5 Common Sexual Mishaps (And How To Recover From Them)

There’s nothing quite like sex to set every man’s anxieties on overdrive.

Men are competitive about everything. If a guy is into a subject or a hobby, he wants to believe that he is the master of it – if not of the world, than at least amongst his friends. Whether it’s cooking, grilling, video games or random geek trivia, every guy out there wants to be seen asthe definitive expert, the number one guy.

When you throw sex into the equation however, it goes from a matter of competition and braggadocio to one of desperation and ego. It’s one thing when you have the highest kill/death ratio of your Call of Duty clan and you’re competing with anonymous drones who are nothing but meat for your cannons.

When it comes to sleeping with beautiful women, it’s no longer about getting your name at the top of the high scores list in the hopes of impressing your friends. It’s about making your mark. It’s about impressing her and all of her friends. You’re not competing with faceless nobodies: you’re now competing with every guy she’s ever slept with. Every guy she has ever gushed about to her girlfriends the next day. Every guy she’s Facebook friends with. You want to be the acknowledged master of her pleasure, the one that nobody will ever be able to surpass.

But just as no plan survives contact with the enemy, no fantasy survives contact with actual flesh. You may think that it’s going to be all candlelight and soft lens filters but when it’s time to bang, sometimes things go wrong. Maybe you say something wrong or maybe it’s just a case of you can’t quite perform the way you were hoping to.

Don’t panic. Just because things don’t go as planned doesn’t mean that you can’t recover from them… and even make sex better than ever.

5) Coming Too Quickly

The Problem:

Duration during sex is the number one anxiety that men have about sex, beating out StDs, pregnancy and penis size  Every man fears being a “one-minute man” or a “two-pump chump”. Informed by porn and stories passed around locker rooms from distant ages past, men are socialized to believe that sexual endurance is one of the hallmarks of a masterful lover; the longer he can hold out before orgasm, the better. Despite the fact that penetration ideally lasts seven to thirteen minutes every man grows up with the fantasy that true masters can last for hours.

How To Recover:

Step one: Calm down. Every guy has times when they cum a lot faster than they would have liked. Getting upset isn’t going to help you and will only make things awkward for the both of you. She’s going to take her lead from you; if you treat it like it’s no big deal, she will too.

Step two: Damage control. Give a self-deprecating laugh, tell your partner that she had you really turned on and you just couldn’t hold back. Now follow up with oral sex. No reason why she shouldn’t have fun too, you know.

Step three: deal with the problem afterwards.

Premature ejaculation – defined as when a man ejaculates sooner than he or his partner would prefer – can have a multitude of issues ranging from simple anxiety to hyper-sensitivity and extreme arousal, and there are a number of ways of lasting longer. The simplest is to practice kegel exercises; the pubococcygeus muscles – that control the flow during urination – are the same ones that control ejaculation during orgasm. Strengthening your PC muscles and releasing them repeatedly is a simple way of controlling one’s orgasm.

You can also change up your sexual practices. Some sexual positions change the level of friction or the muscle tension that makes it easier to last longer; positions that require you to support your own weight will create tension in your pubic muscles that will make it more likely to orgasm quickly. You may also want to employ the classic stop-start method; when you feel the orgasm starting to build, stop thrusting for a few moments while letting the sensation fade before restarting. It can be almost torturous for guys to do this – once you feel that familiar tingle, you want to pound away as hard as you can – but a little discipline will bring desirable results.

There are mechanical and chemical solutions to the problem… at a cost. Thicker condoms will cut down on the sensation, for example, allowing you to last longer. Similarly, most sex shops and adult video stores will have desensitization cremes, usually involving a topical anesthetic like benzocaine as the active ingredient. Beware using these however; the last thing you want to do is accidentally transfer the creme to your partner and end up cutting down onher sensitivity as well.  Many SSRI based anti-depressants will have a retarding effect on male orgasms; some doctors will prescribe very low doses as a treatment for chronic premature ejaculation. However, some SSRIs will not only increase time before ejaculation, but they willalso reduce one’s libido. Take great care if you decide to go down the medication route.

If duration is a common problem for you, consider taking matters into your own hands on occasion. Make masturbation a part of your regular pre-date preparations; you won’t be feeling the urge as strongly during the date and you’ll have taken the edge off when sex does happen that evening.

Remember: When in doubt, rub one out.

4) Mood-Breakers

The Problem: 

No matter how much you prepare, sometimes things won’t just go wrong, they will go embarrassingly wrong. Boner-killer wrong. The kind of wrong that makes it impossible to continue. Her dog leaps onto the bed. You let loose the loudest, nastiest fart you have ever known… while she’s going down on you. She reveals that she’s a squirter… without warning you first. Her leg starts to cramp up just as you’re about to show her why the girls back home called you “Mr. Crazy Straw”. You call her by the wrong name… and she hears you. Her parents call and leave a long message on the voice mail.

What was going to be a momentous night of passion is now reduced to the two of you awkwardly looking at each other while you feel the atmosphere – and your erection – deflating into a distant memory and now there’s nothing left but to wonder how long it’s going to be before the social contract let’s you sneak out the door.

How To Recover:

Laugh.

No, seriously. Treat the situation like it’s a scene in a comedy, acknowledge and embrace the absurdity, make a joke and laugh it off. It only has to be serious and awkward if you both want it to be. The best thing you can do is defuse the interruption by making it into something silly. Laughter will lighten the mood, relax the both of you and transform what could have been the end of the evening into a temporary break until the two of you are ready to resume again.

Almost any interruption or mood-breaker can be laughed off… but some are going to be harder than others. If you called her by the wrong name, you’d better be ready to follow up quickly. If she calls you on it, it’s time to insist that her name really is “Jesse”. Or “Martha”. Or “Bambi”. Pretend to be confused and give her a different name every time she says something, then demand to know who the hell she is and why she’s been calling herself “Sarah” all this time.

