penis not being too sensitive to ejaculate. So most men that I have ever worked with, and that have come through our clinic and we have like 13 sex therapists now. So we see a lot of this and most of them can masturbate with control. You know, they usually come into sex therapy with that ability. already very few men are up
George Faller 18:18
control, they can start and stop or they could just
Laurie Watson 18:22
know they can they can masturbate for more than seven minutes before climaxing you know, so continuous masturbation stimulation, with or without erotica. And they don’t climax too quickly with masturbation that they have control. But that’s generally the person that comes in. We do want to explore kind of the first time it happened. Oftentimes it is first sex, there are certain cultures that for sex happens in a really anxious situation, there’s a setup or even a prostitute. Sometimes some cultures endorse that. And you can imagine a young boy 17 I mean, just how anxious he is. And that first experience is kind of a setup for his continuing sexual life. So we want to explore that and figure that out what happened, what he felt, and debrief that and maybe have him share with his partner who he may never have shared with his early beginnings of sexuality.
George Faller 19:24
I’m really fascinated. I had never thought of that before to you it said, you know, what do they do when they’re masturbating? So if if this this guy was premature ejaculation is alone in their house that has the whole day to himself, then he has no problem lasting, right? Pretty No pressure. Think about that. Right? When there’s no pressure that you know, and he wants to take his time and enjoy himself. He actually has control over that. And yet when when he’s with his partner, something changes, right. That’s that anxiety, that person Should that’s been introduced, that kind of speeds the whole thing up. Yeah. And seeing that gave me that sense of control.
Laurie Watson 20:07
Right seeing that he actually does have the ability to control it. That is more natural because he gauges his pressure, his rhythm. You know, he is in it’s a direct biofeedback mechanism, right masturbation, that’s why women and men often are very successful with masturbation to reach orgasm, because they’re on both sides of it. And so he is doing things when he masturbates, that actually slows down the Jackie latorre response, which, for most men, there’s like this point of inevitability, which means they’re going to climax with any further stimulation, or even without further stimulation, they have just reached a point of arousal that no matter what happens, they’re going to climax. And so men with masturbation kind of play with that point. And they know how to do that. Instinctively, they’re not even conscious of it. But then in partner relationships, their partner may not know how to do that. They may not know how to tell their partner how to do that. And you add anxiety on to it. And it’s like, you know, gasoline on a fire. Anxiety just changes the point of inevitability. So that’s what we want them to start communicating about. So the next step is basically having asking their partner to stimulate them in a variety of ways. Usually, I have them start with manual stimulation. So she’s touching him with and without lubrication, that I use Uber lube. Remember, Uber lube.com, with the coupon foreplay gets you this great silicone lubricant, and it really is a great lubricant for masturbation as well. And we’re talking right now about mutual masturbation where she is masturbating him. And so touching him, it may be that lubrication is too slippery, kind of too exciting in the beginning. So it might be just touching him with her hand on his skin, it might even be that she begins touching him, like through his jeans or something that is less direct. But getting to the point where he can last for about seven, eight minutes without climaxing is great. And what he wants to do is start to identify internally, that point of inevitability where he gets he’s getting too high. So let’s say for most men, the point of inevitability on a scale of one to 10 is about at eight and a half, you know, any further stimulation or lack of stimulation, they’re going to climax. But for men with premature ejaculation, that point is like at a five, six. So what I instruct the men to do is to tell their partner when they reach a four or five level, depending on what number and you know, it’s very subjective, I don’t have to really understand it better than ones who understand their own numbers. But what we want to do is like, stay two points below the point of inevitability.
George Faller 23:09
So what would that mean? That would mean stop. Yeah, masturbation, right. That
Laurie Watson 23:14
means stopping stimulation,
George Faller 23:16
stop and stimulation to let them miss the score drop a little bit. And then when you feel like it’s back to like, a three or something start to get
Laurie Watson 23:24
correct. Okay? And, and just try to do that with the understanding that he’s still going to climax probably early in the beginning. And that that’s okay. We want to take the brakes off the pressure off that somehow or another in the early exercises that he’s going to be able to last he’s not. And so we want to just say, let’s have them try it maybe once where they stop at, you know, f4 he relaxed, the some he may lose his erection. And this is another thing men get anxious about, like, if, if we don’t continue stimulation, I’m gonna lose my erection. That’s gonna make me anxious, too. It’s like, hey, that’s okay. Then you actually, that’s good. You start all the way over again.
