Do each version of the exercise as many times as you need to until you can easily reach level 7 or 8 or until you can passively allow stimulation for fifteen to twenty minutes. Allow roughly five minutes for each complete peak, including both the up curve and the down curve. In any peaking session, it doesn’t matter whether or not you have an orgasm, ejaculate, or have an erection. Continue all the way to orgasm if you can do so without working at it. The only difference between you and someone who is not concerned with ejaculation is that you may have to move a little slower or repeat some exercises more than once.
Exercise 27. PLATEAUING FOR PREMATURE EJACULATION
Plateauing is similar to peaking, as you learned in Chapter 18 on self-touch. When you peak, you allow your arousal to rise to a certain level and then you stop the stimulation so that your arousal level goes down. With plateauing, you allow your arousal to go to a certain level, and you try to stay at that level for anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Plateauing is a great skill to have for ejaculation control. In fact, the way most adolescents or young men initially learn to control their ejaculation is through a rudimentary form of plateauing, in which they learn to recognize the arousal levels right before ejaculation and stay clear of the “danger zone” by changing their position or movements.
There are four strategies you can learn to use to plateau: changing your breathing, changing your movements, changing your focus, and squeezing your PC muscle.
Begin your first plateauing session with focusing caresses. Then give your partner a genital caress and oral sex. Lie on your back and relax. Your partner will give you a manual front and genital caress. When you reach a level 4, instead of telling your partner your level, take a couple of deep breaths. This should cause your arousal to go down a half level or so. When you feel that you are below a level 4, speed up your breathing. This should cause your arousal to go up about a half level. As your partner continues to caress you, see if you can maintain a level 4 for several seconds by adjusting your breathing.
Now relax and allow yourself to go up to a level 5. Thrust against your partner’s hand. Then slow down your movement and your arousal should go down about a half level. See if you can maintain a level 5 by starting and stopping your movement.
Now relax and allow yourself to go up to level 6. When you reach a level 6, shift your focus to some part of your body that your partner is not currently touching. See if you can maintain a level 6 for a few seconds by switching your focus back and forth from the part of your body that your partner is touching to some other part she is not touching.
The final plateauing technique is using your PC muscle to decrease your arousal level. Allow your arousal to go up to level 7. When you reach level 7, gently squeeze your PC muscle a couple of times. This should cause your arousal to go down about a half level. Relax your PC muscle and allow your arousal to go back up. See if you can maintain a level 7 for a few seconds or more by squeezing and relaxing your PC muscle. It’s not necessary to squeeze it very hard. One very gentle squeeze may be enough to take your arousal down a half level. You may need to experiment a little bit to find out exactly how hard you need to squeeze your PC muscle for this technique to be effective.
Continue the exercise, plateauing at levels 8 and 9 if you can. Use whichever technique seems to work best for you or is most comfortable for you. You can use just one technique for each plateau, or you can try combining them.
Once you have learned to plateau with manual stimulation from your partner, you can then practice the different plateauing techniques with oral sex and with intercourse in several different positions. I would recommend doing the positions in the following order: side-to-side, butterfly, woman on top, rear entry, and man on top (missionary).
As with peaking, you can do the plateauing exercise several different ways. You could do an exercise where you practice only the lower levels. Or you could do an exercise where you practice only the higher levels. Or you could do an exercise in which you plateau several times at the same level.
Exercise 28. REPETITIVE PENETRATION FOR PREMATURE EJACULATION
This exercise also appears in the next chapter, on healing erection problems, because it works well for both problems.
Many men with premature ejaculation have a form of anxiety that is called point-of-penetration anxiety. This means that the most anxiety-provoking moment of a sexual encounter is when they first insert their penis to have sexual intercourse. Many men with premature ejaculation find this point to be such an overwhelming source of stimulation that they literally ejaculate immediately upon penetration. If they can get past that high-anxiety point of penetration, often they’re okay with the continued stimulation of intercourse.
If you have point-of-penetration anxiety, here is an exercise you can do to overpractice the act of penetration itself. Before you begin, exchange back caresses for about ten minutes each, and then do a front caress or genital caress with your partner. Make sure you have lubrication handy.
Lie on your back and take the passive role. Do a couple of comfortable lower-level peaks as your partner caresses you with her hands and lips. Then change positions and have your partner lie on her back. Have her tilt her pelvis and put her legs up in the air (the butterfly position). Now apply lubrication to both of your hands, kneel between your partner’s legs and slowly begin to caress your penis with one hand, using a lot of lubrication.
With your other hand, caress your partner’s genitals, also with a lot of lubrication. Then start to caress her genitals with your lubricated penis. Caress her outer genitals first, and then slowly insert just the head of your penis into her vagina.
Remove your penis from your partner’s vagina and caress her genitals with it again. Then insert your penis again, this time going a little deeper.
Remember to breathe and to keep your muscles as relaxed as you can. Focus on the sensations. Practice several insertions within a twenty-minute time frame, using peaking to allow yourself to go a little higher on the arousal scale each time. Try to stay within the 4-to-8 arousal range for most of the exercise.
