The Science of Premature Ejaculation

Jesse Bering wrote 1,734 words on premature ejaculation. The man does his best to make science interesting.

Apparently, 30 percent of the male population are premature ejaculators, compared to the 0.15 percent of delayed ejaculators. So why such a discrepancy?

Here’s Bering’s theory:

All else being equal, in the ancestral past, wouldn’t there likely have been some reproductive advantages to ejaculating as quickly as possible during intravaginal intercourse—such as, oh, I don’t know, inseminating as many females as possible in as short a time frame as possible? or allowing our ancestors to focus on other adaptive behaviors aside from sex? or perhaps, under surreptitious mating conditions, doing the deed quickly and expeditiously without causing a big scene?

Good old natural selection is to blame for all that embarrassment. Based on a 1984 study from sociologist Lawrence Hong, Bering said:

[Y]oung reproductive-aged males who ejaculated faster (i.e., had more sensitive penises) avoided injury, lived longer and therefore had a greater chance of attaining high status and acquiring the most desirable females.

Since men stopped (consistently) killing each other over sex thousands of years ago, this suggests that premature ejaculation is a heritable trait, which was then confirmed by a team of Finnish psychologists last year.

Well, at least you now know who to blame. For some reason, though, I don’t think that’s a conversation anyone wants to have.