Ejaculation

What is ejaculation?

Ejaculation (Dutch: ejaculatie) is the expulsion of semen from the penis through the urethra, usually at the peak of sexual arousal. It happens in two phases, emission and expulsion, and is driven by the nervous system. Ejaculation often coincides with an orgasm, but it is not the same thing.

How ejaculation unfolds: emission and expulsion

Ejaculation is not a single moment but a short sequence. The medical literature describes a normal ejaculation as “a complicated but well-coordinated series of physiological events typically involving three phases: emission, expulsion, and orgasm”. The first two are the physical part:

1. Emission. Semen from the epididymis mixes with fluid from the prostate and the seminal vesicles and gathers in the rear part of the urethra. This phase runs through the sympathetic nervous system, and it is also the point where an ejaculation announces itself and can barely be stopped anymore.
2. Expulsion. Rhythmic contractions of the pelvic floor and bulbospongiosus muscles push the semen out in spurts. The encyclopedia describes it as “rhythmic contractions of the pelvic floor and bulbospongiosus muscles expel the semen from the penis through the urinary meatus in several spurts”.

A recognizable picture: during sex the arousal builds to a threshold, often called the point of no return. From that moment the reflex takes over and the ejaculation follows on its own, whether the man wants it or not.

Why ejaculation matters

For most people ejaculation is tied to pleasure and release, and that is exactly why the subject brings up so much tension. Anyone who understands how it works can also play with it. The moment just before expulsion is the hinge that techniques like edging and coitus reservatus grip onto: stretching the arousal by stopping just before that point.

• For the man himself, knowledge of that hinge gives more grip on the timing, and less the feeling that it just happens to him.
• For a couple together, room opens up to tune the pace to each other instead of working against the clock.

What that knowledge does not do is solve a real problem. When the ejaculation almost always comes within a minute, that is what Thuisarts.nl calls coming too quickly, and that is something to discuss with your GP, not with a glossary.

Ejaculation is not the same as an orgasm

“Ejaculation and orgasm are two words for the same thing.” No, and that is the most important misconception. They usually coincide, but they are separate events. The medical literature notes that the feeling of an orgasm can even occur after a radical prostate removal, “without any genital sensory input or ejaculation”. An orgasm is the experience, the ejaculation is the physical process.

“More semen means a better orgasm.” Also not. The amount and the force say little about the experience, and both decrease with age without the pleasure necessarily decreasing with them.

“An ejaculation is always visible.” Not always. With a dry orgasm or a retrograde ejaculation the semen goes the other way, toward the bladder, while the experience simply stays an orgasm.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, busy with BDSM for a good twenty-five years and with a background as a psychotherapist. What strikes me most often is how much tension hangs around this one moment. Men sometimes measure sex entirely by it, as if the ejaculation is the finish and the rest the run-up.

In practice it works the other way around. As soon as it is no longer about that one point, air comes into the rest, and oddly enough the timing then often gets calmer. This is not a medical statement, just what I see: the less an ejaculation is the goal, the less it plays the boss. That air to have to do nothing is exactly what an intimate togetherness takes the time for.

More reading about ejaculation

On this site the sexual response cycle is about the phases in which ejaculation forms the release, and semen retention is about the idea that holding back yields something.

Off this site, the overview from StatPearls on ejaculation and coming too quickly gives the most complete explanation of the phases and their control.

Sources

• Premature Ejaculation. Crowdis, Leslie & Nazir, StatPearls Publishing, 2023. Supplies the division into three phases (emission, expulsion, orgasm), the sympathetic control of the emission, the role of the pelvic floor and bulbospongiosus muscles, and that an orgasm can occur separately from an ejaculation.
• Ejaculation. Wikipedia. Supplies the definition as the expulsion of semen through the urethra, the description of the expulsion phase as rhythmic contractions of the pelvic floor, and the sympathetic control of the emission.
• Snel klaarkomen. Thuisarts.nl. Supplies the description that coming too quickly means it almost always happens within 1 minute, and that it usually resolves on its own or can be discussed with the GP.

Related terms

• Sexual response cycle. The phases of arousal, in which ejaculation coincides with the phase of climax and release.
• Semen retention. Holding the ejaculation back longer and the ideas that exist around it.
• Libido. The desire for sex, which precedes the arousal that eventually leads to an ejaculation.