Month: November 2023

A Review of Delayed Ejaculation

A review of delayed ejaculation

This has been described as one of the most challenging male sexual disorders: and it’s certainly true that men who have a problem ejaculating, whether they are alone, or with a partner, will likely feel anxious, frustrated, and possibly consider themselves a failure in the arena of sexual relationships. Often, the woman who partners a man like this also feels stressed, partly because she’s deprived of sexual pleasure, but also because she feels she cannot arouse him sufficiently to bring him to climax.

The majority of men who need some kind of treatment or therapy for retarded ejaculation have a normal level of sexual desire, and get apparently normal erections, but they simply cannot reach climax during intercourse. As you can imagine, this condition has produced a whole host of theories and a lot of speculation about what might possibly cause it: opinions differ widely on the subject, but in broad terms there are two main explanations.

The first is that the man who is unable to reach his own climax is simply too focused on the pleasure of his partner, probably insufficiently aroused, possibly unaware of his feelings and level of arousal, and basically trying too hard to please his partner.

The second is that the man with delayed ejaculation is basically either demonstrating his psychological “withholding” from the relationship, or is highly resentful and/or angry against women. 

Another reason that this condition has received comparatively little attention is that it’s been regarded as the least frequent male sexual dysfunction, a supposition which is not true, since its occurrence in the population is around 10% of all men. And it’s also been assumed that treatment for delayed ejaculation is significantly less likely to succeed than it is for other sexual dysfunctions, but this too is a falsehood. Treatment can be very successful, although it may involve more psychological work than a condition like premature ejaculation.

In the case of men who aren’t able to reach the point of ejaculation, it’s clear that there is some inhibition of the normal reflex reaction which provokes ejaculation. There’s some kind of dissociation between the emission of semen into the base of the urethra prior to ejaculation, and the experience of orgasm.

Classifying Men’s Inability To Ejaculate

Delayed ejaculation may be something that a man has had for his entire sexual life, or it can be acquired later in life; equally, it can occur with every sexual encounter, or it can be an intermittent condition that only occurs with certain partners.

Finally, some men with delayed ejaculation can masturbate successfully, whilst others are unable to do so. It certainly true that the most common form of delayed ejaculation is coital anorgasmia. Every degree of difficulty from complete anorgasmia to a limited ability to reach climax with a partner can be found in this spectrum of dysfunction.

None of the degrees of difficulty that a man may have with his ejaculation responses have noticeably less impact on the relationship than any other: in all cases, achieving orgasm is hard work, and there is little room for intimacy or a satisfying sense of pleasure.

For the woman, the experience of extended intercourse is often uncomfortable or painful, and will probably require additional lubricant to be acceptable. Partners may miss the shared experience of intimate intercourse, and clearly cannot experience a mutual exchange of pleasure in response to the other partner’s climax.

And the inability of the male partner to “let go” can be seen as symptomatic of his withholding in more general terms in the relationship; a woman who, as most women do, relies on her ability to give sexual pleasure to her partner to maintain her own sexual self-esteem and confidence is likely to feel negated and devalued.

It seems from research that men with delayed ejaculation have difficulty connecting with their own inner world of arousal: although they may have a long-lasting and rigid erection, this in itself does not indicate a high level of sexual arousal. There may also be some physiological mechanism at work which prevents men from responding to the stimulation applied to their penis, so that they are unable to move through the sexual response cycle, unable to reach the plateau phase or the point of ejaculatory inevitability.

Our own experience in dealing with this condition suggests that there may be two main antecedents: the first is when a man has simply conditioned himself through extremely harsh and vigorous masturbation during puberty, so that he can only respond to physical sexual stimulation of an extremely forceful kind. This “traumatic masturbatory syndrome” is a comparatively common condition, and it certainly causes a great deal of difficulty for men in future life, as they struggle to reach climax.

