Yes. Nerves, novelty and very high arousal make a fast first time common. Doctors only talk about premature ejaculation when it happens on almost every occasion for months.
If you’re reading this the morning after, take a breath. A fast first time says very little about what comes next.
Why the first time goes fast
Everything that speeds ejaculation up is there at once: you’re new to it, you’re very aroused, you’re nervous, and you’re probably thinking about how you’re doing rather than about what you feel. The same goes, to a lesser degree, for the first time with a new partner or after a long break.
When I was young I had very few partners, and I was too inexperienced and not mature enough to talk about any of it. Nobody was there to tell me that one night isn’t a pattern, so I’ll say it here.
What doctors actually look at
No doctor diagnoses premature ejaculation from a first time. The psychiatric manual used in the US (DSM-5) asks for ejaculation within about a minute on almost all occasions, for at least six months, and real distress about it. The international sexual medicine society (ISSM) and the American urologists use similar rules: a pattern, on most occasions, with a feeling of no control.
Researchers even describe men who come early from time to time and say plainly that this shouldn’t be treated as a disorder. It’s part of the normal variation between nights.
When to look closer
If it keeps happening once the novelty has worn off, with the same partner, on almost every occasion, and it bothers you, then it’s worth reading what premature ejaculation is and whether you have it. If it has been there since your very first times, that’s what doctors call lifelong premature ejaculation, which was my case. I explain the difference in lifelong vs acquired.
What helps in the meantime
Mostly, less pressure. The more you treat the next time as a test, the faster it tends to go. In my view, talking about it, even with a joke, takes a lot of the weight off. And sex isn’t only penetration, which gives you plenty of room while things settle.
Sources
- An Update of the International Society of Sexual Medicine’s Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Premature Ejaculation (PE), Althof et al., Sexual Medicine, 2014 (quotes the DSM-5 criteria)
- Disorders of Ejaculation: AUA/SMSNA Guideline, American Urological Association, 2020
- The pathophysiology of acquired premature ejaculation, McMahon et al., Translational Andrology and Urology, 2016