Sex anxiety and premature ejaculation: “Sex has always made me anxious”

(approx 5 minute read)

Men’s Mental Fitness reckons there’s plenty of blokes that are dealing with sex anxiety and performance issues. X has kindly shared his story about something we’re calling ‘sexiety’. 

If this wasn’t anonymous, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be sharing this story, because, let’s face it, men talking about performance anxiety and premature ejaculation isn’t, well, very manly.

But I bet there’s millions of men up and down the country who feel performance pressure and sexual anxiety.

I blame Jim Levenstein. Remember, the guy from American Pie who had the unfortunate experience of ejaculating twice with Nadia before she’d touched him.

I was about 12 when the film came out and hadn’t (rightly) had sex by then. Apart from watching Pretty Women and the odd episode of Eurotrash when my parents had gone to bed, this was one of the few times I’d been exposed to sex.

No idea why but I thought about Jim’s premature ejaculation on the day I lost my virginity at 17.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t last much longer than 12 seconds the first time round but pretended for another minute that I hadn’t come until I lost the rigidity in my penis and had to come clean.

After the sixth or seventh attempt in the coming days I started to relax and last longer. Thankfully. The ‘fear’ had gone. 

We stayed together for a few years before I went on to have another long-term relationship into my mid-twenties. Same issue at the start, all over in a flash, but then relaxed into it. 

It wasn’t until I had a period of living the single life that my ‘sexiety’ reared its head again and started to become more of a fixture.

It made sense. I was meeting women for shorter periods of time (a mixture of one night stands and short term romances), not getting comfortable with them worried it wouldn’t go well.

There were the ones where I didn’t last long, and there were the ones where I couldn’t get it up. The first time that happened I was shocked. I walked away feeling a sense of shame, like I’d failed in being a man.

My way of overcoming the ‘sexiety’ was to ensure I was drunk when sleeping with a new person. It worked but not exactly a ‘healthy’ approach to it. That was fine for the first few occasions but there was always going to be first sober sex, which invariably didn’t go well. 

Most of the women were kind about what happened but I had the odd difficult moment or throwaway comment. One lady uttered under her breath, ‘is that it’. That felt great. Another told me I was awkward and weird and left my flat. That felt great. 

Aside from the drunk approach, I trialled a few other avoidance tactics. One was making up a reason I couldn’t go back to the house of the lady I was seeing at the time.

There was one occasion in the early days with my now wife where I purposely cycled my bike to a date so I ‘had to’ cycle home and we couldn’t go home together. She thought I’d gone off her.

A few dates before that we had sex for the first time. I was drunk. It went well. The next morning there was the ‘dreaded’ first sober sex. It was a nightmare. Six hours in bed. I went from not being able to get it up to thinking it was all going to be over in seconds. Welcome back shame! Not from her, she was nothing but wonderful about it, but from me. 

At the time I was having some therapy and I decided I’d raise. It felt excruciatingly uncomfortable to talk about, especially as the therapist was female. She suggested I talk about it with my new girlfriend. So I did. Again, my now wife was nothing but accepting, kind and chilled out about it all. 

In the following months, the short shags or literal ups and downs of my erection continued, but eased over time. 

We now even joke about it if it ever happens. Not once did or has my wife ever doubted my love or attraction for her, which helped hugely with easing the worry. 

The feelings of failure and shame still linger in the background every now and then but I’m certainly kinder to myself.

I may be the only man in the world that has experienced the above to some degree or another, but I doubt it. So hopefully this is a positive life story for other men to think about.

You aren’t the only man who sometimes comes too quick or can’t get it up.