It can be seen as a lack of arousal even during adolescent sexuality; but whether that’s so or not, this conditioning process leaves men with a real problem — fortunately, one that can be overcome, by a process of retraining the body to achieve orgasm with lower stimulation thresholds. The other main cause of delayed ejaculation appears to be related to a man’s psychological orientation: in its simplest form, DE may express a lack of trust, an inability to fully release into his partner’s body, that inability being, perhaps, a  metaphor for not being able to open up and trust her fully.

It’s certainly observable that many men with delayed ejaculation have traumatic sexual histories, although it’s not entirely clear why they would develop this condition rather than premature ejaculation. If we rely on psychological interpretations, we might see PE is a means of quickly “getting out of here” – which can be a different manifestation of a desire not to invest fully in a relationship.

In the case of delayed ejaculation, the psychological mechanism seems to be more about appearing to cooperate, but secretly withholding a sense of self in a private inner psychological world. Clearly, this delayed ejaculation isn’t going to be amenable to treatment if the man concerned isn’t willing to explore the psychological issues that may be preventing him from investing himself fully in his partner or his relationship with her.

In some cases, men will deny any knowledge of such issues: but, in the hands of a skilful therapist, they’re not hard to tease out, and generally speaking at some level most men are aware of how they really feel towards a partner — it just requires appropriate and skilful questioning by a competent therapist to draw this out, and then to establish the connection between these insights and a man’s lack of responsivity during intercourse.

It’s been said that if a woman stimulates her man vigorously so that he nears the point of orgasm and then rapidly transfers his penis into her vagina, it’s possible for him to ejaculate intravaginally, and that this will somehow break down the inhibitions which currently prevent him from ejaculating inside her, thereby allowing him to establish greater and greater levels of sexual responsivity.

The significance of ejaculating intravaginally should not be underestimated: it signifies many fundamental psychological tenets of human existence on many levels. Superficially, it’s about the possibility of creating new life. On a deeper level, it’s about possession and ownership. It’s also about the psychology of giving (here, giving the essence of life and vitality to a woman), and also about rendering oneself completely powerless in the throes of orgasm, subject to a woman’s protectiveness and, for want of a better word love, at the moment when one is most vulnerable and where one’s psychological masks are most likely to be weakened, if not torn off completely.

No wonder that a man who has had traumatic relationships with women may find it difficult to express himself in this most vulnerable of sexual experiences. The treatment, or training, takes a period of weeks but it seems to be effective and certainly allows a man to extend the time for which he is able to enjoy intercourse.

How Come You Can’t Come?

How Come You Can’t Come?

You might be surprised to hear that a lot of men have difficulty reaching orgasm and ejaculating during intercourse. In fact, I estimate about one man in twelve has difficulty ejaculating.

Even more surprisingly, many of these men can’t orgasm at all during sexual intercourse.

These men are experiencing delayed ejaculation. This is all about problems reaching orgasm or being unable to ejaculate during sexual intercourse. (And occasionally during masturbation, too.)

Many people think the most common problem men have during sexual intercourse is coming too quickly. So it may  seem baffling that there are healthy men who either can’t ejaculate at all, or have difficulty doing so.

And this condition isn’t much talked about, either, because there can be quite a bit of shame attached to it. Imagine the idea of a man not being able to “finish” during lovemaking! What on earth could cause that?

As you can imagine, delayed ejaculation is not just a problem for men – it’s a problem for the women who they love. After all, the very visible evidence of a man reaching his climax during lovemaking is proof for a woman that she is attractive, that she can turn her man on, that she can get him aroused, and that she can make him orgasm.

For many women, the sensations involved in having their partner climax inside them is most enjoyable, both emotionally and physically. Not experiencing this may be difficult for a woman. And if a couple want a baby, and the man isn’t able to reach orgasm during intercourse, well, you can see this may  really cause challenges within their relationship. Even so, men may put up with delayed ejaculation for years before they seek help – and many men never do.

But Is Delayed Ejaculation A New Problem?

No, but it’s really only come to the attention of the wider public because of the Internet. You see, forums devoted to less common medical conditions like this one have helped people get together and compare notes. And that’s gradually shown that delayed ejaculation is much more common than you might think.

