The Truth About Premature Ejaculation and Erectile Dysfunction
Tired of everyone assuming that all you want is sex?
This week, tune in for world-renowned sexologist Cam Fraser joins the show to share the myths that are destroying your sex life and what you can do to change it all.
Cam and Kirsten discuss the role of testosterone on your sex drive, testosterone replacement therapy, adjusting how you view sexual experiences, arousal versus concent, what to do when you aren’t in the mood for sex and so much more!
Key Topics:
00:10 Decoding Masculinity and Sexuality
00:46 Busting Myths Around Male Sexuality
03:29 The Complex Relationship Between Testosterone and Libido
16:16 Understanding Arousal and Consent
25:13 Addressing Male Sexual Dysfunction Beyond Medication
31:12 Unpacking the Complexities of Male Sexual Health
32:28 Navigating Erectile Dysfunction and Premature Ejaculation
34:04 The Psychological Underpinnings of Sexual Performance
40:24 Exploring Pleasure Beyond Performance
45:01 Practical Advice for Enhancing Sexual Experiences
Connect with Cam Fraser
https://www.instagram.com/thecamfraser/?hl=en
Try Foria
Visit http://thenakedconnection.com/foria and try the Intimacy Massage Oil with CBD to intensify you and your partner’s arousal and pleasure.
Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Have you ever not wanted to have sex, but then you have the thought, shit. I don't want to say no. What kind of man would I be if I turned down sex? Or maybe you're dating someone that wants to have sex more than you and you find yourself thinking, There must be something wrong with me. I'm supposed to want sex all of the time.
What's going on? I'm not a man if I don't want to have sex all of the time, right? And then you're wondering, Is it my testosterone levels? Should I start taking Viagra? Is there really something wrong with me? Well, in this episode, we are going to break down what has led to these moments, why you have these thoughts, and really what you can do about it.
Welcome back to The Naked Connection. This is the show that supports driven men to build deeper connections and have better communication and sex with women. What's up? It's Kirsten, your soon to be licensed sex therapist. And today, in order to walk through all of this, we are joined by Cam Frazier.
A world renowned [00:01:00] sexologist from Australia. He is here to walk through what is leading all of this to happen. He's here to talk about testosterone, replacement therapy, even things like premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, and yes, how to really actually expand your sexual satisfaction at the end of the day, whether you're having sex all the time or on occasion.
This episode is so potent. You guys, let's get some.
Kirsten Trammell: Pam Fraser, welcome to The Naked Connection.
Cam Fraser: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, I'm excited to jump in.
Kirsten Trammell: I am so curious to kick things off. If you were to, summarize what you've been doing in the last, say, decade with men. What would you say?
Cam Fraser: I help men overcome anxiety, [00:02:00] shame, and restrictive stories about masculinity and sexuality to embrace pleasure oriented, full bodied experiences of sex. Yeah, I'd leave it at that, I think.
Kirsten Trammell: I think that's a great start. Um, and in thinking about some of these stereotypes of male sexuality, what have you seen so far as the predominant stereotypes that are placed on men in this, in this space? Yeah.
Cam Fraser: those are essentially stereotypes or what I affectionately call myths, man myths, and some of the major ones that come to my mind, and I want to, you know, do I want to credit the people who, who I am informed by so there's a really good book actually that I'd like to plug called not always in the mood by a Canadian sex researcher researcher and sex therapist Sarah Hunter Murray and her book goes into a lot of the [00:03:00] research behind where some of these myths come from and so That's one of the books I'd like to credit.
But some of the major ones are that male libido or male sex drive is high. Unyielding, unwavering, you know, men want sex all the time and think about sex every seven seconds.
You know, it's just like purely physical. Men just only want one thing. You've probably seen it in, in like article headlines and stuff that's, targeted towards women about like how to understand their male partners better. It's like guys, you know, guys are simple. Ladies, men are simple.
They just want to have sex. It's a very It's a very common trope in media as well. I kind of think of Joey Tribbiani from Friends, right? Like he's personifies this high unyielding, unwavering sex drive, you know, only thinks about sex, kind of one track mind and, and. There are men, there are people, I wouldn't even say men, there are people who do have higher libido, those who have high sex drives, who do want to have more frequent and more elaborate and more intense sexual [00:04:00] experiences, right?
That, I'm not denying that, but when there is the stereotype that it is all men that have unyielding, unwavering sex drives, and usually that's, That the second half of that kind of stereotype is that and all women don't right and all women have lower sex drives or you know less they want less frequent sex right and that plays out into a kind of dynamic where men are the aggressors or pursuers or initiators and women are the gatekeepers the ones that are kind of reticent and passive and reluctant and that strips women of agency right if we kind of you know move if we extend and expand our you Logic from that stereotype.
It strips women of agency and it kind of puts them puts the onus on women to kind of be the gatekeepers of sex and it's their responsibility to either consent or not consent. And you know, it kind of like dismisses men's agency within like that, where it comes to asking for consent and seeking it out in a kind of positive, enthusiastic way.
So there's a lot of ripple effects that come from this, like one stereotype that men just want to have sex all the [00:05:00] time. And. Usually what I see is that that is conflated with testosterone. Like usually the way that that whole high sex drive is talked about is hormonally, right? It's like biological, it's natural.
It's hormonal. That men want sex all the time and that they have a high sex drive all the time and it doesn't fluctuate at all. And the, the culprit there is, is usually testosterone. And so I, I see like testosterone zealots online, you know, like men's coaches and, and, you know, Male health optimization experts kind of tout testosterone is this be all and end all of male health and, and you'll see it in like a lot of the marketing for testosterone supplements and things like that.
They're like, you know, the, the language is always like alluding to Oh, boost your sex drive, like boost your, boost your libido, things like that, but testosterone and sex drive, it isn't a one to one relationship. Sure. There's a correlation there between higher levels of testosterone and more. [00:06:00] Desire and interest in sex.
And, and this is even some evidence to suggest that it's sometimes men feel it's a little bit easier to be aroused as well. If they've got high levels of testosterone that comes from research from guys that are on testosterone replacement therapy, for example. However, like I said, it's not one to one because there's also research that suggests that testosterone replacement therapy doesn't impact men across the board in terms of increasing the libido.
