This appendix has to do with Seman’s Stop-Start technique, one of two techniques (the other being Masters and Johnson’s Squeeze technique) that enables a man to directly and very quickly deal with premature ejaculation.

Both techniques are “American,” in that they were first introduced in writing by American scientists though, I daresay, they had been used before by other people of American and different nationalities.

What these American scientists did--Drs. Masters and Johnson for the Squeeze technique and Dr. Seman for the Stop-Start technique--was actually put the rationale behind and, far more importantly for us lay people, the actual steps to take, in order to achieve control over one’s ejaculation. That in itself is a major contribution.

Among other things, it removed the mystique of premature ejaculation, re-casting it from the psychoanalytic interpretation of its being a hostile act that men did unconsciously, but quite effectively, to a partner they deeply resented. It was a win-win situation for guys. For one, it absolved them from blame (premature--or any other kind of ejaculation, for that matter--is, after all is said and done, an involuntary act) which is win #1; A-N-D it deprived the woman of a lot of pleasure which is win #2 if you dislike the partner you’re with. A-N-D, in typical psychoanalytic fashion, this being a win-win situation for guys, automatically made it a lose-lose situation for gals: After all, it deprived her, first and foremost of a tremendous amount of pleasure (loss #1) and second, of any “right” to blame, berate or beat him up for this since it was “involuntary” and thus not his “fault.”

The simple act of writing down in clear, easy-to-follow instructions what a man (and his partner) must do to help him delay ejaculation, Drs. Masters, Johnson and Seman changed everything. Before this, one of the most popular methods of treating premature ejaculation was the psychoanalytic way: Since premature ejaculation was simply a manifestation of underlying hostility against the wife or an unconscious rage/resentment towards all women one should treat the cause, rather than the symptom. Yet such a treatment plan yielded very poor results. A man could spent 2-6 years getting his premature ejaculation “treated indirectly” by trying to understand where his resentments lay, and while he may in time understand such resentments, alas, he still remained a premature ejaculator. So, premature ejaculation was re-cast, from an involuntary symptom one could do nothing about to a behavioral and thus voluntary action one could do practically everything about.

Alas (or maybe hooray) I do not have the original instructions written by these doctors. I first came across them in graduate school and have since passed on to many clients whom I hoped would benefit from them. I say “hooray” because, when I passed these instructions on, I was around to discuss these techniques. Oftentimes, my clients had questions about the instructions which, happily, I was around to answer. I have incorporated the questions they asked into these instructions. I have also tried to assuage concerns, relate to other feelings, thoughts, successes and failures previous couples have experienced while trying out these techniques. Under such circumstances, with me nakatutok sa kanila (by their side after each and every encounter and oftentimes, in between, if they called for further instructions, reassurance, encouragement, etc.) success rates were 100%. I do not know what the results will be now, when these instructions are given cold, without me to follow up, answer questions, deal with concerns that inevitably crop up, etc. as they will be now. Methinks the results will be just as good. I certainly have taken pains to make it so. By being ‘forced” to share these instructions in my own words, I have included the most common questions and most frequent concerns raised by my previous clients. Even more importantly, the suggestions they gave and the tips they shared that made following the instructions if not more fun (which, happily it was for some) then certainly far less excruciatingly embarrassing or self-flogging.

If you have any you would like to share, please write to me at Anvil Publishing so I can incorporate them in future instructions.

SO...without further ado, here is Seman’s Stop-Start technique, starting with tips learned and shared when dealing with Filipino clients:

TIPS to MAKE FOLLOWING THE STEPS MORE FUN/LESS DEBILITATING:

1. Doing it with a partner is more fun and more effective but you can certainly do it alone too.

2. Whenever possible, choose that partner who is the one true love of your life and, preferably, one who feels the same way about you.

Other than the more obvious reason that things are always better with the love of your life, whoever does the steps with you will need some patience. Not a whole lot of patience since, like the good behaviorists that they are, MJ and S--Drs. Masters, Johnson and Seman--made the instructions so crystal clear and in such small incremental steps that one can’t help experiencing success and thus reinforcement/reward for following the steps). Still, patience is required, as are creativity, grace and goodwill.

The love of your life who happens to feel the same way about you will have great reserves of all of the above, far more than what is needed to complete this program.