George Faller 24:11
Yeah, yeah. So, and I like the idea of starting with masturbation because a lot of men try to do this during intercourse and try to change positions to cut to de escalate things. But that’s, that’s not to a great topic for their partner. Right, which, you know, so how do we have these communications where, you know, ball, people are pushing in the same direction for the same goal,
Laurie Watson 24:35
right. And, you know, every man is different. What we want to do in the exercises is structure them. And I kind of think about structuring them in half steps. You know, what’s the next most exciting thing for some men it might be oral sex, some men can’t climax with oral sex no matter what. It’s just not the right stimulation. And that actually is probably far more common. My experience as a sex therapist, then men who are too exquisitely turned into oral sex and climax too quickly. But for a guy with premature ejaculation that may be very erotic. So maybe that would be the next step is once they’ve mastered it with manual stimulation, they go to oral sex. And eventually, they’re going to move to vaginal sex. And with vaginal sex, there’s two things. A couple of tricks that I happen try one is, I call it go for broke, have fast, rapid sex, like right away, just go all the way and climax as fast as you can. In fact, it’s, it’s like a paradoxical intervention, when you tell somebody have sex as fast as you can. Ironically, there’s another form of anxiety. It’s like, wait, I know, not climatically, what’s wrong, you know, but they should, they should go ahead. And with the female partners permission and understanding that this is part of the process, there’s a whole nother feeling and attitude about it. So she’s welcoming it, she knows it’s part of the exercise, it’s like, Come on, honey, go for it, do it. And then he’s basically very relaxed. So he can tolerate stimulation, more easily, he may not have an erection right away again, that’s okay. Also, sometimes I would have the man masturbate earlier in the day, maybe a couple hours before he has sex or sexual exchange with his partner. Because that, again, releases tension, depending on the age of the guy, whether or not he can have an erection again, you know, within so many hours or climax, again, it would depend, but that’s a, that’s a quick trick. That helps him reduce anxiety.
George Faller 26:51
I’ve, a lot of men have talked about really getting more in their body, focusing on feeling their, their calves on the bed, you know, noticing their nipples, kind of rubbing their head, just bringing more awareness, just relaxing their body taking that focus off their penis as a way of slowing down the process of actually pulling this scrotum down, creating space, you know, and towards the ejaculation, it starts to get tighter, you know, so that, you know, it’s just another way of just trying to kind of create that space. But I love all your tips and techniques. As far as just trying to recognize there’s more control here than you realize, if you just practice.
Laurie Watson 27:37
And I think you’re talking about sort of whole body experiencing a sexual pleasure. And and that really helps. So I mean, in some ways, this treatment, better things a man and a woman cycle, you know, because women need so much more time and if a man will not be anxious about climaxing and allow for massage, touch all over his body. And it kind of spreads the sexual excitement that is not so penile centric, you know, it isn’t just his penis, but he can start to feel arousal throughout his body. And I just want to finish with how to move from the earlier exercises into the sexual intercourse exercise. And the first thing that I’m going to have him do is I will ask him and his partner when they are together, and they’re at that stage, that he should enter her, but not thrust, and just be fully enveloped in her vagina and try to manage that feeling. And again, we take the brakes off, it’s okay, if you climaxes in the beginning, it’s okay. We’re going to get there, but sort of learning to just be enveloped, feel her vagina around him feel the warmth, the wet, I mean, all of that, and let himself be stimulate erotically, and enjoy it is part of the process. And then eventually, we move toward him thrusting or her being on top. And you mentioned positions that might be less stimulating for him. He may not know that. But if he does know that, that can be helpful, you know, positions that he’s not as deep or all that kind of thing.
George Faller 29:24
Excellent. Great advice. Well, listen, to the men listening, please challenge these assumptions and expectations. And it can seem insurmountable, but to move from one minute to six minutes, you can do it. Right. And I love that Lori’s confidence in saying this is very treatable. There are real practical things that you can do. That can change a whole lifetime of doing it a certain way, right to regain the control that you and your partner deserve. So let’s work together. Let’s make a difference against this premature ejaculation.
Laurie Watson 30:00
Great, thank you for listening. We wish you a Happy New Year and keep it hot it a little bit longer. Hey, don’t forget we are doing our Couples Retreat and that is great sex. Great love on February 5. You can sign up right now we’ve got a discount going until January 8. We’d love to have you join us for a whole day. George and I are inviting you.
George Faller 30:23
Come join us and I’ve been
Announcer 30:25
calling your questions to the foreplay question voicemail dial 833 my foreplay that’s a three three the number four play it will use the questions for our mailbag episodes. All content is for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for therapy by a licensed clinician or as medical advice from a doctor. This podcast is copyrighted by Foreplay Media
