Porn is ruining my relationship. My future husband who is 46 suffers from delayed ejaculation. He can only ejaculate using his hand. This has been going on for over a year. We sought help and he was advised to cease masturbation for 90 days and stop all porn use to see if it helped. I believed he had done so but nothing got better. I continued to look for answers, all the while he continued to view porn and masturbate on a daily basis. I recently found this out and am furious! I always want to have sex and he turns me down. I also would not have a problem with porn or masturbation if it was not effecting our sex life but it is. He has now (after being caught) agreed to the same thing again but I don’t trust him at all. I think it’s likely best for me to leave this relationship because I cannot get past this. Any advice?
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You raise three issues:
• Your man’s ejaculatory idiosyncracies—delayed ejaculation and only being able to come using his own hand.
• His porn use.
• And your anger that he broke his agreement to stop masturbating to porn.
It’s difficult to say anything definitive based on your brief question. But it appears that your guy’s porn habit has trained him to delay his ejaculation and come only using his own hand. You say you “sought help,” and whoever counseled you advised him to stop porn and stop masturbating for 90 days. You don’t say who this counselor was, but I have serious questions about the advice you received. I’m guessing this counselor was not a sex therapist. Telling a man who enjoys stroking to porn to simply stop cold turkey would be like telling a woman to walk past 100 shoe stores without ever looking in the window. It’s unrealistic.
In my view, it’s fine for him to masturbate to porn if that’s how he self-soothes. But two things are not fine—his refusal to have sex with you and his self-training to ejaculate only with his own hand, which excludes you. As far as this ejaculatory style is concerned, he trained himself that way and he can RETRAIN himself to expand his ejaculatory repertoire beyond his hand to your hand, your mouth, and intercourse. Sex therapists have developed a program that helps men accomplish this retraining. I’ve distilled their program into a low-cost, self-help e-article, Can’t Get There? Help for Men’s Ejaculation/Orgasm Problems. I suggest you both read it and implement the program over a few months. It may help.
But you also have additional issues: his porn use, his agreement to stop, and his breaking that agreement. That speaks to trust, power, and control issues in your relationship, and for those issues, self-help has limits. I suggest you consult a sex therapist, not just some random therapist, but someone specifically trained in sex issues. Here’s the simple truth: Most men masturbate considerably more than most women. This isn’t a character flaw or a rejection of you. It’s hormonal. Testosterone drives men to do it. Every female-to-male transsexual I’ve spoken to has reported astonishment at how much he’s masturbated since taking testosterone supplements as part of gender transitioning. And every male-to-female trans women I’ve spoken to has reported masturbating a lot less since taking estrogen.
In my view, it’s unrealistic to tell him to stop masturbating. He agreed to stop to placate you. Clearly, he wants to please you. But it’s a rare man who can stop solo sexing. To me, the issue is not his masturbation per se. It’s his reluctance to have partner sex with you. I bet a sex therapist could help you guys establish a schedule so you can enjoy the sex you want/need and he can still masturbate at other times.
Sex therapy usually takes four to six months of weekly one-hour sessions. It costs $150-200/hour, though many therapists discount fees for those who can’t afford standard rates. If you’re unfamiliar with sex therapy, clients DON’T have sex with therapists and therapists DON’T watch clients having sex. For more, read my low-cost article, An Intimate Look at Sex Therapy, and/or see the film, “Hope Springs” with Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. To find a sex therapist near you, visit the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, or the American Board of Sexology.
I sympathize with your frustrations, but I really think you guys can work this out with the help of a sex therapist. I certainly hope you can. Goo luck!