Retarded Ejaculation
My partner has retarded ejaculation. We have been together for six months and have good sex. We are roughly same age I am 50 and he is 49. Prior to our relationship he had not had sustained relationships with other women. He has confided that prior to meeting me he masturbated to pornographic movies and visited female sex workers. He reports he had difficulty achieving orgasm and ejaculating with sex workers, however as he was able to successfully attain ejaculation during masturbation. An added complication is that he is HIV carrier; we use condoms. He acknowledges he worries he will infect me. He seems to have had this problem as far back as he can remember even prior to the HIV diagnosis. I am nervous about discussing this continually as I do not want to impede an otherwise good sexual life. We are able to talk about everything together and he regards me as his soul mate. I think this must be incredibly frustrated when he cannot climax. Is there anything we can do to change this situation?
There are many reasons for "retarded ejaculation," mostly having origins in psychological factors. The two most common reasons for this condition are fears of impregnating a woman and the need to control the level of intimacy; both can be simultaneously present. The former reason is self-explanatory; the latter is more complicated. Many men have conscious or unconscious attitudes about intimacy and sex. They can either be emotionally intimate or sexually intimate but not both with the same woman. These men are often capable of climaxing with prostitutes, but not with a partner with whom they are intimately attached. Since you report that he has not been able to ejaculate even when participating in anonymous or non-intimate sex with "sex workers," it appears that the issue may be related to the former issue. Without having direct contact with him for a detailed exploration of his psychological and sex history, it is not possible for me to determine etiology.
That being said, I can suggest that your partner has been training himself for many years not to ejaculate inside of a woman, in effect practicing a form of birth control. Now with being HIV positive, he has the added fear of transmitting the virus. This would be sufficient to create a problem for most men. In this regard, I would strongly suggest that he find a professional psychologist to talk with in order to help deal with the psychological implications of being HIV positive, i.e., what it means to him to be HIV positive. I would also be interested in knowing how he contracted the virus. If he contracted it through sexual intercourse, for example, this could serve to confirm his unconscious beliefs in the dangers of sexual intercourse and ejaculation.
There are several things that the two of you can practice that might help alleviate the situation, but there are no guarantees. Since you report that he is able to achieve orgasm through masturbation with the aid of pornography, it appears that he has trained himself to be sexually aroused to hardcore, sexually explicit material rather than through emotionally connected intimacy. He has separated sexuality from intimacy, relegating sexuality to mere release. Continuing this practice of isolating sexuality to self-stimulation exacerbates the problem. What is necessary to bring a live partner -- namely you -- with whom he is emotionally connected into his sexual activity thereby transferring the sexual experience to interactive sexuality.
So for starters you might begin by watching some pornography together to promote a sexual response while touching and caressing each other. What we would want to do here is eventually to have you bring him to climax manually rather than him doing it to himself. The key, however, is to connect the sexual response to an overall emotional and physical connection with you rather than to the pornography. Gradually, as success is achieved in this manner with you bringing him to climax (beginning with both of you fondling him so that he can show you how he likes to have it done), you can attempt penetration even if it requires disengagement to complete the ejaculatory process manually. With practice in graduated increments a complete transfer might be achieved. I say "might be achieved" because there are so many complications involved: the number of years that he has practicing his own form of sexual response, the HIV, using a condom which decreases sensitivity, and whatever other psychological factors might be in play.
There are many reasons for "retarded ejaculation," mostly having origins in psychological factors. The two most common reasons for this condition are fears of impregnating a woman and the need to control the level of intimacy; both can be simultaneously present. The former reason is self-explanatory; the latter is more complicated. Many men have conscious or unconscious attitudes about intimacy and sex. They can either be emotionally intimate or sexually intimate but not both with the same woman. These men are often capable of climaxing with prostitutes, but not with a partner with whom they are intimately attached. Since you report that he has not been able to ejaculate even when participating in anonymous or non-intimate sex with "sex workers," it appears that the issue may be related to the former issue. Without having direct contact with him for a detailed exploration of his psychological and sex history, it is not possible for me to determine etiology.