There's a, there's a good percentage of guys who don't experience higher libido or higher sex drive purely from just taking more testosterone or just having more testosterone in their system. And that's because. sex drive, sexual behavior, our experience of pleasure is impacted by so many other things.
So many other like neurochemicals in our body, neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin and prolactin, for example estrogen and estradiol cortisol. And there's so many other things that factor into the way that we experience our desire for sex that. Just increasing testosterone doesn't always, it's not always the [00:07:00] case that that'll, that'll increase your sex drive.
In fact, there's some interesting research that found that men who were taking estradiol supplementation, and no testosterone supplementation, experienced higher levels of libido and sex drive as well, alright? And that's, that goes counter to this idea that it's just testosterone that, that results in higher, higher sex drive.
So I could, I could hop on all day, but the, even if we do take, even if we do take, right, so this is, this is interesting, even if we do take that stereotype of face value and that it's testosterone, which is responsible for sex drive, testosterone fluctuates, right? We know that testosterone, it's very well documented that it's high in the morning and low in the evening, right?
It's called a diurnal variation of testosterone. That's, that's very well documented. We also know that testosterone fluctuates over the lifespan as well. It gradually declines. In fact, there's a little bit of controversy around that because there's some evidence that suggests that if you're a healthy man, as you age, like your diet and you're not smoking and you're, you're not drinking and things like that, that there's actually not so much [00:08:00] fluctuation in testosterone, but that's that's very new research.
There's also some evidence to suggest that testosterone fluctuates on a seasonal basis as well.
The research is a little bit conflicting, but some of the research suggests that it's testosterone is higher in the cooler months in winter and lower in the summer months. Again, there's only three studies looking at seasonal variations in testosterone. So it's not super conclusive, but there is evidence to suggest that there's a kind of yearly seasonal variation of fluctuation.
There's also some evidence which suggests that there are circadian rhythms that, , go through 20 and 30 day cycles. So, again, that's not conclusive, but there's Some small evidence to suggest that there are those, those circadian rhythms in, in testosterone fluctuation as well.
And people that are taking testosterone replacement therapy, like the way that that has evolved is that they try and mimic the natural variations of fluctuations in testosterone, right? It isn't just you taking testosterone to peak yourself out. All the time when you're when you're prescribed testosterone, it's to [00:09:00] try and mimic those natural variations and fluctuations because there's the implicit acknowledgement that it does fluctuate.
So even if we are saying that testosterone equals sex drive, which it surely doesn't, there's still variations in testosterone that you've got to consider. So, so yeah, so I'm, I'm a big. Advocate for trying to unpack that particular stereotype, because I see it played out all the time. I see a lot of guys that come to me and they say, Hey, my wife wants more sex than I do.
I'm broken. Something is wrong with me as a man because my wife has a higher sex drive than I do. But the research tells us from, and these are from, this is from data of you know, surveys that are done of couples that are seeing. Relationship therapists and sex therapists is that 50 percent of all couples that see sex therapists are going there for a libido discrepancy issue, right?
So that's very common that one person in the relationship has a higher sex drive than the other or desire sex more than the other 50 percent of those couples. It's the woman who has higher sex drive than the male partner, right? So if we're going off just the data of people that are seeing sex therapists [00:10:00] for some sort of issue in their relationship.
It's 50 50. Right. And and I think that's really important to acknowledge is because a lot of guys, like I said, internalize that stereotype and they think that something is wrong with them if they don't desire to have sex all the time. And again, I was kind of talking about extending our logic from that one of the, one of the extrapolations of that particular stereotype is that guys will always say yes to sex.
Right. And I, I, I ask men when I work with them. Have you ever said no to sex? When was the last time you said no to sex? And, and the vast majority of guys will say to me, well, I've never done that. I've always I just, And, and, you know, when I kind of scratch at the surface, we uncover or maybe there's an expectation that I should always say yes to sex.
Maybe I should that's just what men, men do, right? Men, men want sex. And so we'll, and it's in our language as well oh, getting lucky, right? So a lot of guys will, will think, yeah, I'm lucky to have sex. So I'll, I'll, I'll take, you know, any holes a goal, right? That's kind of like the mentality.
But I mean, And I, I, I, I won't project that. Like I had that mentality as a younger man, right? It's I always say yes to sex because, you [00:11:00] know, sex, sex, right? Wherever it's, you know, good sex or bad sex, I'll say, yes, that was something that I, I held as a belief system about my sexuality and masculinity.
And so a lot of guys, when we start to like really unpack that idea they expressed to me, you know, that, If they were to say no to sex that they might be letting their partner down, right, or their partner might, or it doesn't have to be a partner, but the, the, and I work with heterosexual guys, so it's then the woman might think they're gay, right?
That was a fear that I had. It was if I said, if I said no to sex. In fact, I had young women when I, you know, on the rare occasion that I did say no to sex. Say, what are you gay? You know, like there was this underlying internalized homophobia that was informing my decision to say yes to sex not all the time.
Right. But there were, there was occasions, right. Where I was where there was some fear and some anxiety that if I said no, it would mean something about my sexuality, right. That I would be less of a man because I turned down sex. So yeah. So that like root stereotype that like men's [00:12:00] sex drive is high and unyielding and unwavering.
When we start to extrapolate from that, it kind of leads out and ripples out into some other, other beliefs that we have about men and sex and and masculinity in general.
Kirsten Trammell: Yeah and it's, as you've been sharing this, it really has pinpointed how this one really foundational myth can have such a large impact, not only on people's sex lives, but on their relationships, on how they perceive themselves, their status in the world, how they relate to women and how women relate to them.
I know a handful of times, under having conversations with women where they're like, Oh yeah, he turned me down. And then we internalize that to mean all of these other things about us that's then rooted from this Expectation that men are supposed to always want to have sex. So it's a pretty massive component of how we all experience intimacy.
So I appreciate you opening that up. Yeah.
Cam Fraser: yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Like a lot of self worth stories can come up for [00:13:00] female partners for guys when they, you know, of guys, when they turn down sex Oh, am I not, does he not find me attractive? Am I not hot enough? Is he not interested in me anymore? You know, which that, that dynamic in reverse is very rarely true, right?
