Mistakes When Trying to Last Longer in Bed

If you’re trying to last longer in bed, the first thing you should do is probably stop worrying about it.  That might sound counterintuitive, but you need to make sure you have the right attitude about improving your sexual performance first and foremost.  The single biggest mistake that men make when trying to last longer in bed is probably misunderstanding their situation.  Premature ejaculation is extremely common—in fact it’s almost ubiquitous according to many surveys and studies.  So if you’ve been building your problem up into a big thing, you need to knock down those perceptions.  It’s not a big thing—it’s a very common thing.  It’s also something which you can tackle.  But it’s going to be a lot easier if you don’t attach too much angst to it.

Once you realize that a lot of men are trying to last longer in bed, even though they’re too embarrassed to talk about it, you can realize that your sexual weaknesses aren’t who you are—they’re just part of being a man.  Nor are they an integral part of being a man; they’re just something which you have to work at overcoming if you want to last longer and have a more fulfilling sexual life.  Refusing to identify with premature ejaculation is imperative.  It’s something you have, not something which defines you or your relationship.

Perhaps the next most common mistake is another one which is simply hardwired into many men’s mindsets.  While this may or may not ever change depending on who you are, you may think of sex as a race to the finish line.  There’s a good chance that a lot of this has actually been fed to you by the media and by other sources of social conditioning, and that it isn’t really a part of who you are.  If that’s the case (which it probably is if you genuinely want to last longer in bed), you will need to de-condition yourself.

You can’t go into a sexual encounter thinking about an orgasm.  That’s a big mistake.  The reason is that our bodies can be very responsive to our minds, particularly where sex is concerned.  If you think about being turned on, you can get turned on.  If you think about having an orgasm, you can often have one with a lot less stimulation or arousal than if you weren’t thinking about having an orgasm.  So if you go into your sexual encounter thinking of the finish line, your body is likely to take the cue and jump straight to the end of the race—and it’ll be over before it began.

Another common error men make is in assuming that the women they are having sex with want nothing but hard, vigorous thrusting.  In reality many people, women especially, enjoy broader sexual experiences.  Women aren’t conditioned by society as much as men to race to the finish line—since they are open to more foreplay, you shouldn’t feel pressured by an expectation which may not exist.  In fact, some women can’t climax during penetration at all.  If you indulge in other sexual pleasures instead of just thrusting, odds are not only will your partner have a more enjoyable time, but you’ll last longer since you won’t be racing to the finish line (or putting all that pressure, physically, on the head of your penis).  One reason that women last longer than men is that they are physiologically able to do so without developing the skill, but the other reason is that they aren’t thinking about having an orgasm the whole time, and they define sex as more than just penetration.

Try to get to know your partner as an individual in bed.  If you define sex as intercourse only, sex is going to be pretty much the same for every couple.  If that’s how you’ve been doing things, odds are you actually don’t know your partner as well in the bedroom as you do in other aspects of your shared lives.  Sexuality is a lot more complex than that however, and odds are your partner has a distinctive sexual personality and you do too.  So try and get to know what your partner likes, and explore what you like at the same time.  Many people have no idea what their preferences and tastes are until they actually make the effort to find out.

Not only can all of these changes to your sex life pay off in terms of helping you to last longer in bed, but they can also help you to find more fulfillment in your relationship altogether.  Sex plays a huge part in our society, but at the same time, many people never truly explore their own sexuality, instead accepting the role they are given by society.  Society can be very misleading, though.  After all, if you’ve been fretting about your premature ejaculation, you might think you have a major problem.
That’s something society has taught you which isn’t true.  The actual reality is that premature ejaculation is extremely common and very treatable—and for most men who put in the effort, it is something which can be overcome and which isn’t going to be a big deal in the long run.  Did you know that on a famous survey by Alfred Kinsey, more than three fourths of all men reported that they ejaculated within two minutes or less of penetrating their partners?  That’s a meaningful statistic, and it should tell you a lot more than all the messages you receive saying you have a serious problem and which try to call your manhood into question.

The biggest mistake which men make in bed is thinking that sex is something that people are automatically good at—it’s not.  Just because the instinct to have sex is hardwired into most people, that doesn’t mean that the skills which go along with that instinct are innate.  Sex is highly individual, and like many other skills, lasting longer in bed is something that takes work to develop.