In general if you look at these forums, you’ll see what sex therapists already understand about men with delayed ejaculation (DE for short):  a lot of men with DE have far less difficulty ejaculating during masturbation than they do during intercourse.  And there are plenty of men who can’t come at all during intercourse.

Faced with this situation, it’s no wonder that men don’t talk about it much, and perhaps no surprise that they don’t seek help – after all, where would you go, as a man, to admit that you can’t even climax during intercourse?

Definition Of Delayed Orgasm and Ejaculation

Exactly what constitutes delayed ejaculation? How long is long (talking about duration of intercourse), and how slow is slow (talking about time to male ejaculation)?

The normal average time of intercourse before men reach orgasm is four and a half minutes. From one point of view, anything over this makes you slower than average. But of course, there will naturally be around 50% of the male population who take longer than average to come. That’s simple mathematics. So taking over 4.5 minutes to orgasm doesn’t mean you have DE!

The time of intercourse is measured as “intravaginal ejaculatory latency time”.  This is the time it takes a man to reach orgasm and ejaculate after he’s penetrated his partner.  So at what point does long intercourse become “delayed ejaculation”? 

To some extent it’s a matter of judgement, but most would agree that if a man can’t ejaculate within 15 to 20 minutes of starting to make love, then there’s something unusual going on.

However, the definition also needs to include something about the level of sexual stimulation that a man is receiving. After all, there probably isn’t a man on the planet who’s tried to make love when he’s not been particularly sexually aroused, and in those circumstances it might not be entirely surprising for a man to lose his erection and/or not be able to ejaculate.

And in any case, definitions are all very well, but for a man who has this problem they may be an irrelevance. If you can’t ejaculate during intercourse, you know about it. If you have great difficulty ejaculating during intercourse, you know about. If you have trouble ejaculating, you know about it.

So the real issue for men with this difficulty is finding a solution that enables them to ejaculate (or come, or cum), in a normal timescale.  As you might expect, over the years a lot of different methods of treatment have been suggested. These range from delving deep into a man’s unconscious to find out if he’s got some kind of problem or emotional issue with women, sex, or intimacy all the way through to hard penile stimulation leading to vaginal insertion at the moment before the man feels he’s going to ejaculate.

Andt what will solve the problem for one man may not work for another. This treatment program  covers all possibilities, including ways to deal with sexual dysfunctions which originate in the relationship. In essence, this delayed ejaculation treatment program provides you with effective sexual techniques that will enable you to come without difficulty during sex, no matter whether you’re a husband, a partner, or a boyfriend expereincing difficulties.

Delayed Ejaculation Is Not Your Fault!

Ian Kerner is a leading sex therapist who’s written a lot about delayed ejaculation and premature ejaculation. His grasp of the issues affecting men’s sexual experience is second to none.

In an interview with the Today online magazine, Kerner said that he’s seen a significant increase in the number of men trying to cope with DE. And that includes not only men who can’t reach orgasm during lovemaking, but also men who can’t achieve orgasm at all, ever. Unsurprisingly, the Internet has been a big forum for spreading information about DE so in part this apparent increase could be the result of better reporting and greater awareness.

But … there’s more to it than that, and in a discussion with Dr Michael Perelman, Kerner tried to get to the bottom of what was going on. Kerner suggested that the number of cases of delayed ejaculation is rising for several reasons. One of the most obvious reasons is that more medication which causes delayed ejaculation is being used more often.

This includes antidepressants and anti-hypertensives; many of these compounds can have the side-effect of slowing ejaculation or even making it difficult to ejaculate to even impossible to ejaculate at all. He also made the interesting point that drugs like Viagra may make a man think he’s turned on because he has a hard and long-lasting erection, when in fact he’s not even very aroused.

And clearly if you’re not really sexually aroused then you’re not likely to reach orgasm or ejaculate any time soon. And it’s certainly true that the many men with delayed ejaculation have no difficulty at all keeping an erection — they just simply don’t seem to be very sexually aroused.