Like if a woman turns down a guy for sex, we rarely go, Oh, she doesn't find me attractive. Like she's, I'm not, she's not, I'm not hot anymore. Like that, that kind of, you know, dynamic really plays out in the opposite direction. But but yeah, when a guy turns down sex, there's Something wrong, right?
Is like the, the underlying or the undertone of, of that decision. And you know, again, extrapolating it leads into some pretty don't want to say more serious necessarily, but like some more grave Ideas about masculinity. One of which is well, if men always want sex, and like they're always down to fuck, right?
That's kind of like the stereotype. Then, one of the extrapolations is, well, men can't be sexually abused. Right? Men can't be
Kirsten Trammell: mm-Hmm.
Cam Fraser: right? 'cause they, they always wanna have sex, right? So if that's our belief system about men, then, you know, men can't be know, can't experience [00:14:00] sexual assault.
And, , this ties into another stereotype that I really wanna highlight here, which is. Not necessarily a stereotype, but it's more of a belief about the male body, which is that if A guy has an erection. It means he's turned on.
Kirsten Trammell: mm-Hmm.
Cam Fraser: And if, if he doesn't have an erection, it means he's not turned on.
Right. With there's this, there's this conflation of the two, but there's a difference between subjective mental psychological arousal and feeling turned on and desiring to have sex and wanting to have sex and physiological arousal, which is engorgement and erection and even ejaculation, right. To an extent as well.
And the same thing is true for, for women, right. If you, There's a difference between being psychologically turned on, desiring to have sex, wanting to have sex and being engorged and lubricated, right? It's like one of the reasons why there's people talking about the importance of foreplay, right? Because it's like, all right, we've got to take some time to allow the body to build that, that sensitivity and that, that sexual arousal.
But because there's this like belief that, okay, if a guy has an erection, it means he's turned on. And if he doesn't have erection, it means he's not. Then when guys [00:15:00] And a lot of guys experience this, which is like the non concordance that happens. So a very, very simple, and this is called arousal non concordance for those that are interested.
It's a very simple example of this is I share this and I get guys go, yeah, that's happened to me. So this is almost like a universal that I've heard from guys. It's like them wanting to have sex, them being with their partner, maybe, or even like with a new partner you know, casually, whatever. And they're like in the moment, in the mood, they're like ready to have sex.
They're desiring, they're consenting, they're turned on, but they don't have an erection. Right. Their, their, their cock hasn't got hard yet. And oftentimes because we, we think so penis centered when it comes to sex, like whether sex for a lot of couples only happens if there's a an erect penis involved.
Right. So broadening your definition of sex is really helpful here, but but like a lot of guys will go, Oh, fuck one. I'm really turned on, but my cock's not working. Right. Is the belief there. And a lot of partners will see that Oh, he's, he's here with me, he's Penis isn't hard. Does [00:16:00] that mean he doesn't want to be here?
Does that mean I'm not attractive? Does that mean he's not turned on, right? Again, because there's the conflation of, of physical and subjective arousal. So that's like one. Scenario that a lot of people can, can tend to relate to and that the solution to that scenario, if there's nothing like underlyingly medically, there's no medical condition like diabetes or something that is contributing to that.
And very often the solution to that is giving yourself more time to allow the body and the mind to sync up just like being in the moment a bit more focusing on pleasure that doesn't involve an erect penis, right? Just getting the momentum going, being relaxed, right? Enjoying the experience oftentimes when that particular situation happens.
Guys get up into their head. Oh my God, my dick's not working off. I'm not going to be able to penetrate. Oh my God. And it becomes this stressful, anxious experience, which, you know, makes them constrict and contract in their body. And if you know anything about erections, they're a function of the parasympathetic nervous system.
So if you're anxious and stressed and worrying about performance and not having an erection, that's going to shoot you in the foot [00:17:00] because you're in your sympathetic branch of your nervous system where you're anxious and stressed out. And so you're not giving yourself any opportunity to be in that parasympathetic branch and allow that engorgement and erection to happen.
So very simple solution is just relax as much as you can focus on pleasure. Keep the ball rolling. Give yourself that time to, to be in pleasure with your partner. The other end of the spectrum though is a little bit more again, like serious is the word that comes to mind, but maybe it's a bit more you know, grave is also the word, but it's guys that don't.
Want to have sex. They don't consent to sex and they're not mentally aroused, right? They're not, they don't want to be there
Kirsten Trammell: hmm.
Cam Fraser: and they're being sexually assaulted and their body responds by getting an erection. This research suggests about 50 to 60 percent of guys who. Are the victims of sexual assault get an erection?
And the research also suggests that about 20 percent of guys that experience sexual assault or the victims of it will also ejaculate as well. And [00:18:00] that's, you know, they're not consenting to it. They don't want it. It's not enjoyable, but their body has a physiological response to the stimulation that they're receiving.
And that can be really confusing for a lot of guys, right? The guys that have experienced that it's confusing for people maybe hearing it as well. Well, but. Getting an erection means he's turned on. Well, that's not, that's not the case, right? That's the whole point of this disentangling of that belief system.
And a lot of guys express feelings of betrayal of their body. They feel like their body betrayed them. They feel really confused. And they start to question, did I really actually enjoy that? Did I really actually want that to happen? You know, and they can start to feel yeah, quite quite confused and conflicted about that, that experience.
And so, and again, that leads to that. Yeah. That myth, let's say that men can't be sexually assaulted, right? Well, if you got an erection, it must mean you secretly enjoyed it, you know, and getting into that kind of victim blaming mentality there. So there's the kind of two ends of that spectrum of that arousal non concordance where there's a difference between physical and subjective arousal.
And I think it's important [00:19:00] to, to kind of voice that as a sex educator, right? That's something that I need to be telling people.
Kirsten Trammell: Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate you giving those two examples on the both sides of the spectrum. Yeah, the, the reality that arousal isn't necessarily desire and it also isn't necessarily consent for anybody. Right. So recognizing that those are not. entangled into the same thing that they're definitely separate.