If she buys your bluff, then understand that I will never ever play poker with you.

3) Incompatible Sexual Techniques

The Problem:

Everyone has their sexual routine. Over the years, repetition and accommodating partners will have trained us to expect that some things are just part of the standard repertoire – the commonly accepted sexual lexicon, as it were. What you can reasonably expect for your future partners to be accepting of, if not anticipating.

Until of course you come across the first partner who not only did not expect your particular maneuver, but is actively repulsed by it. It could be as simple as a girl who absolutely hatesgiving (or receiving) head to power-exchange games. It may be something as outre as fingers going into unexpected or unwelcome territory during sex or or one person asking the other to slap, choke or vomit on them.

As a personal example, I dated one girl who was a biter. Not just a simple love-nip on the shoulder or collar-bone but a full-fledged moment biting anything that might be within range… including faces.  She did not inform me of this in advance. Instead, sex – suddenly and without warning – turned from a simple matter of tab-A into slot-B to trying to fend off a zombie attack during a moment of passion without losing my erection or interrupting the tempo.

How To Recover: 

Maybe it was just the fact that it was a surprise. Maybe pushed too far too fast and you crossed a line of what she is and isn’t willing to try. Maybe you accidentally hit a trigger that you didn’t know was there.

Regardless of how it happened, the only thing to do is stop and apologize right then and there. Sex requires trust above and beyond anything else and no woman will be willing to keep you as a partner if she things for a moment that she can’t trust you to respect her boundaries.

Tell her that you were caught up in the moment and didn’t realize that what you were doing was going to upset her and that furthermore, the last thing you want to do is make her uncomfortable or try to do something she wouldn’t like. Let it pass and for fuck’s sake, don’t do it again. Keep your actions to strict vanilla unless otherwise asked and discuss matters later… when you’re both fully clothed.

2) The Condom Breaks

The Problem:

Things have been going great… but at some point, you realize the condom’s no longer intact. In the heat of the moment, the condom either broke or slipped off entirely… and now you’re faced with the awkward moment of having to tell your partner and dealing with the resultant anxiety that comes with it.

How To Recover: 

It should go without saying that you had best make sure that you and your partner are on the same page regarding pregnancy before you have sex. You do not want to find out that you have differing opinions on pregnancy and abortion at a moment like this. If the two of you aren’t already in agreement about what to do in the event of an unintended pregnancy, you shouldn’t be having sex in the first place.

Now, first things first: You want to keep this from happening in the first place. To start with, you need to make sure that the condoms you’re using fit properly. This is no time for trying to pretend that you need Magnums when you actually need a snugger fit. A condom that’s too big is going to slip off during sex, while a condom that’s too small is more likely to rupture or tear. A condom should fit securely at the base of the penis and not slide off easily; depending on the style, there could be a variable amount of give or material at the head, but it should NOT be nearly skin tight.

Next, make sure that you put the condom on properly. Pinch the tip of the condom to prevent air-bubbles while unrolling it towards the base of your penis; trapped air will cause the condom to rupture during sex.

During sex, take a moment or two to surreptitiously check the state of the condom. Reach a hand down and feel at the base of your penis and see if the condom’s still there. Pull out, take a quick glance to make sure that it’s in once piece and get back to bangin’.

If the condom does break or fall off, don’t panic. What you need to do depends on several factors. If you notice this before you orgasm, simply stop, make sure that there aren’t bits of the condom left in your partner, put on a new one and continue onward.

If you don’t realize that the condom failed until after orgasm, then you need to inform your partner immediately. Your next steps depend on whether she is on a secondary form of birth control such as the Pill or an IUD. If she is, all is most likely well.

If she isn’t… well, it’s time for Plan B. Literally. Plan B – also known as the Morning After Pill – is available over the counter at most pharmacies. Make sure to call in advance to ensure they have it in stock and head over immediately.

By the by: You’re accompanying her to the CVS because you’re a goddamn human. If you think that you’re sending her off on her own, then you need to understand that karma is going to ensure that you will never have sex again including with yourself.

1) You Can’t Get It Up.

The Problem:

Erectile disfunction is the stuff of nightmares for guys. The ability to achieve and maintain an erection is tied directly into our sense of masculinity. The idea that we can’t perform immediately the very moment we feel the urge is a matter of great anxiety for guys.

But as the joke goes, the difference between concern and panic is the second time you can’t get it up for the first time. While the occasional moment of an inappropriately limp penis happens to every man over time, the instant that it happens to you sets off a never-ending downward spiral as you begin to imagine that you will never have another hard on ever again. From now until the end of time, your cock will be strictly decorative; a mocking reminder of your impotence as it hangs like a flaccid vestigial appendage that evolution hasn’t gotten around to ridding you of. Yet.

How To Recover:

First and foremost: DO NOT PANIC. Panicing will only make things worse as your partner awkwardly tries to reassure you of your masculinity – which will only make you feel evenless like a man. Instead, disassociate the lack of an erection from you, your level of arousal or your status as a man. An inability to get hard could have any number of causes ranging from alcohol consumption, side effects from medication, allergic reactions, or the capricious whims of a cruel and uncaring god. It has nothing to do with your masculinity or your ability to please a woman.

Sometimes it happens and it’s not a big deal. As long as you have fingers, a tongue and a can-do attitude, the occasional unwanted limp dick isn’t the end of the evening. Shrug your shoulders, give your best Han Solo smirk and proceed to give her the greatest oral sex of her life. She’ll love you for it.

Plus, if you take your mind off of it and focus on her instead… well, you might find that the problem solves itself