For many women, the sight of an erection implies that a man is sexually excited and ready for sex, However, this is not true. The idea that a hard penis means a man is ready for sex is simply wrong. Just as women need to be aroused emotionally and psychologically, so do men.  Especially as they get older.

There’s another interesting and subtle factor causing an increase in the amount of delayed ejaculation. The number of men around the age of 50 is increasing rapidly, and men naturally begin to slow down, sexually, around 50 years of age. Obviously if you have more men reaching the age at which you have more men experiencing sexual dysfunction, then it looks like the prevalence of sexual dysfunction, including delayed ejaculation, is increasing. But – as always – there’s more to it than this.

An increasing number of men seem to have trouble ejaculating because of increasing levels of shame and guilt. So although we look like we’re becoming more liberated as a society, there may be some hidden issue here. 

Society and Sex; Delays Abound

For example, boys may be brought up in very orthodox religions where masturbation is frowned upon. In many cultures, sex outside of marriage is forbidden. Men may grow up in a family environment where is sex is shameful, guilt-ridden, taboo, embarrassing, or not talked about (or a million other issues).

All of these things can cause shame and guilt and stop men from learning about the natural expression of male sexuality, both mentally and emotionally. Later in life, when they become sexually active, these men simply don’t develop the arousal necessary to reach orgasm.

Harsh Masturbation Can Cause Ejaculation Problems

Some boys develop unusual (“idiosyncratic”) masturbation styles that require a lot of friction and pressure to achieve orgasm. As you may imagine, this is a very potent training method — that is to say, a potent training in how not to reach orgasm and ejaculate, because hard masturbation feels so different to being stimulated by a real person. This is a great picture, isn’t it? It sums up traumatic masturbatory syndrome perfectly. That means hard and fast self-stimulation.

What else did Perelman mention?

He talked briefly about men who are in relationship with women who want to have a child when the man is ambivalent about it. Clearly this can be a significant relationship problem. When the couple don’t talk about this it’s almost certain there will be problems ahead, because a lack of communication appears to be one of the major factors behind the current rise in delayed ejaculation.

Perelman also talked about the way that men are socialized to be in control and not express their feelings. He said that control issues frequently play a role in delayed ejaculation: effectively you’re looking at a man who seems to have trouble “letting go” and experiencing pleasure, perhaps not just in sex, but in life in general.

Another male attitude that promotes delayed ejaculation is seeing sex as a kind of responsibility or even a chore, something you have to do “to be a man”. Men who have feel like this may never fully immerse themselves in their sensual experience.

Other men, it seems, somehow never learn the art of using their mind in a way that can enhance their sexual arousal — perhaps because in the past they’ve always been able to rely on physical stimulation to get them hard and sexually aroused. Many of the men who have delayed ejaculation will probably not have an awareness of the fact that they’re mentally disconnected from sex.

Men Who Cannot Ejaculate During Lovemaking

Men Who Are Unable to Ejaculate 

“Delayed ejaculation,” said one man bitterly, “So you can’t have a child – so what? I can get it up. I can get it in. I can do everything else a man’s supposed to with a woman. If I said nothing, and grunted a bit when I pretended to come, she’d never know the difference, especially if we were using a condom.”

Masters and Johnson said cases of retarded or delayed ejaculation were the other side of premature ejaculation. So while some men come much too soon, there are others who just can’t make it to climax during sex.  Click here to find out about it. Update – the site I linked to now has a new format and a number of new pages. It’s all about delayed ejaculation. Find out more here: tackling the problem and why it happens (i.e. the treatment and causes of delayed ejaculation, respectively).

A woman may think a premature ejaculator isn’t a good lover, or even a “real man” but her response to a man who can’t come at all is one of puzzlement or self-doubt: she may even fear it, because it is just completely counter to everything you expect to happen in sex between a man and a woman.