I actually was reading I've been slowly reading this book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts. It's these two neuroscientists who are studying basically looking at pornography searches. And they actually, this morning I was reading it and they were talking about a study where they were looking at and this one was particular for women's brains about how they had these women watch, a, a video of someone having an amputation and then they had them watch an erotic film and then they observed their arousal and then they had another set where they watched a basic film, nothing, no, no amputation, nothing. [00:20:00] concerning and then watch an erotic film, and they actually noticed that there was more physiological arousal in the women who watched the amputation than the ones who didn't but they reported less psychological arousal, so there's, it's so very separate and so I think it's important for everyone to recognize that.
Thank you. that for yourself and also for your partner too and how to navigate that. And you brought up on the, on the other side of that, but you already mentioned the very beginning of this, this like myth that men are simple and I'll never forget. I, this is probably a couple of years ago. I was listening to a podcast episode.
A woman was talking about how it was like a show for women and she was talking about how simple men are that you can just turn them on and off like a light switch. And I was so bothered by it because I thought how, how unfair, how, , limiting to make that assumption. And and I am so curious, I can only have a woman's perspective, but [00:21:00] that must feel really limiting for a man to be hearing those things about what is actually possible for him. And also for. It's really important for us to understand as in a heterosexual relationship that our male partners are so much more complex than we probably are giving them credit for and, and that can I think be viewed as a really beautiful way and I know that you do a lot of work to expand what's possible for men sexually.
And so looking at ways to do that and understanding that you aren't simple and that that's a beautiful thing.
Cam Fraser: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And, you know, I often hear that you know, our men are visual creatures,
Kirsten Trammell: Mm hmm.
Cam Fraser: on by the sight of pornography or a woman or whatever the visual cue is. You know, and the research doesn't really back that up either. You know, there's a lot of variability in sexual arousal and desire, as you rightly pointed out with one of those pieces of research before.
And, and I think it really does a disservice not only to. [00:22:00] It does, it does a disservice to the women that are hearing these messages about men and their male partners. And it does a disservice to the men themselves because it places, you know, It doesn't necessarily place limitations, but it narrows rather than broadens the way that a lot of people will approach sex and pleasure, right.
With, with men in their life, you know, and and I, I, I get a lot of guys who adhere to these beliefs, right. They've been told them they have, it's been reinforced by their mates. It's been reinforced by the media. I spoke about Joey Tribbiati before, and there's. One of the things that I like to do is, you know, kind of speak about media literacy, right?
And so here's a, an invitation to the people that are listening is watch how male sexuality is presented in your favorite TV shows and movies. Oftentimes you'll see that for a lot of these male characters, like getting aroused and turned on is like really easy. And it's you know, very straightforward and very simple, very linear as well.
Sex is oftentimes very, very [00:23:00] linear. It's get an erection, penetrate, ejaculate, and then roll over and go to sleep, right? The Hollywood trope of having a cigarette and go to bed. And that, you know, and, and that, that, that kind of story of male sexuality is also perpetuated by a bit of academic.
Like the academic research around male sexual response, for example, which is which starts in the 1960s with Masters and Johnson has a very linear, simple, narrow way of defining male sexual response, right, which is arousal. erection, orgasm, and resolution, right? It's called the four phase model, the masters of Johnson's model of male sex response.
And it kind of, most people have seen it on a graph, if they've seen like any sex response models kind of goes up, plateaus, spikes, and then drops off rapidly. And that is Sure, one way of experiencing sexual arousal and having a sexual response cycle, but there's so much more variability and there's research that's come out in the last like couple of years, which has really [00:24:00] started to challenge that model of male sexual response because it hasn't been challenged for many decades.
And the female model of sexual response has been revised, revisited and critiqued about nine times. And you know, for good measure, right? Because it's, it's meant to be critiqued. I don't know whether it's like academia informing, you know, lay people's opinions in the media, or if it's media kind of perpetuating these ideas, you know, that academic researchers just go, well, we don't need it.
We don't need to study male sexuality because it's easy, simple, right guys, just get it up and get off. And that's, that's it. Right. And and so it's really cool that in the last two or three years, there's been some studies that have really started to pick apart that model because for example, it doesn't.
He doesn't talk about non ejaculatory orgasms, right? The resolution period only happens after an ejaculation. So, or the, refractory period. So if a guy has a orgasm that doesn't involve an ejaculation, then there's no refractory periods. That model doesn't Match that response, right? [00:25:00] Or if he has a prostate orgasm, that doesn't match that response either.
That doesn't take into consideration desire and emotions. It's very physiologically based, right? So there's a lot of variables that aren't taking into that, like very simple linear model of male sexual response, but that is very much played out in a lot of the media that we watch. And, on the flip side as well, any male sexual dysfunction in media, right?
Not, I would say 95 percent of the time is the butt of a joke,
Kirsten Trammell: Mm-Hmm.
Cam Fraser: to get an erection, play the laugh track, you know, it's paid for comedic effect coming too quickly. Again, it's a big joke amongst the movie. You know, has low libido. I will code him as effeminate or weak or gay, right?
If he doesn't want to have sex all the time, there's something wrong with him. And again, it's a, it's a punchline of a joke. So like a lot of, The beliefs that guys have about like them being broken or that like it's shameful or that is something to be concerned about that they have. You know, a different [00:26:00] experience than this very simple linear expression of like male sexuality because the reason why I have a job, you know, it's because a lot of these guys internalize those belief systems and go, I'm broken, something's wrong with me.
And the way that I mean, I don't, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater necessarily, but the way that Western medicine has approached male sexual dysfunction is you know, treating men's bodies, you know, As machines, right? It's even in the, in the language dysfunction that reminds me of malfunctioning machines, right?
And so it's pretty much here's a pill to fix that, right? You you're struggling to get an erection. Don't worry about all the psychological, emotional, subjective experiences. Just take this pill that'll get your blood flow going and you'll be able to get an erection, right? Via gross Cialis or other vasodilators, or, you know, you're, you're coming quite quickly.