That being said, I can suggest that your partner has been training himself for many years not to ejaculate inside of a woman, in effect practicing a form of birth control. Now with being HIV positive, he has the added fear of transmitting the virus. This would be sufficient to create a problem for most men. In this regard, I would strongly suggest that he find a professional psychologist to talk with in order to help deal with the psychological implications of being HIV positive, i.e., what it means to him to be HIV positive. I would also be interested in knowing how he contracted the virus. If he contracted it through sexual intercourse, for example, this could serve to confirm his unconscious beliefs in the dangers of sexual intercourse and ejaculation.
There are several things that the two of you can practice that might help alleviate the situation, but there are no guarantees. Since you report that he is able to achieve orgasm through masturbation with the aid of pornography, it appears that he has trained himself to be sexually aroused to hardcore, sexually explicit material rather than through emotionally connected intimacy. He has separated sexuality from intimacy, relegating sexuality to mere release. Continuing this practice of isolating sexuality to self-stimulation exacerbates the problem. What is necessary to bring a live partner -- namely you -- with whom he is emotionally connected into his sexual activity thereby transferring the sexual experience to interactive sexuality.
So for starters you might begin by watching some pornography together to promote a sexual response while touching and caressing each other. What we would want to do here is eventually to have you bring him to climax manually rather than him doing it to himself. The key, however, is to connect the sexual response to an overall emotional and physical connection with you rather than to the pornography. Gradually, as success is achieved in this manner with you bringing him to climax (beginning with both of you fondling him so that he can show you how he likes to have it done), you can attempt penetration even if it requires disengagement to complete the ejaculatory process manually. With practice in graduated increments a complete transfer might be achieved. I say "might be achieved" because there are so many complications involved: the number of years that he has practicing his own form of sexual response, the HIV, using a condom which decreases sensitivity, and whatever other psychological factors might be in play.
posted by DocDreyfus | 11:35 AM
1 Comments:
I know this post is quite old but I'd like to offer comment, that it might help someone. My husband and I have made a breakthrough with this problem finally after 4 years together living with RE. He had never ejaculated in a woman before, and told me in his 1st marriage he would fake orgasm and go to the bathroom or wait until she was asleep to masturbate and relieve himself. He says they never discussed the issue at all. Early in our relationship I recognised the problem and there have been lots of near relationship breaking episodes where I have found him or found out he was masturbating to porn, when I was home and available and when he reported that he had a low sex drive as a reason for our not having sex. I even awoke to find him masturbating beside me in bed one morning and having experienced so much of this with him, also observing his masturbation technique which was always in the same position, with the same rhythm and very rough so to help us I'd asked him to stop for a while to bring back sensation, desire etc and having being told he loved me but had no sexual desire for me (or any woman ever before whom he'd had a relationship with) feeling worthless and unattractive, and that he wasn't at all committed to change, I ended the relationship that day. Then, in the same morning he tried to take his own life by hanging. I found him in our garage and had to cut him down. This is, sadly, the point we had to get to for our lives to change. It was diagnosed by specialists that he had been depressed for quite some time. He has had therapy and still is, was given an antidepressant that specifically is not known to affect sex drive or performance and agreed to stop masturbating and work with me on an honest level to put things right. Before I tell you how we cured him, I'd like to add that we went for sexual counselling before the suicide, was given the sensate focus exercise and indeed, it made us both more anxious. It had no effect. After properly desisting from masturbation (as far as I know) being on the antidepressant for around three weeks and using porn during sex to help him effectively tuning out he achieved orgasm inside me. We continued with this porn use intermittently with me reassuring him that that the 'dirty, sexy' thoughts and images he needed for release where fine and normal. I encouraged them. I even endured those moments of being under him as he watched images that aroused him and feeling I wasn't even there for him. Sounds awful and on one level it was. But experiencing, harder, faster more furtive and excited thrusting aroused me too and we began to climax simultaneously. A revelation as I had thought my arousal made him unable to feel me. Within a few weeks, my husband suddenly became able to orgasm inside me without the porn. It's the 1st time in his life he's done this and he was elated. It was no fluke, it happens regularly now although occassionally we bring the porn back in. But by no means do we have to do it a lot like in the beginning. Is it the ceassation of masturbation, the assistance with dissasociation from our intimate relationship during sex (I don't know if in anyway he tunes out during sex but I don't care to know) or has the relaxant properties in the antidepressant cured him? We don't know. But he's cured.
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