One of the most common questions I get from men would have to be “Is premature ejaculation mental or physical?”. I get this so often that I can remember the explanation off the top of my head, despite who is asking.
The short answer is Yes, if you experience premature ejaculation there is almost certainly a mental component to it.
And also “Yes”. Your premature ejaculation is most defiantly physical in nature.
Let me explain.
The Nature Of Premature Ejaculation
Over there last 50 years there has been an increasing tendency to try and separate human being and their behavior and actions into 2 distinct groups. Mental things and physical things.
Sigmund Freud was the first to popularize this idea and we just haven’t been about to get the concept out of our heads ever since. A trend towards psychoanalysis in the sixties led to an entire field devoted to curing a whole range of ailments mentally.
Mental Treatments For Premature Ejaculation
Among the large number of methods that have been proposed to treat premature ejaculation for men are some that assume that the problem is mainly mental or psychological. These would include psychoanalysis or hypnotherapy as a solution to one of the world’s most common sexual complaints.
Would you believe that even asthma was once considered by many to be psychological?
The nature of premature ejaculation, with all the stigma, shame, and loss of male sexual pride, was always going to be a prime candidate to be tagged as a purely mental problem. For a long time, for men with premature ejaculation, their only form of professional treatment was counseling sessions with a psychologist. This helped in the odd case but was overall highly ineffective as a sole form of premature ejaculation treatment.
You really have to feel for guys who were seeking help for premature ejaculation in those days.
They would have been conditioned to feel that they have some deep underlying problem in their head, that they were weird, and that they were just not normal.
Premature Ejaculation Is Caused By A Combination of Factors
The truth is that premature ejaculation is a combination of both mental and physical factors but the way they relate to each other is often surprising and even counter-intuitive at first.
I’ll explain more about this further down the page but first, let’s check out some of the ways that premature ejaculation is caused or influenced by mental factors.
Mental contributors to premature ejaculation
Before I list these it’s important to keep in mind that these are almost never the sole cause of premature ejaculation and in practically every case, improving your physical skills and abilities will significantly improve your ejaculation control.
Anxiety
Performance anxiety is quite common for males when it comes to sexual intercourse. After all, our pride is on the line, and being labeled as a sexually inferior male would have to be right up there on the list of things you’d rather avoid. In addition, there is also a genetic component to feelings of anxiety during intercourse.
When our species was evolving sex would have been very different than it is for most of us today. There would have been much less shelter and the dangers of wild animals, the elements or hostile enemies would have been significant.
During sex would have been a time when you were extremely exposed and you would have good reason to be anxious.
There’s no reason for us now to have these feelings during intercourse, but of course, our bodies and genes don’t know this so they will keep on doing what has allowed them to survive and pass through the gene pool all this time.
Regressive Sexual Shame
I mentioned Freud earlier on and I may have been a bit hard on him because he did introduce some important theories, some of which have implications for treating premature ejaculation today. This is one of them.
For some men (and women to for that matter) there is a degree of stigma or shame surrounding the whole idea of having sex. This is especially frequent for those who grew up in highly religious families, where sex was subliminally taught to be immoral and wrong.
An Over Focus On Climax
This is a huge one and it seems to be increasing among men in modern times. The problem is that many men are only focused on the endpoint during intercourse (and even during courting). This means they hone in on the result of orgasm rather than viewing sexual intercourse as a process.
They are focused on the destination rather than the journey basically. This is often worsened by the viewing of pornography and then physically reinforced by masturbating with the single goal of orgasm. A lot of men are basically re-training their entire ejaculatory systems to try to reach the goal (orgasm) as quickly as possible.
Relationship Problems
For some men who acquire premature ejaculation later on in life, relationship problems may be a contributory factor. A lack of communication or a buildup of resentment due to sexual frustration (both male and female)
Nervousness
There’s nothing unusual about being nervous before and during intercourse, especially when you are young or with a new partner. While similar to anxiety in any way, nervousness will generally subside as you become more comfortable with your partner or improve your ejaculatory skills
Note: Notice the way that the physical and physiological factors become intertwined here? This is a great example of how why you need to treat both the mental and physical causes of premature ejaculation together to give yourself the best chance of developing ejaculation control.
The Line Between Mental and Physical Causes And Treatments For Premature Ejaculation
As you can see from some of the above examples the line between mental and physical causes of premature ejaculation is often blurred or even non-existent. Unfortunately, this is a fact that many methods of treating premature ejaculation fail to take into account. All too often men will only go after one side of the puzzle. And that is why many of the quick-fix methods to limit premature ejaculation such as pills or sprays often fall well short of expected results.
Physical Methods Can Improve Your Mental Game And Vice-versa
The Beyond Delay premature ejaculation training course recognizes the importance of this overall approach which is why it has been delivering such a high degree of success. Paradoxically our course users will learn or improve a physical skill or technique and it will have a dramatic effect on a pre-existing mental dilemma. A good example is the results we see after teaching men a range of instant cool down techniques.
Now, these are all predominantly physical techniques that guys can use when they feel themselves reaching the point of no return to cool their system down a bit. The surprising thing was that the biggest effect on the guys who learned these skills was that they reported being much less nervous and anxious both before and during intercourse.
That’s a great example of how physically and mentally your body works as a system and not two distinct parts.
A Different Approach To Curing Premature Ejaculation
The trouble with the traditional linear (cause and effect) methods of attempting to treat premature ejaculation is that it is viewed as a condition or abnormality that needs to be treated. Just like you would treat a disease or virus. This causes problems from the go-get and leads to completely normal guys getting painted with the abnormal brush.
A better way to view premature ejaculation is a situation where a guy hasn’t yet learned and developed all the skills and techniques required to sufficiently control his ejaculation (here’s a guide on all the methods to stop premature ejaculation).
In the same way that most people can swim (or will be very bad at it) unless they are shown how is it really surprising that so many men are unable to control their ejaculation?
When viewed like this it becomes overwhelmingly clear that the question isn’t “is premature ejaculation mental or physical?”. The real question should be “what skills (both mental and physical) can I improve to last longer in bed. And the answer is “a lot”.
Natural ways to prevent premature ejaculation
Here are a few natural methods you can use to control both the mental and physical aspects of premature ejaculation
- Breathing correctly
- Improving sexual techniques
- Meditative techniques to reduce anxiety
- PC muscle training
- Learn how to tune in to your senses during intercourse
- Edging or the stop and start method (the Beyond Delay course teaches a more advanced version of these traditional techniques)
- Practice detecting the messages your body is sending you
It’s the men who can think outside the box and see past the constraints of the conventional wisdom of the past who are now developing these skills and proving that premature ejaculation is not something you have to be stuck with.
Conclusion
We all have some doubts and performance anxiety whether we admit it or not. Yes, premature ejaculation is partly mental in many cases. But as we have seen, this does not mean that a singular focus on the mental aspects is the best way to last longer in bed. Quite the opposite in fact.
Hopefully, this has lifted the veil on a few of the mysteries of premature ejaculation and gives you the knowledge, clarity, and motivation to take the steps required to start increasing your ejaculatory control today.