Effects of Learning How To Stop Premature Ejaculation |
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How Does Premature Ejaculation Affect Your Relationship?Two researchers asked one hundred and fifty-two men and their female partners about the man's ejaculatory habits, whether they thought the man had a problem with premature ejaculation (which they called rapid ejaculation), how sexually satisfied the couple were, how well they thought their relationship was going, and their sexual concerns. Interestingly, the men and women's comments on the men's ejaculatory behavior didn't really match up. In general, the women saw premature ejaculation as less of a problem than the men did, although there was a lot of individual perception at work in the women's judgments about whether a man had a problem with PE or not. But it was clear that both sexes got less pleasure the faster a man ejaculated, although this had no bearing on the pleasure and satisfaction that couples felt about their relationship in general. In other words, for most couples, the duration of lovemaking before ejaculation has a bearing on sexual satisfaction but not on the couple's overall relationship and personal functioning. Premature ejaculation is the most common sexual dysfunction for men and affects between one-quarter and one-half of men. And even though there are many other ways of making love besides intercourse, an early ejaculation during coitus may affect both a man's and his partner's satisfaction. Masters and Johnson made this point explicit when they tried to bring an element related to the female partner's satisfaction during intercourse into the definition of premature ejaculation. Even so, few studies of either rapid ejaculation or of the ejaculatory response have provided any data about the man's sexual partner; fewer still have looked at how the women sees the man's behavior. In this study there was a lot of data from both men and their female partners, all of which helped to illustrate how both men and women saw the man's ejaculatory behavior, and to reveal how premature ejaculation affected a couple's functioning. Defining Premature EjaculationThere is little agreement about the definition of
rapid ejaculation. Neither is it clear how various aspects of the
condition are linked together. Two researchers
surveyed the degree of ejaculation control of over 100 male university students,
asking them to self-report on ejaculatory latency (time before
ejaculation after penetration) and their control over ejaculation. They
found that these two data sets were only modestly related, sharing, on average,
only 10% of the variance. Ejaculatory behavior of men with premature ejaculation is not likely to be the same in the lab and in bed with a sexual partner, nor is it likely to give much indication of how long they can last during lovemaking. In short, to know whether or not we are on the right lines when looking at men's estimates of the length of time they last during sexual intercourse, we need to ask their partners some questions and see what they have to say on the subject. Regular or long-term partners are able to provide information about how long the man can last before he ejaculates, or whether he ejaculates before he penetrates his partner; once you have this data you can compare what the partner says about these matters with the man's report of how long he can last, whether he knows how to control his premature ejaculation, and his ability to control its timing. You can also assess whether or not he is worried about ejaculating too rapidly, and establish his satisfaction with how much ejaculatory control he has. Most research has split men into rapid ejaculators and non-rapid ejaculators based on predefined criteria. The current authors, though, included objective measures of rapid or premature ejaculation as well as assessments of how the men classified their own ejaculatory tendencies. They found that about one man in five reported that he had a problem with premature ejaculation. With the help of seven criteria which could be used to predict when a man would report himself as having an ejaculatory problem, they (not surprisingly) established that there were three components to self-identified rapid ejaculation: a behavioral component, an affective component, and an efficacy component. They then studied how a man's partner sees her man's ejaculatory behavior. The Impact of Rapid EjaculationAmong couples receiving sexual psychotherapy, it's been found that improvements in ejaculatory response (i.e. a longer time before ejaculation) are associated with increases in sexual and relationship satisfaction. Although a lot of men revert back to their original ejaculatory habits when therapy ends, the improvements in sexual satisfaction are maintained for at least three years. From this you might well conclude that rapid ejaculation need not lower a couple's sexual satisfaction (and of course it also seems that those reported improvements in sexual satisfaction after therapy may be related to more general changes in the long term sexual relationship, not just to the man being able to control his ejaculation and knowing how to last longer in bed during lovemaking). However, researchers have not looked at the connection between premature ejaculation and sexual satisfaction or relationship satisfaction in couples who have not sought therapy. In other words, there is no evidence that coming too quickly is an obstacle to a satisfying sexual relationship. For this reason, the researchers studied how both measures and perceptions of whether the man has an ejaculation problem affects sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction. In addition, they looked at how men and women thought an ejaculation problem affected the man and woman's self-esteem, their sexual pleasure and relationship, their overall relationship, and whether or not it it caused a man to avoid intercourse. Participants in the premature ejaculation research studyA questionnaire was mailed to 1,989 male university alumni. Only 260 (14.1 %) men and 166 of their female partners returned completed questionnaires. Only the men whose partner completed the Female Questionnaire were included in this study. Data from 14 couples was discarded because either the man or the woman had not answered the question asking if they believed the man had a problem with rapid ejaculation. This left a final sample of 152 couples. The men ranged in age from 23 to 76 years while their female partners ranged in age from 21 to 77 years. Most were married or living together, and the relationships ranged from 6 months to 50 years in duration. One may assume that the men who returned the survey were more accomplished at pleasing a woman in bed anyway. More than half of the couples had one or more children living with them. On average, both the men and the women rated their physical health as very good; both the men and the women said that they had sexual intercourse just under twice a week on average. However, the women said there had been more lovemaking than the men did in a typical 4-week period (women = 7.4 while men = 6.7). This article is based on a piece about premature or rapid ejaculation and heterosexual male and female couples' perceptions of the man's ejaculatory patterns, which was written by Sandra Byers and Guy Grenier and appeared in Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol 32, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 261-270. Digital reference: 0004-0002/03/0600-0261/0 copyright 2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation.
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