However, sometimes the love of your life isn’t around yet. Ain’t life a bitch? To get her you have to woo (and win) her. While being a Bill Gates with tons of money but hopefully far less hair falling over your eyebrows might help win her, being a terrific lover would too.

It’s like the chicken and the egg scenario: Do you need to be a terrific lover first, thus winning the love of your life OR Do you win the love of your life first and then with her, learn to be a terrific lover? Which comes first (in a manner of speaking)? If you follow this program faithfully, the chicken, the egg, everyone will come first but you. I promise.

Having said that, let us go back to the matter at hand. In the absence of the love of your life, a like of your life (or even a like of right now) would do too. As would, perhaps, even a merely congenial, willing woman whose services you paid for (if you were so inclined). What is necessary is her willingness willing to work with you until the end (anywhere from 5-20 sessions, in my experience) A-N-D that an attractiveness sufficient for you to get an erection.

What you want is to be in control of your responses, including ejaculation when with an absolutely, gorgeous, riveting partner. If she isn’t the one with whom you’ve done these techniques with, then second best is to be with someone similar (at least in ability to turn you on). Otherwise it’s not too good. Anyone can hold off when with someone not super turnie-onnie. The crucial test is to be able to hold off, receive and give pleasure with someone you genuinely care and deeply lust for.

#3. even more important than the above two,.... in fact, is THE single most important instruction of this entire procedure: Be analytical.

People have this romanticized notion that to be magical sex has to be irrational and/or inexplicable as well. Baloney! Especially when it comes to premature ejaculation. This is not to say there can’t be any magical, inexplicable occurrences in bed. But one doesn’t negate the other. A sexual encounter can be both magical a-n-d scrutini-zable. A person can be both romantic--whimsical even--and yet still be analytical.

In curing premature ejaculation, being analytical is far more important.

Or, perhaps the motto should be analyze, then romanticize.

In an attempt to delay their ejaculations, men most often these two things:

(1) Use desensitizing creams and/or 2-3 condoms to lessen the feeling, or

(2) Distract themselves through non-sexy thoughts (taxes, counting backwards, etc.) or pain(digging one’s fingernails into one’s palms).

Big mistake.

True, the sensitizing creams and use of three condoms at the same time may work, but it’s a sorry world indeed if the only way a man can last longer is if his penis is slathered with cream or encased in what is, in effect, saran wrap. It can’t be all that much fun for the guy (even if he doesn’t get an allergic reaction from all of this which some men do, by the way).

It’s no fun for the gal either. Not if she truly cares for her partner. How can she truly get down/ get into it if she realizes that the only way he can continue is if he doesn’t (get down/ get into it). and yet knows that the only way he can hold off is if sex isn’t quite as pleasurable as it can be.

What a gal really want is a guy who can control himself while relishing the sights, sounds, look and feel of her and, better yet, of the two of them together.

Men have the mistaken notion that to make lovemaking last longer, they have to distract themselves from what’s going on. That is why they count to twenty backwards, think of death, taxes, their ex-wives or dig their fingernails into their palms hoping the pain will distract them from coming. Again, another big mistake. Distraction usually makes you come faster PLUS you have all this unpleasantness--painful palms, painful thoughts painful math--that you didn’t have to deal with in the first place.

Seman’s stop-start technique suggests the exact opposite. Instead of distracting yourself from your feelings, you concentrate on them so that you can pinpoint the different reactions your body has to what’s going on. To do this you have to be analytical.

What do you have to be analytical about? Primarily your own responses. Figure out just exactly when it is you reach the point of ejaculatory inevitability (PEI). Or, in layman’s terms, the “point of no return” when, no matter what you do or say simply to last longer no longer works. Once you reach PEI, no matter what you do to prevent it, you can’t. Ejaculation is not an option, it just is.

Having pinpointed the PEI, you go back a few microseconds before. What is the point just before this point of no return for you? Is it when you shudder a few times? or maybe it’s when you hold your breath and turn all red? Or you pump a bit faster and start hyperventilating? Each guy has his own unique and lovable things he does just before PEI). Hold on to that thought and to that movement. This point before PEI (PBPEI) is the critical moment.

