Effect of Premature Ejaculation on Heterosexual Couples and Their Relationships

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The researchers mailed a questionnaire to the men and women in the survey - each member of a couple received a questionnaire. A letter was enclosed, explaining how the study was to be operated, and with instruction on completing and returning the questionnaire. If the man had been in a relationship for longer than three months, he was asked to have his female partner complete the female questionnaire as well.

The men and women were given a separate envelope to return their questionnaires, so privacy could be maintained if necessary. Both the men's and the women's instructions instructed the participants to complete the questionnaire independently. The men's questionnaire and the women's questionnaire  had several sections printed in booklet form. The questionnaires consisted of seven sections and a large number of items.

Male Questionnaire

First men filled in a background section with questions about age, education, relationship status and duration. The men completed a measure of relationship satisfaction scale on five, 7-point bipolar scales: very good to very bad; very pleasant to very unpleasant; very positive to very negative; very satisfying to  very unsatisfying; and very valuable to worthless. They also assessed their own degree of overall sexual satisfaction on a similar scale, rating the quality of their overall sexual relationship in similar fashion. Possible scores on both scales range from 5 to 35, and the higher scores suggest greater satisfaction.

The current sexual behavior section asked questions regarding the men's current sexual and ejaculation tendencies, such as how often they had sex every four weeks, and average length of foreplay. Seven separate measures of premature ejaculation were used in the study: time to ejaculate following penetration (LATENCY); concern about ejaculating too soon; (CONCERN); satisfaction with ability to choose when to ejaculate (SATISFACTION); degree of control over first ejaculation (CONTROL); how often they involuntarily ejaculate before intercourse starts (% ANTIPORTAL); how often men try to prolong intercourse by delaying ejaculation (% DELAY); and lastly tendency to ejaculate sooner or faster than a man wishes (% RAPID).

Men were asked if their partners did anything to delay their ejaculation and prolong intercourse.

The Current Relationship Issues section of the questionnaire looked for sexual problems in the relationship. These were problems over and above premature ejaculation, such as lack of sexual interest, feeling unaroused or turned off, partner asking for sex at inconvenient times for sex, inappropriate length of foreplay, and so on.

The men and women responded by indicating which of the nine listed sexual concerns they'd had in the previous 3 months. The results were summated to create a measure of the participants' number of sexual concerns, where scores could range from 0 to 9.

The Specific Sexual Issues section of the questionnaire looked at men's opinion of whether or not they had a current or past problem with premature ejaculation. Early or premature ejaculation was defined as having an ejaculation before a man wanted it, and in spite of his desire to delay it. Men who indicated they had a premature ejaculation problem were also asked to rate how it affected their self-esteem and their partner's self-esteem on separate 7-point scales which ranged from 1 (biggest negative impact) to 7 (positive impact).

The men in the survey also undertook the same assessment of their sexual pleasure and their partner's sexual pleasure, as well as the impact that their premature ejaculation had on the couple's sexual relationship and the couple's overall relationship.

In addition, the men were asked about any problems they may have had with erectile dysfunction. And lastly they were asked a series of questions designed to discover the impact of premature ejaculation on each man's sexual behavior: for example, if he had ever avoided sexual intercourse because of concerns about premature ejaculation, or if his partner had shown any dissatisfaction with the timing of ejaculation or duration of intercourse.

Women's Questionnaire

The female questionnaire was essentially similar to the male questionnaire. Their questions focused on relationship and sexual satisfaction, significant sexual concerns, and the man's ejaculatory behavior. The questions were adapted so that they were suitably phrased: for example, the women were asked to assess the degree of control their man had over his ejaculation.

Male and female perceptions of male ejaculatory behavior

It may or may not surprise you that the men and women had very different views of the men's ejaculatory behavior! But the odd thing is that the women thought the men had much greater control over their ejaculation than the men's self-assessment would have suggested. Furthermore, they were significantly less concerned about it than the men were.

The female partners tended to think that men "lasted" for a shorter time during intercourse than the men did, but oddly they also believed the men had more control than the men did! The women also showed what might be considered a lack of empathy for the effects of premature ejaculation on men by reporting that (1) they believed the men were less concerned about premature ejaculation than they actually were, and (2) they believed the men were more satisfied with their ability to choose when to ejaculate. More interestingly still, they reported that their concerns about the men ejaculating too fast were lower than the men's concerns on that score. In general, therefore, men seem to define their ejaculations as premature more readily than women do. (A related finding may be that women and men rarely agree on how long intercourse actually lasts - not the objective time it lasts but the perceived time it lasts. In general, women seem to think this is longer than men.)

