The most common sexual performance issue for men around the globe is early ejaculation. According to the data made available by the Mayo Clinic, the condition plagues every third man in the United States alone. Translated into numbers, this means that nearly 50 million men in the country are unhappy with how long they can last in the bedroom, which in turn triggers a lot of 
psychological problems, anxiety and decreased self-confidence being among the most frequent ones.
Numerous physicians and experts argue that early ejaculation isn’t something that should be perceived as a health-related problem, certainly not a serious one. After all, premature release doesn’t have an effect on a man’s reproductive health and his ability to procreate, which at least in evolutionary terms is the primary purpose of intercourse. It’s really our psyche that suffers the most, but according to experts, that’s less about our sexual performance and more about our unrealistic expectations.
How Evolution Shaped Our Sexual Habits
To most mammals, intercourse is merely a way to quickly satisfy an instinctual impulse. It’s just one of their instinct-driven daily activities: sleeping, running, hunting, eating. Unlike all other mammals, people have developed a need to prolong the sexual interaction in order to achieve pleasure. Men have it the hardest: if they fail to postpone the release long enough to provide satisfaction to their partners, they always blame themselves, overlooking the fact that nature intended it to be this way.
Experts believe that men have mastered the ability to become aroused, perform, and release quickly during one of the gloomier periods in our evolution. Our ancestors were forced to accelerate everything they were doing because they were under a constant threat from enemy tribes, predators, and other forces. Times have changed, but people are creatures of habit, after all. The evolution has engrained the urge to act quickly in us, despite the fact that we no longer have to fight the threats our ancestors did.
Unrealistic Expectations Clashing with Reality
Men who suffer from problems related to early ejaculation most frequently wonder about how long “normal” men last in bed. A few years ago, the experts from the Department of Andrology and Male Infertility at the Mayo Clinic conducted a research in order to answer this question. The results showed that Americans last the longest at approximately 13 minutes, whereas the average for European men is about ten minutes. Furthermore, men in Germany tend to last only about seven minutes per session.
Based on these results, it’s safe to conclude that different cultures have different lasting times, which is another evolutionary consequence of our ancestors’ lifestyles. But how have our expectations changed to the point where every third man is deeply unhappy with his sexual performance? Doctors say that it’s all about the deeply unrealistic attitudes modern people have towards sex. Much of it stems from watching porn and believing that what you see there is a reflection of real life.
Trying to explain just how irrational porn is, Dr. Brian Steixner of the Jersey Urology Group says that the humankind would have died centuries ago if what porn depicted had any semblance to reality. If all men had oversized penises and were able to postpone release for up to two hours, he says, they would have lost the ability to procreate. Without procreation, there would be no children, and without children our species would have been wiped off the face of the earth.
Knowing all of this, doctors find it very difficult to treat patients who are dealing with early ejaculation. Recounting the historical perspective of the issue and telling them that their condition is normal doesn’t change the fact that they feel depressed and anxious to find a solution to their problems. The usually prescribed treatments range from pills to exercises to adding new elements to their sex life. Ultimately, sex is not just intercourse: it’s partners pleasuring each other, and there are many ways to achieve that.