Many men live in fear of mounting a disappointing performance in the bedroom – having problems getting started or reaching finale too quickly.
The latter anxiety leads to some interesting mental strategies that men use during sex to distract themselves from the task at hand and last longer.
They range from thinking about grandparents on their deathbed, to picturing former heads of state. Others do mental puzzles and math.
‘There are definitely men who have asked me how to last longer,’ Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a sexologists and medical advisor for Ro, told DailyMail.com.
She added: ‘distraction is a common technique, but sometimes it doesn’t work, while other times it works too well, and the erotic moment lapses.’
Many men choose to think about things unrelated to sex when they’re having it, thinking that it will keep them from reaching climax. This yields a wide range of techniques.
These tactics are common symptoms of anxiety about sexual performance according to David Rowland a psychology professor at Valparaiso University.
Dr Rowland’s research has found that men’s fears about ejaculating too fast are so intense it makes them ‘reluctant to enter into a new relationship.’
The popular way to deal with this is to focus on other other things than the subject at hand, Dr Rowland told Men’s Health.
The theory, generally, is that thinking about something unrelated to sex or something unappealing could reduce how aroused a person feels, taking them further from the edge of climax, and giving them more time before they finish.
There are a myriad ways to do this.
Some men go straight for something that elicits disgust, in hopes that it will douse their desire. A Reddit user said that he likes to think of a hot dumpster to keep the wolf from the door.
Other people get more creative. At least three men online have shared that they conjure images of the late Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher.
Another Reddit user with the screenname Cyanora, painted a particularly descriptive version of his technique: ‘When I still had that issue, it was Margaret Thatcher, in the nude, playing baseball on a cold day. And Baron Harkonnen was the umpire’.
The latter is described as ‘grotesquely overweight’ and is the villain in the Dune books and movie series.
Some, like 26 year old Simon from France, prefer to keep it in the family – thinking about his great-grandmother.
He told Vice that thinking of her in her final years, when she was bedridden and in ‘awful states’, tampers his arousal, in the ‘rare’ situation that he wants to do so to last longer.
Another common answer has men going back to school – conjuring up math equations in their head.
Zoran, a 26 year old Serbian, told Vice he hated math class in school.
But the mental effort it takes him to figure out the arithmetic actually helps him now, keeping him distracted for longer when he’s doing the deed.
The only complication, he said is that, ‘now when I have to do some simple math I sometimes get a bit of a boner.’
Other men think about similarly innocuous things.
James, a British 25 year old, told Metro he thinks of Paddington Bear eating a jam sandwich to get by.
Another popular technique is for men to think about balls – sports balls that is.
Premature ejaculation might effect between 30 and 70 percent of American men,
America’s favorite pass time is a common answer – with many people sharing they sort through the batting order of their preferred team.
Abroad, other men are thinking about soccer. Harry, a British 26 year old, told Metro he also lists the starting line up from his favorite soccer team. Or if he needs a challenge, he’ll try to list the starts from another team.
Pondering this, he said, ‘It amazes me that I’ve ever had sex at all really.’
Some take a different approach, like Darren, a British 30 year old, who told Metro he’s more in favor of pausing the deed to engage in other activities, like oral stimulation. He said turning his attention towards his partner’s pleasure gave him a much needed break.
‘There are many ways to make love, including using other things besides a penis, such as a vibrator, hands, or the mouth,’ Dr Schwartz said.
The preferred length of a sexual session differs for each person. But a 2017 study of 1,055 women found the ideal romp lasts somewhere between seven and 13 minutes.
Despite that, the average session tends to last around 5.4 minutes, a separate study of 500 couples from 5 countries, performed by sexual health experts at Utrecht University in the Netherlands found.
It’s difficult to know exactly how many men deal with premature ejaculation – since scientists don’t have a window into people’s bedrooms and people don’t tend to be forthcoming about this situation.
But researchers estimate it probably affects somewhere between 30 and 70 percent of American men at some point in their lives, Dr Samuel Deem, a urologist at Charleston Area Medical Center, wrote on Medscape.
Studies have found that longer sex isn’t always better.
In fact, the Utrecht University study found that the more sex acts the partners performed, incorporating oral, or other stimulation, the more likely both partners were to orgasm. The length of the penetration mattered less in terms of overall pleasure.
So many experts tell men to relax, and focus less on the duration, and more on the quality of the time spent with their partner. In fact, they actually advise against distracting yourself during sex.
Not least because it decreases your own pleasure, but also, because it might actually make you finish faster, Dr Michael Perelman, a clinical professor of psychology and reproductive medicine at Cornell University, told Mens Health.
This is because the anxiety that sits in the back of your brain as you conjure up equations and visions of a hot dumpster stimulates the same part of your nervous system as arousal.
So the anxiety adds on top of the arousal and escalates the situation until it explodes, Dr Rowland said.
‘If you’re enjoying the sensations of sex, you’re not focusing on thoughts of, ‘What if I finish too soon”‘.
Dr Rowland insisted that focusing on the moment won’t make you finish faster, even though its counterintuitive.