By M.J. Ecker
One nice thing about being a proud, frequent masturbator is you don't need to feel bad about not having sex every other day, like all those friends of yours who claim they "don't need to masturbate." (Yeah, right.) Sure, sex is still great when it's done well, under the proper conditions, and when you're ready for it. But the truth is, masturbation can go a long, long way toward making you an incredible, fully satisfied sex partner.
To consider how masturbation can help improve your sexual performance, let's look at a couple challenges of having sex with another person:
Self-acceptance. When you're having sex, it's no time to be self-conscious, worrying about your body or what you may or may not be doing right. The first step to successful self-acceptance is directly related to masturbation. You need to fully accept the fact that you masturbate and enjoy masturbation. If you enjoy masturbation, you enjoy your penis – and almost without exception, if you can get great enjoyment from your penis, then someone else can, too.
At JackinWorld we are constantly getting letters from readers who are scared about having sex because they're insecure about their bodies. This often relates to their penis – they may be uncircumcised (or circumcised), or their penis may be smaller than average, or curved slightly, etc. Or it could have to do with something else, like excessive body hair, or even something entirely common and normal like one testicle being larger than the other. Even though these letters have almost nothing to do with masturbation I often write back and tell them not to worry so much. Since no one's body is perfect, when two young people get together oftentimes both of them are insecure about their bodies. But you have to get beyond that. As I recently told one reader, if a girl were to react negatively to his ample body hair, that suggests the couple doesn't know each other well enough to be having sex in the first place. This is what I mean about being ready – being mature enough to have sex means not only are you mature enough to accept your body for what it is, you're mature enough to accept your partner's body as well.
When we masturbate, our body gives us pleasure. Try to develop a deeper understanding of what that means: You were given this incredible gift to experience sexual pleasure, even without another person being there. You have to give your penis and the rest of your body some credit for that, don't you?
Staying power. This is a big one. Many of the letters we get from the "scared of sex" crowd relate to this – a guy feels he ejaculates too quickly when he masturbates, so how will he perform with someone else? But I have no qualms about saying that if you ejaculate too quickly from masturbation, you are missing the point of masturbation and are just plain masturbating wrong. So what's the "right" way?
Now I realize there are times when you're unable to spend 45 minutes masturbating. Perhaps you're in the shower or the bathroom at school, or you have to get out of bed and go to work, but you just have to masturbate. (We all know the feeling!) But these kinds of sessions should be much more the exceptions than the rule. Why? Because if your goal is to ejaculate quickly, you're doing yourself more harm than good. It's like practicing to be a baseball outfielder by seeing how many different ways you can drop the ball, or practicing your writing by seeing how many words you can misspell. When you masturbate you don't necessarily need to do it for the longest time possible, but you should at least be getting a feel for how your body works, what gives you maximum pleasure, and what you can do to throttle back that pleasure when necessary. And that can be done only when you have some time and you're in a low-stress environment.
Being a good masturbator – and by direct extension a good sex partner – is about developing discipline and self-control. That means being able to force yourself to throttle back at moments when plowing ahead would result in a "too soon" ejaculation. You've probably got enough self-discipline not to stuff yourself with cookies and soda 15 minutes before dinnertime, no matter how hungry you are. It's the exact same thing with both masturbation and sex.
So how do you develop this discipline? There are a few things you can do. If you're masturbating in the garden-variety, hand-on-penis way, three main variables are at work: hand speed, hand pressure, and fantasy. For most people maximum stimulation is produced with a faster hand speed and a tighter grip, so reducing one or both of these will reduce stimulation and make ejaculation a little less imminent. So will taking your mind for a moment off that girl who sits next to you in math. Masturbating to orgasm is like a locomotive slowly accelerating up a hill; if the engineer reduces the power, the train will stop accelerating or will slow down. And if the power is shut off the train will certainly slow down. This what you must do: reduce the "power" to keep that locomotive from going over the top. Sometimes that means taking your hand off your penis altogether, taking a deep breath, and relaxing for a minute while you think of something non-sexual. With time you'll learn it's much better in the end to stop or slow down than to barrel ahead and finish with a disappointing orgasm. And the "too soon" ones are usually much more disappointing than the ones that happen somewhat later.
If you're having real trouble getting yourself to stop when you need to, try squeezing your testicles a little – but not so much that it actually hurts. This may trigger a reduction in excitement, kind of like applying the brakes in our locomotive analogy.
So when is the right time to finally ejaculate? If you're in your bed at night, or in the afternoon when nobody is home, I'd say you should be able to masturbate at least 20 minutes without ejaculating, including resting periods. If you're able to go 45, all the better. Your hand doesn't have to be moving the whole time; by all means stop and take a break if you want. (Good lovers do this all the time – although if you're wearing a condom you'll need to keep an erection unless you put on a new condom before starting up again.) Even if you've been masturbating only for a couple months you should know how your body feels when you're about to ejaculate, so when you get close to that point in a session (or a little sooner), that's when you need to "throttle back." When you have sex, you do exactly the same thing. That's how you develop staying power for intercourse.
By the way, you'll get a better approximation of intercourse if you use the "Vagina" technique in JackinExpert Collection or use one of the Simulators described in JackinExpert. Getting stimulation by moving your hips rather than your hand definitely feels different, and thrusting the hips tends to speed up your progress toward orgasm, so it's a good idea to know your body under these stimulation conditions as well.
Two-person exercises. One downfall to solo masturbation is that several important challenges of sex aren't involved: the ability to create someone else's pleasure, and the ability to communicate openly. But if you're masturbating with a partner you can work on these areas, too. Great two-person sex involves lots and lots of foreplay (non-intercourse pleasure-giving prior to intercourse), and masturbation can be an excellent form of foreplay. So if you're being masturbated, lie back and relax, but try really hard to tell your partner what feels best. Perhaps they're concentrating too much on the shaft of your penis and you'd like more attention to the head, or vice versa. Or their speed or pressure might be a little off, or you might want them to slow down because you're nearing orgasm and don't want to ejaculate yet. Whatever the case, try to concentrate on positives: Tell your partner what feels good, and never criticize (although if something is uncomfortable you should say so). If you're really enjoying it, it never hurts to tell your partner what a great job they're doing – they'll certainly appreciate it!
If you're masturbating your partner, make a point of asking what feels good, and then do exactly as they say – the more you do this the more feedback they'll provide. Try different things and look for subtle clues about what's working and what isn't; look to see if your partner's breathing changes, their eyes close, etc. And don't be embarrassed to talk a little "dirty" – if there's something verbal you know turns your partner on, like a personal compliment or a certain story, do it! Remember, the better you are at providing and reinforcing pleasure, the more willing your partner will be to do the same for you when they return the favor.
Masturbating another person, or engaging in mutual masturbation (where you're both masturbating each other), is like a dress rehearsal for full-on sex where there really aren't any limitations on what the two of you do together. So it makes sense to do it with someone you're very comfortable around. Fortunately, as long as you're careful where semen is deposited and don't engage in any unsafe acts, there's no risk of pregnancy, HIV infection, or spread of other STDs.
Final thoughts. I've said before that the best masturbators make the best sex partners – so even if you don't "do it" every night of the week like those randy friends of yours, you're doing the right thing simply by doing what you love to do: masturbating all by yourself. Just make sure at least some of the time you're doing it the right way.