If you have very severe premature ejaculation, you may need to start this exercise when you are at a very low arousal level, even a 1 or 2. You can do the exercise without an erection, which helps some men get comfortable with penetration. Just use more lubrication if you don’t have an erection.
Exercise 29. THE PC MUSCLE SQUEEZE
The PC squeeze exercise will help severe premature ejaculation problems that have not responded as well as you might have hoped to the relaxation and awareness techniques. Before you take the time to learn the PC squeeze, though, try an easier option first. Have your partner stimulate you to ejaculation at the beginning of a peaking session. If you ejaculate at the beginning of a session, you won’t be worried about ejaculating during the peaking process. This will reduce your anxiety so that you will be able to learn how to peak. Once you have learned the peaking skills with your partner, you will no longer need to ejaculate at the beginning of a session.
If the above strategy does not work, you can learn the PC squeeze. Begin the session with focusing caresses. Then do a nondemand genital caress or oral sex with your partner.
Lie on your back, remembering to focus on the sensations, breathe, and relax all of your muscles. Have your partner begin to caress your genitals as she would during a peaking exercise. When you feel yourself reach a low level of arousal (for example, a 4), squeeze your PC muscle several times until you feel your arousal go down. Repeat this process, squeezing at levels 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 if possible. It goes without saying that before you can do this exercise, your PC muscle needs to be in good shape, which should have happened naturally already because of the daily exercises you have been doing.
There are several ways you can squeeze your PC muscle. You could do one long, hard squeeze. You could do several quick squeezes in a row. Or you could do three or four medium-strength, rhythmic squeezes that mimic the action of your PC muscle when
you ejaculate.
Squeezing your PC muscle in this way during this exercise will probably cause your erection to go down a little. If you squeeze too hard at a high level of arousal before you have done the low levels, you may actually trigger an ejaculation. This is nothing to worry about. It will only happen once. Just wait a few minutes and start the exercise over.
It is possible to overdo the squeezing, and if you do this exercise for more than about half an hour, you may temporarily find yourself unable to ejaculate at all. This is also nothing to worry about as long as you are learning to recognize your arousal levels and to decrease your arousal by squeezing your PC muscle.
For the PC squeeze to control your ejaculation, you must be sure to squeeze only the PC muscle. You must make sure that you are not tensing your abdomen, thigh, or buttocks muscles at the same time.
You may need to repeat this exercise a number of times until you become aware of how hard you need to squeeze to feel your arousal go down but have your erection stay up. When I taught the PC squeeze to clients, I told them they needed to learn to “tap on their brakes” rather than “slam on their brakes.”
After you have learned to do the squeeze while receiving manual and oral stimulation, you can also practice it during intercourse. It is possible to squeeze your PC muscle at the moment of ejaculation, which I am told creates some unusually pleasurable sensations. A strong PC squeeze at the moment of orgasm can sometimes cause you to have an orgasm without ejaculating. A few seconds later you could have another orgasm and ejaculate.
This exercise will show you that your ejaculations are under your control, which will help you relax. After you have mastered the PC squeeze so that you can allow yourself to relax, go on to the peaking exercises without the squeeze. Use the PC squeeze only as a tool to enable yourself to become comfortable enough so that you start learning to stay aroused through awareness and relaxation. Squeezing tends to reinforce the idea that you are “working” on your problem rather than relaxing and enjoying the stimulation. Squeezing should be used for only a few sessions, and then you should return to the awareness and relaxation techniques, unless you want to experiment with the squeeze to see if you can have multiple orgasms.
Exercise 30. THE PARTNER-SQUEEZE TECHNIQUE
This exercise is different from the PC muscle squeeze, although the exercises have similar names. The squeeze technique involves your partner squeezing your penis. You may be familiar with the squeeze technique, which was invented by Masters and Johnson and is recommended by most sex therapists. I usually teach the peaking process instead, but the squeeze technique is effective for some clients with very severe premature ejaculation problems. Use the squeeze technique only if you have gone all the way through this program and are still not confident that you can control your ejaculations.
Begin as you would any other exercise session, with focusing caresses. Your partner will then caress your penis while you are passive. When you reach the level of arousal right before the point of ejaculatory inevitability, signal your partner and she will squeeze the head of your penis tightly between the thumbs and first two fingers of both hands. After your partner squeezes your penis, you will feel your arousal level decrease. Your erection level is also likely to go down somewhat.
You can repeat the squeeze technique several times in one session, after which you should allow yourself to ejaculate. You can also do the squeeze technique during intercourse, withdrawing your penis at high levels of arousal so that your partner can squeeze it.
Breathe, relax, and focus on the sensations as you would during any other exercise. Again, use the squeeze technique only as a tool to bring yourself to the point where you are comfortable enough to begin the peaking exercises without the squeeze technique.
