Premature Ejaculation Needs a Rebrand.

Let's talk about something nobody wants to talk about, which, of course, is exactly the reason we should!

Premature ejaculation. 

There. I said it. Without lowering my voice, or covering with a nervous laugh.

Yet for something that affects, by most estimates, nearly a third of men at some point in their lives, the silence around it is extraordinary. And I find that rather sad. Not the thing itself. The shame that comes with it.

A little while ago I had the good fortune of playing with somebody quite lovely. Let’s call him “M”. He was handsome and courteous and highly skilled with his tongue - which I, of course, put to good use. However when it came to what most people insist on calling “the main event” (a terrible descriptor, which I’ll get into later) he reached climax rather quickly. Now, it wasn’t the speed in which he achieved orgasm that surprised me, but the haste in which he jumped up to apologise: he went from blissful to mortified in approximately three seconds, convinced he had committed some kind of unforgivable offence. I was not upset, nor disappointed and once I made that clear, we ended up having a valuable conversation about the whole thing. And it got me thinking: why are we all so catastrophically bad at this particular conversation?

Here's my perspective, and I mean this sincerely, without a hint of condescension: I've always found premature ejaculation quite flattering. When a man is so overwhelmed by the experience of being with you that his body gets ahead of itself… that is, at its most basic level, a compliment. And I think we could stand to reframe that.

We live in a culture that has built an entire mythology around male sexual endurance, as though longevity were the primary metric by which a man should be judged as a lover. Films, novels, the general cultural ether: all conspire to suggest that the ideal man is one who can fuck all night, jackhammering away, and who treats the whole affair like some sort of athletic endurance event. This is, I would argue, a rather bleak vision of intimacy. And it has left a great many perfectly wonderful men convinced that they have failed, when actually they've simply arrived at the destination a little ahead of schedule.

The shame, research confirms, is doing serious damage. Men with self-reported premature ejaculation show significantly higher levels of internalised shame and social isolation than those without it. And here's the particularly cruel irony: shame and anxiety are themselves among the most significant drivers of the problem, resulting in a feedback loop that makes everything worse. 

When it happens, the awkwardness around how to talk about it is often the worst part. The mortified silence. The fear of disappointment. The immediate, panicked assumption that the evening, and possibly the entire romantic enterprise, is over. 

I want to say this, gently but firmly - much like I did with “M” - Please stop. You have not ruined anything. Your body has simply, and very enthusiastically, made its feelings known. There's an intimacy in this vulnerability, one I believe is much more honest than pretending to be some impossible Adonis.

Now. To the practical matter. Because compassion is all well and good, but the question of what one actually does next is equally important.

The answer, if you'll forgive me for being obvious, is: continue. The assumption that sex begins and ends when penetration does is an extraordinarily limited view of what sex is, and can be! Penetration is one bow in what ought to be a very large orchestra. To treat everything before it as warm-up and everything after as awkward denouement is to miss the symphony entirely.

Thus, a man who responds to an early finish not with paralysing shame but with a cheerful, creative pivot is, in my experience, a far more interesting lover than someone who has simply trained himself to last longer through sheer determination and possibly mild dissociation.

I'm not advocating for the lowering of standards. I’m arguing for a raising of our collective imagination.

Bodies are beautifully unpredictable, and it would be boring if they all worked in the same way. So here is my modest proposal: let's agree to retire the shame. Premature ejaculation is not a character flaw. It is not evidence of inadequacy. It is a physiological event experienced by a significant portion of the male population, and it does not have to mean what we've all been quietly told it means.

It means you were having a good time. And that, really, is rather the point, isn’t it?

-A