Now we're prescribing low dose SSRIs, which are antidepressants for that, right? It's don't worry about all the psychological, emotional, human experiences of coming quite quickly. Yeah, just take this pill, this SSRI to, to what it is, is it numbs you out. That's why [00:27:00] SSRIs are prescribed because they dull your sensations.
They dull your sensitivity, which make you last longer. So it's like flattening men to just, Just biology, right? Just physiology rather than taking a holistic humanistic approach to who men are as individuals and what it is that turns them on and helping them relax and things like that. So like I said, there's, there's value in it, I suppose.
And I, I'm not against pharmaceuticals and medication. I'm not against it, but I think we have Over pathologized variations in male sexual response,
Kirsten Trammell: Well, and it's from the research that I've done, statistically speaking, I mean. I think it was something like almost in America anyway, 20 percent of men will experience premature ejaculation at some point in their life and erectile dysfunction, you know, grows as you get older, but up to, 40 percent of men by age of 40 or 50 will have experienced erectile dysfunction.
So it's not like these are like uncommon things that are happening to people. And, and I know sometimes self [00:28:00] diagnosis can be a little funky, but even if those are moderately accurate statistics, that's a, the vast majority of men almost are having this, one of these experiences at some point in their life.
And so probably not really talking about it with anybody from your experience in the work that you've done. What are some of the ways that men can start if they have had it, An experience with ED or early ejaculation to remediate that without maybe perhaps like going straight away to using pharmaceutical drugs.
Cam Fraser: Right, and I think you're touching on something here that I'd like to expand on very briefly, which is that You know, a lot of guys do self diagnose, right? Part of, part of it is because we don't have a lot of the language to describe our experiences, right? So a guy who maybe has some erection reliability concerns, because we don't have the language to describe our sexual experiences, now has erectile dysfunction.
Struggles to get an erection a couple of times, oh fuck, I've got an ED. Right. [00:29:00] Another guy who maybe comes a little bit quicker than he wants to, or his partner wants to, right. Cause it usually it's when there's another person involved, you wouldn't, a lot of guys don't say I've got premature ejaculation and they're virgins, right.
It's because there's another person involved. But again, because there's not a lot of language to describe their sexual experiences because a lot of guys don't talk really wholeheartedly and genuinely and passionately about their sexual experiences with people in general, let alone other men.
It's immediately all the languages I've got premature ejaculation. Right. Or a lot of guys struggle with their relationship with pornography, right? Oh, I've got porn addiction, you know, like it's the, and those are clinical terms, right? Addiction premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction. But there are diagnostic criterion that you have to meet in order to be diagnosed with those diagnoses.
Right. But. That's how, that's how lay people, that's how people just in general will describe their sexual experiences with these clinical terms. And what I think is, is helpful systemically or generally is giving people [00:30:00] more language to describe their sexual experiences. So one of the things that I really like to, to do around like erectile dysfunction, right?
Is borrow a phrase from another sex therapist by the name of Chris Donahue, who talks about erectile disappointment. Right. Which is you know, I'm not dysfunctional. I'm not broken. Just have these expectations about what my cock should and shouldn't do. And you know, it's not living up to those potentially unrealistic expectations.
Right. And we can play the blame game, but like one of the things that often gets blamed is pornography. Right. And so I'll often ask guys, if they watch porn, when was the last time they saw a flaccid penis in pornography? I mean, you don't, you don't see flaccid cocks in porn, right?
Especially in main, not mainstream porn, at least. Right. They, they just kind of like bounce out of, of underpants and trousers. Right. And it's. And so this, this leads to a lot of guys kind of expecting that they should have an erection immediately, right? And they don't know about arousal and concordance, you know, so they get up in their head if they don't have an erection immediately.
And now, because of the language or the limitation of the language, now I've got erectile dysfunction. Right. [00:31:00] And so now I've got erectile dysfunction. What do I do? I'll just go get the little blue pill, right?
And again, I'm painting like a bleak picture here, but that, that has played out for a lot of my clients. And then they'll come and see me and be like, I'm, It doesn't work all the time. I'm taking Viagra. It doesn't work all the time. And what's going on? What's wrong? And what that tells me immediately is it's because there's nothing physiologically wrong, right?
It's because you're, trying to navigate Like a emotional, subjective, psychological experience of arousal and desire and sex and expectation and narratives around masculinity by, you know, dilating your blood vessels,
Kirsten Trammell: Mm-Hmm.
Cam Fraser: it's course, that's not going to work, right?
It's not, it's not a problem of hydraulics, mate. It's a problem of your expectations and experiences of sexuality and pleasure. And so, Again, like this reduction of men down to the biology is something I see a lot.
Kirsten Trammell: I just want to say, as you were saying that, I'm like, I've never heard a woman say, you know, I have pussy dysfunction. No one's using that [00:32:00] terminology. So it's weird that we can use, flip it around.
Cam Fraser: Yeah. I mean, what I have a gripe against. Is people online saying, Hey, do this one thing and it'll solve all your premature ejaculation issues, right? Or it'll solve all your erection issues because there's different types of premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, right?
So, that's one thing to take into consideration when people that are listening to this go, Oh, I'll try this thing for my I'm coming to you quickly. I'll try this thing to help with me not coming so quickly is, you know, is that approach aligning with the underlying causes of your premature ejaculation in the first place?
Right? So it isn't always Oh, I'll try this. And what I said before, like a lot of guys who I work with, FIAGRA doesn't work for them, right? And it's because they're not, it's not a function of vasodilation and, and nitric oxide. Sure. It'll help. But the underlying root cause of their erection reliability issues is.
That they're anxious and stressed and they placing expectation on themselves and what their penis should do and that makes them [00:33:00] tense and tight and constricted and contracted and not experiencing pleasure and not being present with their partner because they're up in their head. And that's what's resulting in their.
Inability to go into their parasympathetic nervous system and relax and focus on the sensations of pleasure, which lead to engorgement, which leads to erection, which leads to penetration and all the other things that they want to do. So, so my, my selection bias with the guys that I work with, because I'm not a medical practitioner is I get a lot of guys who have psychogenic issues, right?
So what that means is it's, it's a function of their performance anxiety and my, this is pure conjecture here, but like my observation is that. The vast majority of men's sexual issues, whether it's coming too quickly or, you know, unreliable erections, is psychogenic.
