Is there a link between premature ejaculation and masturbation?

Remember being a teenager and furtively rushing to come before someone; worst case scenario: your mom, walked in on you masturbating? Some experts once believed that continually racing to finish could contribute to premature ejaculation (PE) by conditioning you to always ejaculate quickly. Now we know that this habit may worsen or reinforce PE, but doesn’t cause it. Studies show that most men tend to masturbate similarly, whether or not they have PE. In general, we all use the same amount and intensity of physical stimulation.

What does appear to be different is what happens when we use visual stimulation --pornography, for example. Some research shows that when men add visual stimulation to physical stimulation, their ejaculatory control decreases, and the potential for PE goes way up. So PE seems much more likely to occur when you’ve got a combination of what we call psychogenic (visual/mental) stimulation and reflex (physical) stimulation.

That’s an important discovery because many methods of dealing with PE have focused on a kind of meditation-based awareness training during masturbation. That may work when it’s just you and your penis, but most guys masturbate with the help of porn or other visual stimulation. Add that kind of psychogenic stimulation to the mix and awareness training probably isn’t going to work. It’s even less likely to succeed during real sex with a partner.