She may well be very sore; she may well wonder if she is attractive; she may well feel that she isn’t doing enough to make her man come; but other women find that the prolonged vaginal thrusting makes them come easily and repeatedly, and for them it is a blessing!

But of course, they may need lots of lubricant, and they may need to be sexually mature themselves to be able to see over the fact that their man is not ejaculating during intercourse – one of the most fundamental expectations of a couple having a sexual relationship!

So, it’s a marked problem for a significant number of men – and much more common than has always been believed. Masters and Johnson reported a case caused by religious guilt and shame, in which a young man – an orthodox Jew – had been trying to attempt his first sexual intercourse at age 23.

He was told to stop by the woman he was with, as she claimed she was having her monthly period – and the man was repulsed, since orthodox Jews cannot make love during the menstrual period…he was horrified and took the women home and then never saw her again……in his later marriage, he and his wife were strictly adherent to the rules of Judaism about menstruation.

But even so, this unfortunate fellow found that he was in fear of being contaminated. He was literally dry – he could not ejaculate in his wife’s vagina even when he was notionally allowed to by his religion. His body fluid remained in his own body – he could not mix it with his wife’s.

Similarly, a 35 year old man of the RC faith reported how his mother had discovered him masturbating at the age of 13, and was so repelled and disgusted (at least in his eyes) that she told his father, who punished the boy severely…..an interesting response, since the father himself had almost certainly masturbated – 98% of adolescent boys do so.

Yet, the boy was taken to see a priest, who put the fear of God in him, threatening him with mental illness and failure of growth into manhood…..the whole event being so traumatic that the boy never even had a wet dream, let alone masturbated.

Later in life, he grew up and married, but could still not ejaculate inside his wife. Talk about being “unmanned”! This is indeed a fine example of being repressed by one’s parents, and then losing touch with your sexuality. A man in this situation would need some serious therapy.

A video on delayed ejaculation

Then again, a son – a singleton – brought up rigidly by a repressed Protestant mother and equally religious father was accustomed to total physical privacy – there had been no sharing of the family bathroom, no public nudity, no dating except under the most repressive conditions, and a view of sex that suggested it was dirty, that ejaculating was an insult to a woman, and sex was only acceptable when children were wanted.

Not too surprisingly, when the young man married a carefully selected woman, he encountered a priest who told him of the pitfalls of first time sex – pain, blood, etc – and thought sex would be difficult….when he found he could enter her easily, he assumed she was a sexually experienced woman, which turned out to be true, and when questioned by this sadly abused young man, she broke down and they had a massive argument: eventually he professed to forgive her (a modern reader would think of this as unbelievable, but there are still taboos like this in various Neanderthal-like societies today) but then found he was unable to ejaculate inside her. 

For the next eight years he spent almost an hour four or more times a week thrusting vigorously during sex, much to her pleasure no doubt because she was multiply orgasmic – but the man was more and more alienated by her sexual responsivity – and began to be paranoid, thinking her pre-marital experience had caused her orgasmic ability.

He was afraid of being contaminated by ejaculating into her – and he became completely non-orgasmic. Extraordinary isn’t it?

But some things like this still occur, even today, although these days we would generally assume that the majority of cases of delayed ejaculation are caused by shame, anger, resentment, frustration, hostility and guilt.

These extreme cases of delayed ejaculation are rare – but they are not as rare as you might think, and many kids are still brought up in similar circumstances.

Other men are unable to ejaculate with sexual partners because they don’t like them. Seems understandable!

One man was married to a rich and overbearing distant cousin. She kept reminding him that if it weren’t for her dad’s millions he wouldn’t have come to anything. So resentfully, he denied her – albeit subconsciously – his ejaculation.

Another man was actually gay. He married to keep up appearances in his career but really didn’t like women at all. He had a gay lover and was able to come quite normally with him but was totally unable to do so with his female partner.

Yet another man man married an ugly woman – the more she wanted sex, the less inclined he was to provide it – and even when he did try intercourse, he was unable to ejaculate.