You can combine the squeeze technique with the peaking process. Do a peaking exercise while your partner stimulates you with her hands. As you reach each arousal level, tell your partner your level and she will squeeze the head of your penis so that your arousal goes down. Then continue peaking up through all of the levels to ejaculation, having her stop the stimulation and squeeze at each level.
Exercise 31. EJACULATING ON PURPOSE
Some men have a different issue with premature ejaculation: They literally don’t enjoy ejaculation. Because of many bad experiences, they don’t feel good about ejaculating, and they don’t even really experience orgasm when they ejaculate. The uncontrollable ejaculation is really just the localized genital reflex when the PC muscle spasms and forces semen out of the penis.
Ejaculating on purpose is not exactly a specific exercise. Rather, it is giving yourself permission to learn to enjoy your ejaculations again. In this technique, you have intercourse and try to ejaculate as quickly as you can. It doesn’t matter if you come right away, as long as you allow yourself to enjoy your ejaculation as much as possible. Learning to enjoy your ejaculation and to give yourself permission to have one whenever you feel like it is just as important as peaking and plateauing and all the other ejaculation control “skills.” Do this exercise if you are starting to feel a bit bogged down by working on your problem. Repeating this experience a few times will give you permission to ejaculate whenever you want to.
Exercise 32. MAKING NOISE DURING EJACULATION
Some men have a related issue, which is that they have been embarrassed by their premature ejaculation problem for so long that they try to pretend they’re not ejaculating. I guess this is a form of denial. They try to control an ejaculation by not moving or not making noise or not doing anything to indicate that they’re aroused. This doesn’t work, of course.
If this is the case for you, start making noise as you have intercourse. Role-play someone who is extremely aroused. Grunt or pant as you get close to ejaculation. Really go overboard—loudly say “I’m coming!” Imitate the orgasm scene from the movie When Harry Met Sally, but in reverse. This works best if you have already gained some degree of ejaculatory control, so that you can have intercourse without ejaculating immediately.
Exercise 33. KEEPING YOUR EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL AROUSAL LEVELS TOGETHER
This is an exercise that is especially helpful for flaccid ejaculation. Remember that flaccid ejaculation is a problem in which a man ejaculates before he has a full erection. It is a combination of premature ejaculation and erection problems.
There are two different arousal scales for men. There is the 1-to-10 scale of your internal feeling of closeness to ejaculation. That’s the scale you’ve used in the peaking exercises in this chapter. We can call this emotional, psychological, or subjective arousal.
There’s also the 1-to-10 scale describing how hard your erection is. We can call this physical arousal.
So far, you have only used the first scale. I now want you to be aware of the second scale. Normally a man’s physical and emotional arousal levels run parallel, with his erection becoming harder as he becomes more emotionally aroused. It is not unusual, though, for the two responses to be a little bit out of sync; for example, your erection could be at level 8 and you could be ejaculating, or your feeling of emotional arousal could be at level 5 but you could have a really hard erection. In flaccid ejaculation, these two responses have gotten completely out of sync. For example, your emotional arousal might be at level 10 (ejaculation), while your erection is a 3 or 4 (not really erect enough for easy penetration).
If you experience flaccid ejaculations, you should do an exercise in which you peak during intercourse in the side-to-side position, gently folding or stuffing your penis into your partner’s vagina using plenty of lubrication (the flaccid-insertion technique described in Exercise 26). After you have learned to control your ejaculation by focusing, breathing, relaxing, and peaking, try the following exercise, in which you attempt to keep your emotional and physical arousal levels together.
Begin the session with focusing caresses, and then do a nondemand genital caress or oral sex with your partner. Next, lie on your back while your partner caresses your genitals
and does oral sex. Switch your focus back and forth between your erection level and your emotional arousal level. When you feel your emotional arousal level go higher than your erection by one or two levels, ask your partner to stop the stimulation. When your emotional arousal has gone down two levels, ask your partner to restart the stimulation.
You cannot will your erection to become harder so that it matches your emotional arousal, but you can manipulate your emotional arousal level to match your erection level by stopping the stimulation, slowing down the stimulation, breathing, focusing on the sensations, and relaxing. Do four or five peaks this way. You will find that each time your emotional arousal decreases to become more in line with your erection level, your erection level will increase with the next peak. Spend about fifteen minutes on this part of the exercise.
Ejaculate at the end of the exercise if you feel like it. You may need to repeat the exercise several times or alternate it with peaking exercises until you begin to notice a definite improvement in the hardness of your erections.
You can also do this exercise during intercourse in the butterfly position. Your partner lies on her back with her knees bent and her legs up in the air and spread apart. Using plenty of lubrication, kneel between her legs and stroke her vaginal lips with your penis. As you caress the outside of your partner’s vagina with your penis, you will be aware that you are reaching a certain level of emotional arousal. If you feel that your erection level is lower than your emotional arousal level, slow down. Use your penis to caress some other part of your partner’s body until your emotional arousal level has dropped back down to the same level as your erection.
Sexual Healing Page 24
