Premature Ejaculation – how shame short-circuits sex
I recently wrote about the impact of shame on Erectile Dysfunction. In this blog, we’re going to look at that other great bête noire of male sexuality, Premature Ejaculation (PE).
Bugbears & black beasts
It’s hard to find a better shorthand for PE than the French term bête noire, which means a bugbear or, literally, ‘black beast’.
PE puts men into a vicious cycle of dissatisfaction and disempowerment. Sexual experiences become fraught with anxiety before, during, and after actual intercourse.
This creates a downward spiral of anxiety (before), failure (during), and shame (after) sex. This cycle encourages involuntary celibacy, which in turn increases dissatisfaction and sexual tension. Rising tension in turn promotes unhealthy sexual choices. And so on.
PE during sex is bad enough. PE can be so extreme that it happens before penetration. Every difficult experience makes the mountain harder to climb, the pain more acute, the reward more elusive. Yes, this is the voice of ancient and bitter experience.
How do we exit this spiral?
Premature Ejaculation is never random
By understanding that Premature Ejaculation is never random. If it isn’t random, it’s mechanical. And if it’s mechanical, then the right mechanic with the right tool (excuse the put) can fix it.
No matter how much you may believe you enjoy sex, Premature Ejaculation is the evidence that deep down, you’re ashamed of it. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Premature Ejaculation is common among men with significant sexual shame. It doesn’t stem from physical over-stimulation but from emotional overwhelm. It’s a coping mechanism, a means of short-circuiting the sex act—so deeply desired in the first place—to escape the fear, disgust, and shame of it.
In one short paragraph, we’ve come a long way from the downward spiral of PE. We’re talking about coping mechanisms and wondering how we can alter those mechanisms.
The pulse of life
So how does orgasm actually occur? There’s a bioelectric process at work.
In The Function of the Orgasm, psychoanalyst and biologist Wilhelm Reich writes that our cells constantly pulse—this is literally the ‘pulse of life’. Live cells pulse; dead cells don’t. The source of this pulsing isn’t fully understood, but it’s a form of bioelectric energy or current, which Reich was able to measure in experiments.
The same pulse that animates our cells occurs, in a slower but more powerful form, during sexual intercourse. (Or, for that matter, during masturbation—intercourse between genitals and hands.) Reich emphasises “the fundamental identity between sexual process and life process.”
This is an instance of the ancient philosophical principle, “As above so below.” This means that what happens at the micro level happens at the macro level and vice-versa. Nature reuses the same processes on varying scales to achieve fundamentally similar aims.
The orgasm formula
Reich writes that this cellular pulsing occurs via a four-step dance between the physical cell and the bioelectric current that animates it (yes, this is chicken-or-egg).
Reich calls this dance, the pulse of life, “the orgasm formula”:
The cell contracts to generate a bioelectric charge. At the point of maximum physical contraction, bioelectric energy is released. The cell physically relaxes from the bioelectric discharge. At the point of maximum relaxation (i.e., maximum physical expansion) the cell recommences the cycle.
The same thing happens during sex. Mechanical tension is the friction between penis and vagina, which hardens the penis. Bioelectric charge is what we experience as sexual pleasure. When we hit our ‘pleasure limit’, bioelectric discharge (climax) happens, followed by mechanical relaxation and the softening of the penis.
From this it follows that the cell’s capacity to generate life energy is determined by its ability to expand and contract, like a diaphragm. The more supple the cell, the greater its throughput of life energy—and the more alive we feel.
The cell’s suppleness is determined by the presence or absence of anxiety. When anxiety occurs, the physical cell becomes less supple, reducing the amount of life energy it can generate through tension and release, causing emotional pain.
In other words, shame literally causes the bioelectric process to short-circuit.
Modern man
Throughout this course I’ve argued that modern sexual shame—with all its ailments like PE, Erectile Dysfunction, and porn addiction—is the result of ancient sex-negative physiological conditioning.
Reich: “The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture, is typified by… armouring against his inner nature… fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness.”
Ouch.
Reich notes that this character structure “is not found in the stages of human history prior to the development of patriarchy.”
Premature Ejaculation is just one manifestation of this. The work lies in restoring male sexuality to a healthy basis. The blocker is shame. I can truthfully say that my PE is long gone, along with my shame.
It’s no use crying over spilled milk, as the saying goes. But Premature Ejaculation? That we can do something about. It’s called Releasing Unconscious Shame.