A no less tragic but far more reasonable case was that of a congenially engaged pair who then married – and the woman told the man she had been raped as a young and innocent teenage girl – her new husband couldn’t cope with the news: while he was not repelled, he simply could not come inside her – one assumes he was filled with disgust at the thought of going where the rapists had gone before him.

After a few years, the relationship ended – and then the man discovered he needed treatment to enable him to have sex with any woman. He had  simply found the idea of vaginal sex too disgusting to allow him to ejaculate.

Another man was in stable relationship and happily sexual until his kids came into the bedroom in the midst of lovemaking with his wife.

He was past the point of ejaculatory no-return, and though his kids were interested rather than shocked, he found he was unable to ejaculate again for another nine years (mind you, he might have got some therapy!) Even though he put a bolt on the door, he did not ejaculate again for nearly a decade. 

Still another man found his wife and his best friend fucking, and although the two begged forgiveness and the man said he was going to forgive and forget, he could never again ejaculate.

So from all this, you can see that men with retarded or delayed ejaculation may have complex problems. There are repressive influences of extreme religions; (ironic, since man’s love of God and God’s communication with man doesn’t have much to do with sexual repression); there are men who are gay; men who don’t like their partners; and men who have severe emotional stress or shock.

The Masters and Johnson treatment for these men tried to use the reverse of the treatment method for premature ejaculators. The woman should be demanding, and stimulate her man’s penis vigorously with oil or lotion, so forcing his ejaculation.

Combined with intimate sensate focus, she would then masturbate him to the point of ejaculation, then mount him, in the female superior position, slipping his cock deftly into her vagina.

She was told to move fairly rapidly and firmly, but even when most of the seminal fluid was shot outside her vagina, even a few drops entering her would often cause the emotional and perhaps physical blocks stopping intravaginal ejaculation to crumble. Of the patients referred to Masters and Johnson there was a success rate in excess of 82 percent. But a cure depends in large part on the sincerity and cooperation of the man’s sexual partner.

Masturbation and sexual problems

Masturbation Methods

Many men who have problems with slow ejaculation learned ti self-pleasure using what are euphemistically known as “idiosyncratic” techniques of masturbation during their adolescence. These include high-frequency, high-pressure hand movements, mattress “humping”, or harsh pressure on the penis.

These techniques are one of the main causes of delayed ejaculation. The movements of intercourse produce stimulation of a far lower intensity than that resulting from such harsh masturbation.

Often a man who cannot ejaculate may have simply conditioned himself to ejaculate only in response to a particular type of stimulation.  That might be a certain level of pressure and frequency of hand movements or other kind of stimulation.

Traumatic Masturbatory Syndrome is an example of this. Fortunately, it is entirely possible to retrain the body to become more aroused, more quickly, and more easily, so that the reflex of ejaculation is triggered by a lower level of stimulation.

Sexual Problems and the Human Shadow

Sexual problems and the human shadow

Before we look at the impact of shadow work on sexual issues, some simple facts.

To start with, you may have been wondering why you can’t achieve orgasm during intercourse (or get your female partner off by making love to her if you’re a man). If so, it’s probably very helpful to know that most women do not have an orgasm during intercourse.

What this means is that not all inhibitions and issues around sexuality are emotionally based. Sometimes it is just a practical matter. That said, you stand a lot better chance of dealing with the practical issues if you have dealt with the emotional ones first. We’ll come on to this later in this post, and look at how shadow work can help you.

In fact, it’s actually normal for a woman not to achieve orgasm during sexual intercourse (although it’s quite normal to want to do so!)

And this explains, at least partly, why so many women enjoy self-pleasuring – it’s presumably one of the major ways in which they enjoy orgasm. They certainly don’t have many orgasms during intercourse without clitoral stimulation. 

When asked if they masturbated, women responded as follows:

82% of women said they masturbate
15% of women said they do not masturbate
3% of women didn’t reply

Of the women who said they masturbated:

66.0% reached orgasm “always”
29.3% reached orgasm “sometimes”
3.0% reached orgasm “occasionally”
and just a few reached orgasm “rarely”

There are several reasons why women have trouble achieving orgasm during sexual intercourse.

