How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous!
Dear How to Do It,
My wife is currently unable to have sex. During her sexual sabbatical, I want to work on something to really wow my wife when she’s back.
I want to improve my sexual stamina so that when she returns, I can last longer in bed. I have purchased a Fleshlight to simulate vaginal penetration, but I wanted to get sex industry insight as to how porn stars are able to prolong their sexual experiences.
Are there certain physical exercises they utilize or training regimens to increase sexual stamina? While engaging in sex, are there mental exercises or tools they use to prevent overstimulation/excitation? Or is it mostly an illusion aided by cutscenes, position changes, etc.? Any thoughts would be helpful.
—Training to Last
Dear Training to Last,
Male performers in pornography don’t give up their secrets often. The secrets that have been shared with me indicate that each performer uses somewhat different approaches, and that these approaches are simply highly sophisticated versions of the general advice given to men who experience premature ejaculation.
You’re headed in the right direction with your thinking of pornography as an entertainment medium. It isn’t so much that position changes allow for an illusion of lasting longer, though, as it is that interrupting the kind of repetition of stimulation that feels so good it might cause an orgasm interrupts that orgasm. Position changes allow for actually lasting longer. Slowing down before the point of orgasm also tends to cause that interruption. Taking a break to provide oral stimulation or focus on other parts of your wife’s body will serve that purpose, too.
In the interest of full disclosure, yes, use of cutscenes or other creative editing practices can absolutely save a scene that went short or was awkward for any reason, but usually filming runs pretty smoothly with professionals, and if anything, the difficulty occurs when it’s time to ejaculate in a visible and aesthetically pleasing manner. You might watch a few full sex scenes (as opposed to the more common practice of scanning for the couple of minutes that really push your buttons) from couples-oriented or narrative-driven studios with an eye toward what male performers do when they need a break from stimulation of their penis for ideas about how to keep the energy going.
You do have to keep in mind that performers in adult videos are also prioritizing what looks good over what feels good, and achieving the length of time needed for a scene over having the most erotic experience possible. Yes, generally the secondary goal is to experience (and therefore authentically display) pleasure. But it’s a very different main objective than what most people consider when having sex with their partner at home.
If you can get a second erection fairly soon after ejaculating, you might have a quickie with yourself first or come quickly and focus on activities that don’t require an erection during your refractory period. You can experiment with distracting yourself from what your penis is feeling, whether that’s literally baseball or some aspect of the sex you’re experiencing that won’t send you over the edge. And, with your Fleshlight (Disclosure: I’ve had a licensing deal with them for over a decade), you can practice finding the point of no return and then retreating from it so you’re more proficient when you and your wife can return to having sex with each other. (If you’re really stuck on getting info from a pro, my former colleague Erik Everhard has a whole coaching program called The Everhard Academy.)
—Jessica
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