And all you have to do when that critical moment comes is nothing, You stop whatever it is you are doing in order to break the momentum of the act. You stop because you don’t want to come just yet and stopping (whatever it is you’re doing) stops you (from coming).

Later, when you are certain the momentum has been broken and the urge to come has subsided, you start once more, picking up from where you left off. And stop, once more, at PBPEI. You continue doing this five to six times per session. (Less if you;re tired, but no more even if you feel you can go on).

After a day or two, have another session, doing the same thing: Get horny, get her horny, make love, stop at PBPEI, start once more when the urge to come subsides (UTCS) and stop at PBPEI, start after UTCS, stop at PBPEI, stop at UTCS five to six times and then end the session,..until the next day or the next two days.

Pretty soon you will see that you can hold off longer and longer, until you can hold off for as long as you like.,..which is what we (therapist and client) want too.

#4 a. Understand the rationale of Seman’s STOP-START technique so that you’ll be more ganado (encouraged) to continue till you succeed fully (being able to hold off for 20-30 minutes is good...holding off for 60 minutes not such a bad goal either).

Masters and Johnsons state than an overwhelming majority of premature ejaculators in the U.S. had their first sexual experience in a car. My own clinical experience bears out that many Filipino men who are premature ejaculators had their first sexual experience with a prostitute. Under both these circumstances, speed is of the essence. Coming quickly when having sex in a car is good because it means less chances of getting caught by the cops, your parents, roving teenage gangs. Coming quickly when with a prostitute is also good (at least for the prostitute) because it means more time with other customers and thus more money.

What has happened here is that both kinds of men--Americans in the car and Filipinos with prostitutes--have been reinforced (rewarded) for coming quickly. Even if they are later punished for doing so (if only by themselves), it is difficult to countermand what one has learned the first time, indeed one of the most powerful teachers in our lives.

So what has this first time taught them? That penis in vagina (sometimes, alas, even near vagina) means immediate ejaculation.

What Seman’s Stop-start technique teaches them is that penis in vagina does NOT mean immediate ejaculation. First time: penis in vagina = immediate ejaculation

Seman’s Stop-Start technique:

Penis in vagina + lots of time humping and grinding + damn good time

Damn good time + more bumping and grinding = ejaculation when both are good and ready

But this one learns most effectively by doing and actually experiencing, rather than merely being told.

Thus, each time you put your penis in her vagina and don’t come is another valuable lesson learned, each lesson eroding the very powerful lesson you learned the first time.

Through Seman’s Stop Start Technique, you learn that you can (1) be erect; (2) insert your penis in her vagina, (3) enjoy yourself and have her enjoy you without coming immediately. Through Seman’s Stop-Start Technique, you substitute the bad habit of (1) inserting and then (2) coming with the wonderfully good habit of (1) inserting (2) pumping, thrusting or whatever-ing (3) coming only when you both want it.

#4 b. Understand the rationale of Seman’s Stop-Start technique so that you won’t be djahe (embarrassed) about seemingly being so self-absorbed about your own pleasure and your own reactions. “I mean, isn’t true lovemaking an interaction of both your needs, wants and desires? So what’s all this focusing on your PBPEI shit?” you may be asking yourself, well, don’t.

The operative word here is seemingly. You are not being selfish or self-absorbed or a typical male macho bastard sexist pig when you focused on your own pleasure and your own sensations. You are simply following instructions. Instructions that need to be followed if Seman’s Stop-Start technique is to work.

You are asked, specifically, to focus exclusively on the erotic sensations emanating from your penis while it is being stimulated (or you are stimulating yourself). You are specifically told not to pay attention to your partner not because you are a male so what else can we expect but this kind of selfishness? ( No, no, no. Sex therapists are, on the whole, great fans of men )and women--as I hope is fairly obvious by now). It is not even because this is what lovemaking is all about. Rather, you are asked to focus exclusively on your sensations because this is what is needed right now.

Look at this task as the medicine you have to take (complete self absorption on your part, patience na dadating rin ang oras mo--your time will come too--on the part of the woman) to cure you of your dysfunction.