The first of these, at least in many women’s minds, is that most men simply cannot thrust in the vagina for long enough to bring a woman to orgasm. Premature ejaculation has been described as the scourge of sexual pleasure – for both men and women – in our time.

And while that might be an overstatement, it certainly has a lot of truth in it.

We know, for example, that over 75% of men cannot last longer than two minutes from penetration to ejaculation. Of course dealing with men’s premature ejaculation is a whole subject in itself. (See this on control of premature ejaculation.)

Sexual medicine – intimacy and sexual health concerns

And if you’re a woman who wants to achieve orgasm during intercourse, you may believe that one of the reasons you do not do so is that your man cannot last each for long enough in bed to provide enough vaginal stimulation for you to experience an orgasm.

Of course it is important for men to take responsibility for not only their own sexual pleasure but also for their partners’ sexual pleasure (at least if it’s true that their partners’ sexual pleasure depends on their ability to make love for longer than two minutes at a time).

The question is, of course, would longer thrusting really make any difference to a woman’s capacity to reach orgasm?

We can get a clue to the answer by looking at the percentage of women who achieve orgasm when they are with men who are able to thrust for at least 15 minutes before they ejaculate.

The remarkable thing is that even among this group of women, who at first might seem to be very fortunate, the frequency of orgasm during intercourse is actually still very low. In fact, it turns out to be just as low as it is in any other group of women.

In a survey  the question “If your partner can last for fifteen minutes or more before he ejaculates during intercourse, do you achieve orgasm through penile thrusting alone?” produced the following answers:

  • 10% of women said that they “always” came during sex with their partner
  • 20% of women said that they “sometimes” came during sex with their partner
  • 70% of women said they “rarely” or “never” came during sex with their partner

So, this brings us to the second reason why women have trouble reaching orgasm during intercourse. 

The simple fact is that most women rely on clitoral stimulation, if not entirely, at least primarily, to reach orgasm. You’ve probably noticed that during sexual intercourse there are very few sex positions that will stimulate the clitoris in a way likely to help a woman achieve orgasm during intercourse.

And even the much vaunted coital alignment technique (see more here) seems so complicated that most couples give up with it long before they achieve success.

Given these difficulties, it hardly seems surprising that many women have a low expectation of orgasmic pleasure during intercourse.

The third factor, with which most of you will already be familiar, is the simple and undeniable difference between men and women’s sexual arousal: men are quicker to arouse, quicker to reach orgasm, and quicker to lose their arousal after sex than women.

The hard reality is that while men can be fully aroused in a minute or two, most women, most of the time, require twenty minutes or even more of gentle foreplay before they feel aroused enough to really desire and want sexual contact.

The problem, however, goes deeper than this, for the vast majority of men lose interest in sex once they have ejaculated.

This means that if the first part of sex is devoted to the man’s pleasure, the inevitable result is that the woman is likely to be unsatisfied, left hanging without an orgasm, frustrated and probably rather resentful, whilst her man slumbers peacefully next to her.

The first part of sex becomes the final part of sex. There is no second part, the part which should be devoted to the woman’s pleasure.

Of course, what we are describing here is the conventional view of the incompatibility of men and women’s sexual desire. The good news, however, is that there is a solution: the man brings the woman to orgasm with oral pleasure before he enters her to make love.

But, most importantly, the primary objective of all sexual relationships is that when a woman wants an orgasm she should be able to achieve one. Where there are emotional or sexual issues at work which mean that a woman cannot achieve orgasm, then a psychological healing technique called shadow work can be useful.

And at the same time, the man should be fully satisfied as well.  And although his “performance” or skill as a lover does not depend on giving his partner an orgasm during sex or masturbation, most men like to do this, and feel proud when they have done so (as well as finding it highly arousing). Also, psychological issues are just as likely to impact men as women in achieving sexual happiness.

Shadow work and sexual happiness