Overcoming Ejaculation Problems With Self-help Treatment
So, you and your partner have reached the point where you’ve decided you’re going to work on the problem together.
The good news is that this is not difficult – the “less good” news is that it requires dedication and patience, perhaps quite a lot of patience. But as the saying goes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and the route back to full sexual joy is one worth pursuing.
So the starting point for you consists of some exercises designed to (1) show you how enjoyable physical stimulation can be, and (2) increase intimacy and connection with your partner.
These exercises are the foundation which will set you up to overcome your ejaculation difficulty.
Want to overcome delayed ejaculation? Then go for it!
Your first step is: Getting Out Of Your Head And Into Your Body
I described earlier how we can separate mental arousal and physical arousal.
Simply, to enjoy sex more you need to get out of your head space (mental arousal) and into your body (physical arousal).
In other words, the first step is to stop thinking, fantasizing, wishing, speculating and imagining (all of which take place in your mind) and to start enjoying the sensations your body has to offer you.
The best way to do this is with a technique called Sensate Focus. This technique helps you stay in touch with your body and what it is telling you – especially about how aroused you are.
So before you do any of the specific exercises for ejaculation difficulties, you will go through the Sensate Focus exercises with your partner. This will undoubtedly make you feel more connected and emotionally closer, as well as allowing you to enjoy the physical experience of sexual intimacy with a partner.
Furthermore, it helps you to associate good feelings in your body with the experience of being sexually turned on, which makes it helpful for men who don’t have much sex drive or who don’t find they get very aroused.
And it also helps to lessen anxiety, since when you focus on the “here and now” – in other words, what is happening to you, and what you are doing, right now, at this very moment – you can’t spend as much time worrying about what might happen (such as not being able to ejaculate).
The basis of Sensate Focus is the simple but often forgotten fact that sexual arousal is, in its most basic form, all about physical sensation. Think of a young boy. He has very little in the way of mental concepts about sex in his head, but he still gets an erection when his penis is rubbed by a towel or his clothing: his erection is a response to physical pleasure, to something that feels good.
It is this simple experience of sexual pleasure that we often lose as we get older. One reason for this is that our beliefs, prejudices, preconceptions and experiences, be they good or bad, get between us and our response to physical pleasure.
To put it another way: as adult men, if we become more dependent on getting aroused by porn, imagery, imagination and fantasy, we can lose the simple pleasure of what it feels like to be aroused in our bodies.
Sensate Focus
Now, that’s not to say that fantasy is wrong. It’s very exciting, it’s what men do, and it adds spice to our sex lives. Watching a beautiful woman undress and imagining her making love to you, or watching a porn film and imagining what it would be like to be in the place of the actors, and other such fantasies, can be very exciting.
But the point is that when these things and others like them become the primary focus of your sexual arousal, then you might have a problem. The way you get aroused has become too focused on what you think as opposed to what you feel.
In fact you can lose your sense of how aroused you are in your body when you focus too much on what is going on in your mind. That means you may well experience delayed ejaculation – or perhaps premature ejaculation.
And this can be a problem if you need physical stimulation to get aroused, as most men do after they reach a certain age. For some of us this is in our twenties, for others, our forties. But whatever our age, we can all simply lose our awareness of the physical aspects of sex.
What’s more, if you depend on fantasy to get aroused, you can leave yourself open to the chances of losing your arousal during sex.
For example, that may happen if you can’t get the right fantasy going at the right moment, or if you suddenly think of something that distracts you from your fantasy.
Thoughts like, “How hard is my cock?” or “How am I doing with her? Is she going to come?” can distract you, can interrupt your progress towards orgasm and ejaculation. You’re basically too busy thinking about your “performance” to get aroused, be fully in the moment, enjoy the physical sensations of sex, or pay attention to your partner.
On the other hand, if you focus on what it feels like to be pleasured and caressed by your partner, you won’t worry so much about whether you are going to ejaculate or not. That’s because when you’re enjoying what is happening to your body, you’ll be much less inclined to create your own fantasy excitement in your head!
The simple fact is this: if you have a problem getting aroused enough to ejaculate, Sensate Focus will reliably and consistently help you increase your level of arousal to your point of no return: the moment when a bit more stimulation gets you over the edge and into your orgasm!
Questions About Fantasy
You may be wondering if fantasy during partnered sex is normal or not. If you use fantasy a lot during your sex life, you may well believe that all men do the same. The truth is they do not. Men use fantasy if they are bored, not aroused, not getting aroused, or want to get aroused.
None of this is wrong, but it’s unhelpful for you in achieving sexual pleasure, and it’s a major factor in delayed ejaculation, where the fundamental issue is a low level of sexual arousal.
Even so, you may worry that without sexual fantasy you’ll never be able to ejaculate. However, this treatment doesn’t require you to give up sexual fantasy completely, and in any event there is a better way to get aroused, which we will look at in a moment.
Something else that may be important are body image problems. These problems are not unique to women, though they certainly occur more often in women than men.
If you feel self-conscious about being touched by your partner because you think your body is not all it might be, please try to discuss it with her. Simply raising the issue may lessen its power over you.