Difficulties With Male Orgasm & Ejaculation

Delayed ejaculation (DE) is the name used to describe a man’s inability to ejaculate in a reasonable time during intercourse or masturbation.

Sometimes men with this challenge are completely unable to ejaculate during sex with a partner,  and sometimes they have great difficulty doing so.

Most men with DE really want to achieve both orgasm and ejaculation. It’s a mystery to a man in this position why, when he has lots of sexual stimulation and an erection perfectly adequate for lovemaking, he can’t ejaculate.

To make things even more confusing, men with delayed ejaculation can climax during masturbation, even though it may take a long time.

So this is, primarily, a problem that involves sex with a partner.

What’s It Like For A Man To Be In This Position?

The majority of men who have this condition do not find it a pleasant experience in any way: in fact, it can be extremely frustrating.

Men with delayed ejaculation (also known as retarded ejaculation) are unable to “come” during sex and sometimes feel frustrated and anxious, and lose their sexual self-confidence, and sometimes feel bad about themselves….

Their female partners often become depressed or irritable, since they are deprived of sexual fulfillment, and they may see their man’s problem, his inability to ejaculate, as a reflection on their sexual attractiveness.

And of course this often goes on for a long time, so the potential for mutual conflict and recrimination can make things worse, especially if one or both of the couple want to have a baby.

In fact, in the end, the woman may threaten to leave unless the man does something about his sexual dysfunction. And it’s often a woman’s threat to end the relationship that prompts the man to seek treatment. I know of several couples who have actually broken up because of this issue.

Finding a treatment for retarded ejaculation (or RE for short – the terms “delayed” and “retarded” are used interchangeably) is sometimes seen as difficult, but in truth we have so little information on the condition that we don’t really know how many seek treatment, and how many men are cured by the various treatments available.

The good news, however, is that with the right approach, a man who is sufficiently motivated to overcome the challenges associated with the treatment of retarded ejaculation has a good chance of enjoying “normal” sexual function again (or acquiring it in the first place, if he’s experienced delayed ejaculation all his life). 

Some sexual therapists see delayed ejaculation as one of the less important sexual problems which can affect a man, but in my experience it causes far more problems than rapid or early ejaculation.

As for erectile dysfunction, I’d say that and DE cause a similar amount of distress, and they are certainly at least as troubling as each other, albeit in a very different way.

Imagine (maybe you don’t need to – maybe this is you!) being a young couple, healthy in every way, and wishing to have a child, where the man cannot climax during sex.

The idea’s a bit odd, isn’t it? It goes against everything we assume about the nature of male-female sexual relationships, and so the most important  question is: what causes it?

It seems that both psychological and physical issues contribute to delayed ejaculation, but the precise way it develops is not at all clear.

Happily, treatment can be effective despite our lack of understanding of the condition, and so if you happen to be one of the men who knows all too well the frustration it invokes, do not despair!

Delayed ejaculation or retarded ejaculation, call it what you will, is often regarded as somehow related to anorgasmia in women. But in fact it is really a completely different condition. It’s certainly not caused by a lack of sexual desire, because a man with DE usually has a normal libido.

Whether or not he wants sex with the particular partner he is in bed with is, of course, another question. That’s a question closely related to the diagnosis and treatment of this condition – is it partner-specific, or does it occur with every partner?

If you don’t wish to read any more now and you simply want to go straight to the solution, see the information and link in the right hand column of this page.

Theories About The Origin Of Delayed Ejaculation

Some psychodynamic theories of DE suggest it’s caused by fear of loss of control, or by hostility and anger, or by too much reliance on fantasy during sex for arousal. There’s often a disconnection between sexual arousal in a man’s mind and physical arousal in his body.

Another common factor is a man learning to masturbate, perhaps as a teenager, in a particularly forceful way – rubbing against the bed is common – and this seems to inhibit his ability to reach orgasm with gentle stimulation such as “normal” masturbation or sexual intercourse – the theory being that he just does not get enough stimulation from these techniques to reach orgasm.

And sexual therapist Bernard Apfelbaum believes that delayed ejaculation involves a low level of arousal – in other words, he thinks a man who thrusts for hours during sex without reaching orgasm and ejaculation is simply not sexually aroused, even though he has a hard and long-lasting erection.

Much of the treatment for DE has centered on psychodynamic psychotherapy, simply because there are no drugs available which can be used.

Psychotherapy tends to look for explanations of current conditions in a man or woman’s emotional and psychological history. And it’s not hard to understand how a man’s inability to ejaculate with a specific partner might represent a “withholding” attitude towards her.

His lack of ejaculation could be an external symbol of internal hostility, resentment, or anger. Non-partner-specific delayed ejaculation might be the result of more generalized shame, anxiety or guilt around sex in general. Here’s a very helpful book about delayed ejaculation.

I believe that some of my clients with delayed ejaculation have indeed held a great deal of hostility to women in general or their partner specifically, or feel a lot of shame and guilt around sex in general.

Video about delayed ejaculation

But there’s still an interesting question to be addressed, and that is why these emotions manifest in this way in only some men who have ejaculation issues. There is no doubt that many men have feelings of anger and hostility towards women, and/or shame and guilt around sex, but they have NO difficulty engaging in intercourse and ejaculating normally. So is there another factor at work? The answer, as you may have expected, is probably “yes”.

It seems that men with delayed ejaculation often have a very low level of sexual arousal, despite having a hard and often prolonged erection.

This situation appears to develop because a man is, at a very deep emotional and psychological level, trying hard to please his partner, to fulfill her needs, and to satisfy her in a way that probably goes beyond sex alone.

But there are other explanations of delayed ejaculation too, the primary one being that a man learned to masturbate in a very idiosyncratic way which involved extreme pressure and force on his penis.

Having conditioned himself only to ejaculate in response to very vigorous stimulation, it becomes impossible in later life to get the necessary stimulation he needs to ejaculate from the act of intercourse.

A third explanation is even more prosaic: it is that a man simply prefers the feeling of his own hand to that of his current partner’s, or any partner’s, vagina.

And so of course the most important question is: what treatment methods are available?

The answer is that there are many ways of treating DE, and which one of them will be successful depends on the individual circumstances in each case.

Where there are clear issues of blurred boundaries, or, worse, childhood sexual abuse, then deep psychotherapy is probably the answer, so that a man can re-establish a sense of trust towards women, and an ability to maintain his own boundaries in the face of his partner’s needs, wishes, and demands.

This might be the right approach when a man seems to have a compulsion to “serve” his partner, or when it appears that his main aim during sex is to pleasure his partner, or when he seems unable to take any time or pleasure for himself.

A man like this can be encouraged, through a gradual process of psychotherapy, to let go and take time and space for himself so that he can enjoy sex to the full.

When he can let go of his emotional constraints, he will probably also be able to release physically during the act of intercourse. “Release” is a good word here, since it implies equally to the release of semen and the release of psychological inhibition.