I personally think that a lot of guys have like performance anxiety and that performance anxiety is manifesting as erection or ejaculation issues, right?
They're kind of two sides of the same coin premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. And that coin is anxiety is performance anxiety. And [00:34:00] so something that helps a lot with the men that I specifically work with is. Changing their narratives around sex, right? And the narratives around their own body.
And part of that is having to do a bit of education for their partners as well. So rather than putting this pressure on to get an erection immediately and having to like, have sex last a particular duration. One of the things that I often say to the guys who come and see me for like early ejaculation issues is you know, a lot of them just want the tools to last longer.
And I'll say to them, okay, I mean, I can do that with you. I can give you the breathing exercises, the squeezing exercises, the energy circulation practices and all of that. But if the sex that you're having is not great, right, it's not that pleasurable, then having not great, not very pleasurable sex for 30 seconds and not great, not really pleasurable sex for 30 minutes is not going to make Much of a difference to like the experience, right?
I mean, if you're having shit sex for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, it's not going to change much. So the approach to [00:35:00] sex is very often the underlying strategy. Let's say that I'll take with a lot of my male clients, which is rather than being performance oriented and, and having this kind of you know, win, lose approach to sex, which is if sex.
Includes erection and penetration and orgasm and last a certain amount of time. And, and, you know, by extension of that, like I'm, I'm, I'm, my Dick's this big and I can, you know, compare myself to these other guys and I like have, you know, I'm better than them at this, like that performance oriented, kind of like sport analogy, right.
Competition approach is, it can, you know, it can lead to like sex is either successful or sex is a failure, depending on whether these things are included. Right. And that's not a great approach to sex because for example, you mentioned for as you age, your body changes, you might not be able to do the things that you did when you were younger.
And so if you're still on that, you know, mentality of, of sex. Has, you know, for me to win at sex or for sex to be successful has to include these things and your body just [00:36:00] isn't capable of those things anymore, then sex is going to be a fail each time and that's going to like really, you know, create a pretty negative story for both you and your partner.
So rather than thinking of sex as a sport where you can either potentially win or lose at it, depending on quote unquote, how you, how you perform. I like to think of sex as a jam session between musicians.
You know, showing up to a jam session and just playing music with the person or the people that are there in the room with you, you're not recording anything. And this is, you're not making an album, you're just playing some music, you're having fun, which is what, you know, a jam session is about. And the key to jam sessions is a few things here, right?
Is you firstly got to know your instrument. If you show up to a jam session with a guitar and you've never played a guitar before, you're not going to be able to contribute much, right? You're going to be pretty knowledgeable about your own instrument, right? Which is why I'm an advocate for doing some introspective work and unpacking your stories and your narratives and psychologically doing, doing that work, but also self pleasure, like exploring your own body, like what it is that it turns you on.
What type of stimulation [00:37:00] do you enjoy? What type of stimulation is too much for you, right? That sort of thing. So really getting to know your own instrument, like playing your instrument. And it also helps to know about your partner's instrument as well, right? Or the other people in that space that you're having a jam session with.
The other musos there is. , if you're showing up to a jam session and you've been planning on playing, alongside someone who has a piano and they show up with a, you know, an Oboe, right. You're going to be like, Oh fuck, I don't really know what to do in this situation and, and you might be like, well, I'm, I'm confident and comfortable enough to go, I can learn on the job right now.
I can learn in this session and I'm here to calibrate and, and to, to listen and learn from you. Right. How do I play alongside you in this? Your jam session, like that's the approach that think is important to have. And, but the same thing goes for like the type of music, , this is another extension of this analogy.
If you're just like really into rock music, right. And you show up to a jam session with someone who's like really into reggae. Right. We're really into jazz or really into classical. It's Oh. Okay. We [00:38:00] can jam out a little bit, but maybe that person's just, , Oh, it was fun. Well, it lasted, but I don't think we're actually, we're not the right fit for one another.
Right. We, we play, we're playing different songs, right. Playing different music. But you might be also really curious and want to play music with someone who's like into Celtic.
Kirsten Trammell: Yeah.
Cam Fraser: Irish dance music, right? It's I would love to learn how to play alongside something like that.
Maybe you, you have that open mindedness and that curiosity to play alongside people that, that have different instruments and different music tastes and things like that. So that's like the type of approach that I try to instill in my male clients. It's just like open minded. curious fun, pleasure oriented approach, right?
You play music for the pleasure of it. You're not trying to record anything or trying to produce an album you're there because it's enjoyable to do because you like music, right? And so, so that's, that's the, the shift in mentality that for my clients particularly is very helpful for them to start to let go of whether their cocks erect or not within the first three seconds of a sexual experience.
And very often just by virtue of them being relaxed, enjoying themselves, [00:39:00] playing music, , quote, unquote, they start to, , be in their parasympathetic nervous system. They start to focus on the pleasure of it that allows the body and the mind to sync up and their erection comes back. Right.
Or the guys that are coming too quickly, usually that's because they're quite tense and stressed and worried about coming quickly. Yeah. But if they're letting go of that and just focusing on guys, is this fun? Is this enjoyable? Is this pleasurable? Maybe I'm not so focused on my cock anymore. Maybe I'm focused on other things that are enjoyable for the two of us.
Maybe it's toys or fingers or hands or whatever it might be. And I'm just there enjoying the experience. They're relaxed because they're relaxed. They're, they're not so on edge and so tense and so tight, which is things that lead to a quicker ejaculation. And so they're able to last a little bit longer.
Kirsten Trammell: Yeah. I absolutely love that analogy of the jam session and it shows how intricate it is. intimacy and sex really is and how much variability and variables come into play. And yeah, I think one of the things that I always find interesting as well , when [00:40:00] talking about lasting longer in duration, and I don't know too many women that are like wanting to have marathon sex sessions, when the sex is medium, mediocre, , no one wants to like, okay, sex for 45 minutes.
