Everything You Thought You Knew About How Long You Should Last In Bed Is A Lie | Men's Health Magazine Australia

FYI: Women Don’t Want You To Last In Bed As Long As You Think

Still, the signs that men are supposed to last well into the night are everywhere. Some of them come from pop culture – thanks, Beyoncé, for lyrics like “We be all night” in “Drunk in Love” – and the rest are unsurprisingly from porn. (Gasp, right?) “In porn, people can last forever, so then men’s […]

Still, the signs that men are supposed to last well into the night are everywhere. Some of them come from pop culture – thanks, Beyoncé, for lyrics like “We be all night” in “Drunk in Love” – and the rest are unsurprisingly from porn. (Gasp, right?) “In porn, people can last forever, so then men’s understanding is that as long as you last forever too, that’s good,” says Dr Harry Fisch, a clinical professor of urology and reproductive medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. “But then they don’t consider what is average, what’s normal.” Fisch also blames sex ed for the rumour that longer sex = better sex.

Scientists have researched sexual stamina and found a big gap between how long sex actually lasts and how long people would like it to last. A 2005 study of 500 couples from around the world determined that the average intercourse session lasted just 5.4 minutes – with or without a condom. Yet according to a 2008 study, most sex therapists agreed that “desirable” sex lasts anywhere between seven and 13 minutes. (That two- to sevenishminute gap? That’s the sound of men everywhere scratching their heads.)

RELATED: 3 Ways To last Longer In Bed

If 13 minutes sounds like an eternity, don’t worry. You don’t need to have the endurance of a long-distance runner. An obsession with lasting foreeeever during sex could even make you imagine you’ve got penis problems.

“Many young men think they have premature ejaculation when they’re well within normal limits,” says sex therapist Dr Laurie Mintz, author of Becoming Cliterate. So while five minutes may seem like a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things, it’s still two minutes past being considered premature ejaculation, which is generally an emission that happens in three minutes or less. And in those cases, there are some practical solutions for drawing out the process. (See sidebar.)

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Most important, an extralengthy sex session isn’t what most women say they want. “I feel like guys get a lot of anxiety about lasting a long time for their partner,” says Maddie, 21, an arts student. “But really, it’s not about quantity; it’s about quality. And sometimes too long just plain hurts.”

That’s because the majority of women don’t get off from vaginal intercourse alone.

“A lot of men are under the false impression that thrusting hard and lasting long is the key to a woman’s orgasm,” Mintz says. “But it’s the number-one lie about getting laid.”

Sex research backs this up: A study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy in 2017 found that only 18 per cent of women said intercourse alone can make them climax. The rest said clitoral stimulation was either necessary or that it made their orgasms feel even better. What’s more, too much in-andout action can make a woman dry and cause her pain, says Mintz.

RELATED:  How Quick Is Premature Ejaculation?

Women often take longer than men to orgasm – around 20 minutes to a man’s five – but chances are she doesn’t want you pumping away for that long. Most women say they’d rather spend that extra time warming up with foreplay, which Mintz says is a much bigger predictor of female orgasm than a few minutes of thrusting.

Not every woman is cool with superquick intercourse, like Amanda, 28, who says she’s a tento 20-minute woman. In that case, using a benzocaine wipe can numb your shaft to make you last longer, says Fisch. But Amanda adds that no matter how long penetration lasts, foreplay is the most essential part.

“The moments leading up to sex are the most exciting to me,” she says. “The actual penetration, it’s just icing on the cake.”

Instead of dragging things out with endless thrusting, treat foreplay as her main event, Mintz suggests. Slowly count to ten as you sweep your fingertips or tongue along her hot zones. (Think the thin skin on her wrists, her neck and her breasts.) Or run a vibrator around her labia and inner thighs. Focusing on foreplay doesn’t just soothe any “Am I lasting long enough?” anxiety; it also makes the eventual penetrative sex that much more sensual for you both. She’ll feel relaxed and lubricated, and you’ll be more than ready to go. Plus, 77 per cent of women in that 2017 Sex & Marital Therapy study said that spending time building arousal enhanced their orgasms.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to rely on intercourse at all for her to climax – sometimes the best sex happens before you even get to home base

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A HANDY TRICK FOR LASTING LONGER – Jordyn Taylor

DID YOU KNOW you can masturbate your way to better stamina? Light a few candles, grab some tissues, and try the “start and stop” and “squeeze” techniques – also known as “edging”.

The idea is to stimulate yourself until the “point of inevitability of ejaculation but not cross that threshold,” says Dr Larry I. Lipshultz, a urology professor at Baylor College of Medicine. When you feel like you’re about to blow, either stop (the “start and stop” technique) or squeeze the head of your penis until you can safely stroke again without climaxing (the “squeeze” technique). Eventually, you’ll learn to recognise what it feels like to be right on the edge of an orgasm, and to control exactly when you let yourself go.

Training yourself to delay an orgasm takes time (and, let’s face it, a lot of willpower). Practise these techniques three times a week for 30 minutes and you should start seeing results after a few months, Lipshultz says.

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