I recently spoke about intentional ejaculation and it seems I wasn't clear.
A simple example of this is asking yourself just before beginning your sexual activity if you are choosing to ejaculate or choosing not to ejaculate.
An intentional ejaculation is like being intentional with your morning coffee. Bringing awareness to your decision to drink the coffee instead of just going through the motions.
I encourage my clients to experiment with choosing not to ejaculate for a certain period of time, noticing how that makes them feel, then making the decision to ejaculate and noticing how it changes their experience of ejaculation. This isn't edging.
Edging, or peaking/surfing, and sometimes known as orgasm training/denial in certain contexts, is a sexual stimulation technique that shares similarities with "slow masturbation" in Alex Comfort's book The New Joy of Sex, and the "Venus Butterfly" technique in The One Hour Orgasm by Leah and Bob Schwartz.
Edging is also a common behavioural therapy used in the treatment of premature ejaculation, known as the “start–stop” technique, developed by urologist James H. Semans in 1956. The “start–stop” technique involves stimulating the penis until one feels the urge to ejaculate, then removing the stimulation until the urge to ejaculate subsides.
Repeating this manoeuvre multiple times before allowing yourself to ejaculate allows you to improve control over the ejaculatory response by learning to identify the physical and emotional parameters involved in arousal (Cooper et al., 2015).
Although once considered the gold standard for the treatment of premature ejaculation, the “start–stop” technique has been under scrutiny, with studies disagreeing on the effectiveness of this behavioural-based treatment (Seftel & Althof, 1997; de Carufel & Trudel, 2006; Jern, 2014).
You can edge by getting as close as possible to ejaculation, walking right up to the edge, then stopping. Repeating as desired. Or you can get as close as possible to ejaculation and keep yourself there, walking along the edge.
These are the two ways that I teach edging to clients. In either case, the focus is on exploring and navigating the levels of arousal and stimulation.
Of course, you can do some edging and also choose to ejaculate or not. Edging and intentional ejaculation are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I often encourage clients to do both.
Again, to be clear, they are two seperate practices.