That isn't necessarily the primary marker of good sex. I would, I personally would say so releasing that tie between Oh, the time and the quality as well, I think is a helpful reframe. Perhaps to take
Cam Fraser: Yeah. And, and I think even disentangling that sex doesn't have to look like thrusting your penis inside of a vagina for 45 minutes, right? Sex incorporates so many other activities, but when people, I mean, again, projection for me, you're like, I used to think this is if I want to have longer sex, what that mean, what that meant for me was I want to be thrusting inside of my partner for a longer period of time.
Right. And sure that can be pleasurable, but what I wasn't [00:41:00] taking consideration and what I do try and take into consideration when I work with my clients now is like, , focusing on oral sex or using, , your fingers or even like sexy massage, using toys or even like the, the conversations and the anticipation, the excitement that you're, , leading up to any type of touch is still part of the sex.
Right.
But pounding away. Like a piston in a car for 45 minutes is actually not that pleasurable. Right. For, for, I mean for for, for both men and women and whoever else is involved. Just like in and out thrusting for 45 minutes. I mean, sure it can be fun, but there's not there's not a lot going on.
You know what I mean? So, so yeah, that's why I appreciate you saying that because disentangling what, what it means to quote unquote last longer is also helpful.
Kirsten Trammell: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking, let's say a guy's listening to this and they're hearing the opportunities or the shifts that could possibly be made because they think in some ways there's [00:42:00] a lot of beauty in the way that men are action oriented and goal directed and like that is a beautiful piece of art.
Part of what of what we could consider masculinity and so having the option to release some of that might be challenging So how what would you? Say to someone that might be having those thoughts Yeah
Cam Fraser: mentality that a lot of guys have is, what I will say as well is like a lot of, a lot of guys that I work with, and this is true, this has been true for me and, and guys that I speak with in general as well is, how do I say this?
Like a lot of guys. They won't necessarily do something specifically for them in the bedroom, but they'll do it because they think it's what their partner is going to enjoy more of. So like I've, I've kind of said before, and I've, I've. Not necessarily gotten in trouble, but I've had some backlash. So I'll try and explain this.
It's like a lot of guys will prioritize their partner's pleasure over their own. [00:43:00] Now I'll stop there because I know that people like, well, what about the orgasm gap? What about, you know, the, the fact that a lot of women actually aren't experiencing a lot of pleasure during sex. And so the caveat I'll have here is there's a difference between sexual gratification and sexual pleasure.
Gratification for me is just like that quick little, you know, sticky white crotch knees scratching the itch, just kind of like jerking off, ejaculating. Wipe your hands, get on with the rest of the day. That's just like the gratification. It's like scratching the itch. Pleasure is that like deeply sensual, erotic.
Connection with another person, connection with yourself, full bodied experience of like eroticism, right? The word that comes to mind is it's immense as opposed to just like scratching of the surface level. So that's the difference between, between pleasure and, and gratification in my mind.
And there's also a difference between like authentic pleasure and genuine pleasure and what men perceive their partner's pleasure to be. Right. And so a lot of guys. Within that framework of prioritizing their partner's pleasure [00:44:00] over their own is a lot of guys also prioritize their own sexual gratification over pleasure.
And usually the pleasure that they think that their partner has experienced is just like their perceived pleasure. Pleasure. It's not actually genuinely authentic pleasure for their partner. That's one of the reasons why a lot of women will fake orgasms, right? Because a lot of, a lot of guys focus on their partner's pleasure, a lot of women feel that pressure to look like they're enjoying themselves.
And so they will, they will fake it or they'll at least it'll, you know, Elaborate it rather than it being like really genuine and authentic. A lot of guys aren't asking, you know, their partner, you know, whether they're actually enjoying themselves, the guys like really focused on orgasm. And so like they that, that again, the goal oriented, right.
Like they're, they're like, they're trying to get to penetration, trying to get to orgasm, trying to get something from sex, have achieve it. Be successful with it. And it's successful if he makes her come, but it's not. I would say this is like not your responsibility to give your partner an orgasm.
It's their orgasm. [00:45:00] Right. Like they're responsible for it. Just as you're responsible for your orgasm. It's not your partner's responsibility to give you an orgasm. It's your orgasm. You're responsible for it. You can be there to help facilitate each other's experience of orgasm, but you don't give orgasms to someone like you give them a Christmas present, right?
It's theirs. And they're the one that's, they're the one that's having it. So the so the, the approach is you know, communicating, talking to one another, like playing with one another so that you can both get what it is that you both need. But like a lot of guys. Again, it's, it's gratification oriented for them.
And to kind of drive this point home, I've been in a lot of like men's spaces where there has been conversation around sex. But the conversation around sex is like very surface level and very gratification oriented. So what I mean by this is we just talked about you know, how well I'll speak on my behalf, like how well I fucked her, right?
Like how many orgasms I gave her, how much of a, you know, God's gift to women I am. There's a lot of machismo and bravado, like in those, like really locker room style, [00:46:00] you know, male spaces. You know, I phrase that I have said, and I've heard said is yeah, I busted the biggest nuts, you know, like it was just focused on gratification.
And it's and hopefully this lands for the guys that are listening. If you were to speak about pleasure rather than gratification in those spaces yeah, like I it was so like, like I felt this in my body. Like I felt it like up in my, my chest. It was like really intense and enjoyable. And I felt this like deep connection with her.
If you started to speak like that. And I know this because I have started to speak like that in some of those male spaces. You get laughed at, you get bullied, you get ostracized, you get told, Bro, what are you, fucking gay, bro? You know, the pejorative, right, of using the term gay, and that more what are you, a pussy man?
You know, the language there is very denigrating and very you know, dismissing of pleasure. Right. It's, it's focused on the performance of gratification. So, you know, a lot of guys will talk about like how much they, how many orgasms they gave to their partner, you know, how much she was, you know, enjoying it and things like that.
Really like
Kirsten Trammell: mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm,
Cam Fraser: over [00:47:00] exaggerating for the most part. Right. And again, it's the perceived pleasure. Like she was having such a good time and I was just fucking it. Right. Like it's the prioritization or the, the pedestalizing. Of her perceived pleasure, not her actual genuine, authentic pleasure. And again, it's focused on his gratification.