After the dysfunction is cured, you can go back to being loving, responsive, caring lovers. because this may distract him from what he is feeling or make him anxious about not pleasing her enough (or, indeed, at all). As the Eraserheads song goes: “Esay (easy) ka lang” (Just take it easy. Your time will come. For you that means your time to show your partner what a sensitive, considerate, wonderful lover you are; For the woman, your time to get some pleasure in your encounters...which is why it is much better to do this with the love of your life who knows she will be in here for the long haul).

It is important you get in touch with your previously repressed or denied erotic sensations because that is the only way you can discover your PEI and thus your PBPEI, the understanding of which are the very crux of this technique.

It is also important that all that is asked of you is to stop before PEI, that is, to stop at PBPEI. Stopping requires much less than trying to control your ejaculations--You’ve tried that before and it didn’t work. All stopping does is get the feelings to subside but in a way that doesn’t insist you deny what you are feeling. Stopping at PBPEI will cause the sensations--wonderfully, tingly, delicious sensations--to subside (if not altogether disappear). But no big deal, right? No big deal because they will all come back. And even if they don’t come back immediately (though usually they do,..and you will get better at this as you get your timing right), that too, is not big deal. Because you are in control, you see, and can always bring back these wonderfully delicious sensations.

This, in fact, is one of the most important lessons of Seman’s Stop-Start (and, for that matter, Masters and Johnson’s Squeeze) technique: that you don’t have to come every time you have an erection. That it isn’t sayang (an absolute bloody waste) if you get an erection and it goes away. Like the potholes on the road and wedgies up your crack-- except so much more pleasant than either--erections come back. and, just as exciting, erections can last.

You knew this intellectually before. Everyone seemed to last longer than you. You couldn’t help wondering: “Kailan kaya dadating ang araw ko?” (when will my day ever come?) Well, very soon if not right now. As soon as you learn to recognize your sensations and not be overwhelmed by them, learn to recognize PEI and PBPEI and feel confident about controlling all these.

#5. Do not set yourself up for failure; rather do whatever you can to ensure success. As Emily Dickinson said, “Nothing succeeds like success.”

How to do this?

For one thing, always start from sexy stuff, but not too, too sexy. Always start from a position of strength; that is, with an activity that’s horny-making but not one that drives you absolutely bananas, so that holding off for even a microsecond later is a terrific achievement for you. Start with something you find sexy but have no difficulty controlling; even if it seems as “harmless” (to others) as looking at her from across the room.

Congratulate yourself for your success so far and then move on to something sexier (thus making your sense of achievement even more meaningful).

Remember, always start with something you can handle, then move on to something sexier, and when it gets very sexy, when you feel you are about to come; that is, when you reach the PBPEI, simply stop. Then continue (start), then stop, etc. etc.

Remember that for most guys, the male superior position and the rear entry (doggie style, not anal sex) are THE most sexy positions of all so you may want to reserve this for last. Of course, it’s different strokes for different folks and you reserve for last what is the position/activity that is sexiest for you.

#6. Be patient with yourself. You have to make tiyaga (be persistent). Actually you need not only patience but persistence, a certain stick-to-it-iveness. And when you find yourself berating yourself for having to do this at all, wondering why “only I have to go through all this just to last longer” STOP! Stop berating yourself (as Filipinos are wont to do). But don’t stop trying.

If you or your partner are too tired to try one night, this is NOT a sign to discontinue the entire program, but to stop merely for today and see how you feel tomorrow or the day after that.

Sometimes Filipino men are too hard on themselves. They say to themselves: “Millions don’t have to do this, why do I?” Let me quickly say that, while millions may not be doing this, perhaps millions should. In the U.S., premature ejaculation is considered the most prevalent sexual dysfunction among men. In the Philippines (at least in my clinical experience), men do not go to therapy for premature ejaculation as often as they do for impotence. But that doesn’t mean premature ejaculation doesn’t exist. In fact, based on what my female clients say, premature ejaculation is alive and kicking.

With the use of Seman’s technique perhaps it will not kick so high nor be as rampant.

Some couples may like the woman to do more than be understanding while the guy stops and starts intermittently. Some couples may like their women to be more active while helping the guy delay his ejaculation. This is a valid, though certainly not necessarily better (nor worse), preference. Indeed, it is different strokes for different folks. For such couples, Master’s and Johnson’s Squeeze technique in Appendix 2 may be more your style. Good luck!