The relationships among ejaculatory control, ejaculatory latency, and attempts to prolong heterosexual intercourse

Although premature ejaculation (RE) is considered the most common male sexual dysfunction, progress in understanding it has been hampered by the lack of a commonly accepted definition. Several different criteria have been used to assess RE with no attempt to validate the extent to which they are related. The current study assessed, in a sample of university men, the occurrence and relationships among four commonly applied RE criteria: perceived control over the occurrence of ejaculation, latency from vaginal penetration to ejaculation, satisfaction with perceived degree of ejaculatory control, and concern over the occurrence of rapid ejaculation. Other aspects of ejaculatory behavior were also assessed such as the thoughts and techniques men used to prolong intercourse and delay ejaculation. Results indicated that although the four RE criteria were significantly correlated, the magnitudes of these correlations were small. This suggests that these commonly used RE criteria are largely independent and are not interchangeable and that research in this area needs to adopt a multivariate approach to assessment. Men's erotophilia/erotophobia was not related to RE. While use of several ejaculatory delaying techniques were individually and jointly predictive of ejaculatory control and/or ejaculatory evidence, there was no strong support for any specific pattern of behavior that is related to better control and longer latencies. Further, experts were not able to distinguish the ejaculatory delaying techniques of the men with the poorest control and shortest latencies from those of the men with the best control and longest latencies.