Kyle and Linda came to the clinic for an appointment. They are a young, attractive couple and the problem they have is actually a relatively common one.
Dr.: How can I help you guys?
Kyle: I can’t please her sexually.
Dr.: Are your erections good.
K.: Yes.
Dr.: Hard, and they last as long as you want?
K.: Well, it goes away after I ejaculate.
Dr.: That’s normal.
Linda then interjects: But he comes too fast. Whoop ... we’re done.
Dr.: Within what time frame?
L.: 30 seconds. I looked it up on the Internet (because women look things up in the Internet) and I think he has premature ejaculation. Is it something I’m doing? Is it me?
Dr.: OK. Kyle, were you able to hold it longer with other partners?
K.: No, not really. Maybe I could go a minute at most.
Dr.: That time period still falls under premature ejaculation. You have what is called lifelong premature ejaculation. It is a fairly common condition occurring between 5 percent and 40 percent of sexually active men (
Int J of Psychitr Med 1992). We think that there is actually a higher incidence in adolescents and young adults.
L.: Kyle has been my only partner. What is considered normal?
Dr.: One study that included five countries, using a stopwatch, showed most men ejaculate within 5.5 minutes. This is what we call IELT or intravaginal ejaculation latency time. Most men with PE ejaculate within a minute (0.9 min actually). And, Linda, it is not your fault, there is nothing you are doing that is causing this. The best thing you can do as a partner is be supportive as Kyle works through this.
K.: Is there something we can do?
Dr.: A standard approach is making sure you don’t have any physical and medical issues and also participating in cognitive and behavioral therapy. I will give you a name of a sex therapist and we will check and make sure you don’t have an underlying condition that may be the cause or contributing to this. And recently there have been some medications that we can try to see if we can work on prolonging your IELT. Let’s begin …
Andrew R. McCullough, MD, director of Male Sexual Health, Fertility and Microsurgery at the NYU Medical Center showed that men classified with probable premature ejaculation self-reported:
- poor control over ejaculation (50%)
- low satisfaction with sexual intercourse (23%)
- low satisfaction with sexual relationship (30%)
- low interest in actually having sexual intercourse (28%)
- difficulty in becoming sexually aroused (34%)
- difficulty relaxing during intercourse (31%)
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The following is feedback received for this blog:
Too bad not enough couples know anything about getting each other off in all the right ways. |