Most of the men and the women agreed, however, that the men attempted to make intercourse last longer at least some of the time. Few of the men thought that the women did anything specific to prolong intercourse: it may or may not be a surprise to you to learn that a lot of the women said that they actually did change their behavior to prolong intercourse at least some of the time.

By careful analysis of the results of the questionnaires, it became clear that the best indicator of a man's premature ejaculation problem - at least a far as his partner was concerned - were her responses to the "satisfaction" question and the "%rapid" question. Women who believed their partners had a problem with premature ejaculation also believed their men had lower levels of satisfaction around the timing of their ejaculation.

In addition, women whose male partners thought they had a premature ejaculation problem recorded more male concern over premature ejaculation and a higher percentage of intercourse events in which the man ejaculated before he wanted to.

Impact of premature ejaculation on a couple's relationship

What is most important, of course, is how premature ejaculation affects a relationship.

It is not surprising that the investigators found that higher levels of sexual satisfaction were linked to having fewer symptoms of premature ejaculation.

Nor is it a surprise that women recorded rather more sexual concerns (this does not include concerns about premature or rapid ejaculation) than the men did.  And men who regarded themselves as having symptoms of premature ejaculation also recorded more sexual concerns than other men.

Since the drive to have sex is so strong in men, it's not surprising to learn that few men (about one in twenty, in fact) or their partners (about one in fifty) had avoided an opportunity for sexual intercourse because of concerns about rapid ejaculation.

Around one quarter of women expressed dissatisfaction about the duration of intercourse and the timing of their partner's ejaculation, but they did so infrequently.

Perhaps most interestingly of all, few of the men in the study had ever looked for help or information about premature ejaculation.

When men with premature ejaculation were asked to estimate how it affected self-esteem, sexual pleasure and the quality of the sexual relationship, they spoke of a slightly negative impact, but as in other studies, there was no effect on the relationship in general.

So what does it all mean?

First of all, this study shows that men's reports of their ejaculatory behavior can be a little unreliable! And there is often little agreement between men and their partners as to whether or not a man really has premature ejaculation.

Secondly, premature ejaculation is linked to lower sexual satisfaction for both men and their partners. But even so, female partners seem to have little understanding of men's emotional and psychological experiences around premature ejaculation and efforts to delay ejaculation. (The same is true in reverse: 40% of the women said they did specific things to delay ejaculation, but only 17% of their men knew about this.) It seems that men and women do not really share their thoughts, feelings, worries and intentions about ejaculation and the duration of intercourse.

It's fascinating that the women seem to regard premature ejaculation as less of a problem for the man than he does. But we can see that the time of ejaculation is important for both men and women because a vast majority of the men and women said that the man tried to delay ejaculation about 50% of the times a couple made love.

Identifying a premature ejaculation problem

Premature ejaculation has both a behavioral component and an emotional component. Men and women's sexual satisfaction is linked to the man having fewer symptoms of premature ejaculation. Having said that, the impact of premature ejaculation is not severe enough to affect overall relationship satisfaction or stop men having intercourse opportunities. Other studies have shown that men with premature ejaculation say they experience lower pleasure from their orgasms but they have similar levels of relationship satisfaction and make love just as often as men who do not have premature ejaculation.

There is no link for women between premature ejaculation and other sexual worries, but there is for men; those men who are less satisfied with how much control they have over their ejaculation, have more widespread sexual concerns than other men. But premature ejaculation does not have much effect on a couple's sexual pleasure, sexual relationship, or romantic relationship, at least in this study. The obvious explanation is that couples get round premature ejaculation problems with other forms of sexual pleasure such as masturbation and oral sex.

The results do however prove that the timing of ejaculation is important to both men and women (no surprise there!).They also show that in most cases, premature ejaculation has a slightly adverse effect on men and women's sexual satisfaction - even if the couple do not seek therapy of avoid sexual intercourse. However, for some men, rapid ejaculation has an extremely negative impact on sexual pleasure and self-esteem.

Drug treatment for premature ejaculation

Effect of premature ejaculation on a man and woman's sex life

Premature ejaculation - and your relationship

What is an ejaculation - the physiology of ejaculation

The medical view of premature ejaculation

Drugs and premature ejaculation

Other pages on this website about the treatment of premature ejaculation

The effective treatment of premature ejaculation

Treatments not requiring drugs