So that's the, that's the expansion of like that, that simple little phrase there. And like I said, I've gotten into trouble for not doing that before. And just like saying that men think about women's pleasure more than their own, but there's a few caveats in there and a bit more nuanced. So in a roundabout way, what I'm saying is like, what One of the things that I'll do is like a lot of guys have that mentality and it's always like quite noble was like, I want to do this because, you know, I want to last longer to give my partner more pleasure, right?
I want to have better erections because my partner, like I want to, I want to fuck my partner for a longer period of time or whatever it is. Right? So like the, the goal oriented or action oriented thing that that's in their mind is I have to do this with my partner, right? I've got to do my. Do better sex to my partner is like their, you know, base kind of goal.
And it's like, all right, that's great, man. It's noble. You want to, you know, you care about your partner, right? That that's, that's [00:48:00] awesome. So I'll leverage that and be like, great, let's, let's talk about how to have better sex for your partner. Let's talk about how to give her more pleasure. All right.
And so that's where I'll just like leverage that same mentality of I'm doing this for them. And I'll say, you know, If you want to give her more pleasure, you have to be able to experience more pleasure, right? The depth of pleasure that you can take her to is dependent on how deep you can go with your own experience of pleasure, right?
So, if you're trying to hold that for her, you've got to be able to hold it for yourself. So that lends itself to Oh, okay. I've got to be a bit more connected to my own body. Oh, I've got to actually notice where I experienced pleasure. Oh, maybe that leads to a self pleasure practice, right? Maybe that leads to focusing on, on things sexually with my partner that don't maybe involve ejaculation, right?
So one of the things that I'll, I'll typically share with couples and people that, you know, work with me is I have sex that doesn't involve an ejaculation. I have sex that doesn't involve penetration. Right. Really start to, to [00:49:00] disentangle the stories and the narratives we have around like what sex has to look like in order for it to be successful.
Right. Because ejaculation and penetration are very much part of that performance oriented approach to sex. Like they have to be included for sex to even count as sex, let alone, successful sex for sex to be a win. So if we start to take those things mindfully away, okay, what else is there? What else is left on the table if we take those things off the table?
I might give guys like a practice through like a pleasure mapping practice, for example, and they can do that both solo and with a partner, just like treating it as a bit of an experiment. You know, and touching, if you're doing it with another person you know, explore your partner's body from the tips of their toes to the crown of their head by using the tools that you have on the end of your arms, right?
These hands that we have can do, they can do a lot, right? They can pinch and scratch and pull and slap and rub and press and caress and do all these other like amazing types of stimulation. It's explore your partner's body. Again, starting at the toes and going to the crown of the head over the course of you know, You know, minimum 20 minutes, I'll say if you can set aside an hour to do this.
[00:50:00] And treat it as experiment, collect data about their experience. You know, like there's no, there's no. Is there's no success or failure in an experiment, right? You you're collecting information, collecting data. So if you do this with your partner, like really start to touch them in novel and unique ways across their body and you find out, well, they really enjoy it when.
And if you're asking for that feedback tell me when you really enjoy something, give me a rating out of 10 or say yes or no, or whatever Oh, they really enjoy it when I like caress. Just under their breasts on their ribcage, right? Or that they're saying that that's really enjoyable for them. Or, or they really don't like it when I kind of.
Squeeze their thoughts, , firmly, but that's not like they're saying that, Oh, okay. That's that's information that I can now take on board as a lover, as a partner and incorporate into a more sexually explicit, , scenario with them. Oh, maybe I'll incorporate some of that light, gentle caressing on their rib cage, or maybe I won't, maybe I had been squeezing them on the thighs when I [00:51:00] was, , having sex with them.
I mean, maybe I won't do that so much any, cause I know that it's not really something they enjoy. And vice versa, right? You can, you can have your partner do that to you to help you learn more about your body and so that they can collect that data and information about your experience. And then you've got stuff then to communicate about and incorporate into quote unquote sex, right?
And that holistic sense of the word. So like that's, that's like an action oriented thing that you can do is collect that information, collect that data. And again, taking into consideration that you can only go as deep with your partner's pleasure as you can go with your own. So like giving yourself that permission to really start to go deep with your own experience of pleasure to help you hold that space for your partner, both like physically and energetically.
And yeah like simple stuff that I'll just guys, if you watch porn, every time you masturbate.
Try experimenting with not watching porn when you masturbate. If you sit down, whenever you masturbate, try standing up when you masturbate. You know, give yourself the permission to experiment and collect information. That's, that's the approach that I take, right? There's no right or wrong way. It's you collecting data about your [00:52:00] sexual experiences and your partner's body.
Right?
Kirsten Trammell: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Cam Fraser: more thoughts.
Kirsten Trammell: Yeah. And I, I love thinking about it as an experiment because there isn't like a win or a lose necessarily in an experiment and I think it's more playful and exploratory when you come into something, when you're collecting data and doing an experiment and you're just trying to figure out what's going on and as opposed to having to reach a certain. goal or endpoint. I love that. And, and it also shows how going back to the very beginning, this isn't all simple and that every person is so different and unique and that every moment and even as you were saying earlier with even testosterone, like the cycling and the shifts that are happening for individuals, there's always things.
That are changing and that we can look at that in a challenging way, or we can look at that in an optimistic, exciting way of never getting bored, never being stagnant, knowing what to expect. [00:53:00] But well, I would love to ask where everyone can find you if they want to learn more about you. I know we didn't even touch on some of the other topics we were going to cover today.
I know you even had sex toys ready for us and everything. So we'll have to have everyone connect with you so they can learn more.
Cam Fraser: Yeah. So you can find me on social media. I am the Cam Fraser on social media, on all platforms. You can find me at my website, which is cam fraser. I've got a podcast as well called Men, Sex and Pleasure, which These types of conversations essentially. Yeah, and, and I talk like about sex toys for people with a penis and you know, how to use them with a partner and a bunch of other stuff around masculinity and sexuality.
I guess like my little tagline is if you jump onto my social media, you'll learn something new.
Kirsten Trammell: Love it. Okay. Well, Kim, thank you so much for being here and I appreciate you coming on the show.
Cam Fraser: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:54:00]