What Is Early Ejaculation?

What's 'premature ejaculation'? The 4th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), describes early ejaculation as "...the recurrent or persistent onset of orgasm and ejaculation with little sexual stimulation before, on, or shortly after penetration and prior to the person wishing to." It is labeled a mental health problem when it causes emotional distress or creates difficulties inside a relationship.

Officially the label for inability to control climax is 'premature ejaculation'. The term 'premature' means "before it is expected" or "too early". The term 'premature ejaculation' (shortened to PE) signifies that the man's climax was too early. One might wonder, when is too soon and who decides?

Men may unofficially label themselves as having premature ejaculation, while others with similar control aren't concerned. These subjective 'self diagnoses' are illustrated by the findings of Dr. Marilyn Safir from the University of Haifa in Israel. She and her colleagues found little difference in the length of sex between those subjects that regarded themselves 'normal' and those that had requested treatment for a sexual dysfunction.

Alfred Kinsey, in his 1948 report entitled The Sexual Behavior of the Human Male mentioned that in the study of twelve-thousand American men, seventy-five percent orgasmed within two minutes. Most men would claim that 2 minutes is too early, and plenty of women would concur. In a study of 1,000 couples published in 1966, it was reported that the average time of intercourse (from start to finish although not necessarily with steady thrusting) lasted between 4 and 7 minutes. These conclusions raise a fascinating question. If 75 percent of men orgasm in two to seven minutes, who's more typical: a man who lasts fifteen minutes or one who lasts two?

Another way of measuring intimate success is the pleasure and results of intercourse from the female point of view. This was an attempt to move away from a stopwatch dependent definition. With this concept of early ejaculation, it was said a man had premature ejaculation if he climaxed 50% of the time before his partner surely could orgasm. This theory was based on the misconception that women always climax during sexual intercourse if the man lasts long enough.

It's bad logic to attempt to define male sexual control in terms of his partner's ability to orgasm from vaginal stimulation, as our best estimates reveal that approximately thirty to thirty-five percent of all women have ever orgasmed from intercourse, and for the majority of women it's stimulation of her clitoris, that is most likely to be her orgasmic trigger. Thus, for most women, if we use her rate of orgasm during sex as a means to measure his control, most men can be considered 'premature ejaculators' even if they were able to thrust for an hour.