I’m Adam, co-founder of Control. An app that helps men last longer in bed. I dealt with PE for years, tried everything, and eventually figured out what actually works. Then I built an app around it. This post is about why everything else is broken and what we built instead.
Let me be honest with you about the state of premature ejaculation treatment: it’s a mess.
I spent years trying to fix this for myself, and what I found was shocking. The medical establishment’s approach to PE is outdated, lazy, and often just wrong. The “solutions” they offer range from barely effective to actively counterproductive. And yet millions of men are told this is the best we’ve got.
It’s not. Let me break down why everything else fails, and what we built instead.
The Three Things Doctors Will Tell You (And Why They’re Mostly Bullshit)
1. Kegels
This is the go-to recommendation. “Just do kegels!”
Look, I’m not here to shit on kegels entirely. They have their place. But as the primary solution for PE? It makes no sense once you actually think about it.
Kegels work for a very small subset of people - guys whose only issue is a genuinely weak pelvic floor. And here’s the thing: if that’s your only problem, you’re probably not in the “I last 30 seconds” camp that most PE sufferers are dealing with. You might feel like you could use more control, but you’re not the guy who’s been ashamed of this for years.
I did kegels religiously for months. Didn’t move the needle.
Here’s why: think about what kegels actually do. A stronger pelvic floor helps you hold back your orgasm when you’re at the point of no return. Cool. But that’s not how guys without PE actually experience sex.
Guys who last longer aren’t getting to the edge of orgasm and then clenching for dear life for five minutes straight. That’s not what’s happening. They’re taking longer to get to that point in the first place. That’s the key difference.
Even if you got amazing at kegels - like world-class pelvic floor strength - you’d still be sprinting to the finish line. You’d just be standing there at the edge, holding on, not cumming but also not really enjoying yourself. You’re clenched up, you’re focused on not finishing, you’re not present. That’s not a great sexual experience for anyone.
Even now that I’ve basically solved this for myself, yeah sometimes I get to that point faster than I wanted and have to hold back a bit. It happens. But that’s the exception, not the entire strategy.
A kegel-only plan completely misses what’s actually going on.
2. Medication
Here’s the thing about medication: it actually works. SSRIs (antidepressants) genuinely help most people last longer. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
I tried SSRIs. They worked.
But there are real problems with this approach:
Side effects. Even the best options come with real trade-offs. Decreased libido - so you last longer but want sex less. Emotional blunting - you’re not as anxious but you’re also not as... anything. Some guys get the opposite problem: delayed ejaculation flips to can’t finish at all, which creates a whole new issue. Erectile dysfunction. Weight gain. Sleep problems. And here’s the cruel irony: the same mechanism that helps you last longer also makes sex feel less intense. You last longer but enjoy it less. Horrible deal.
Dependency. You’re now reliant on a pill for your sex life. There are ongoing costs. You need a doctor and a prescription and pharmacy trips. You have to remember to take it - some are daily, some are “take it 2-4 hours before sex” which means you’re planning and timing around a pill. You probably shouldn’t drink with it, which, let’s be real, is a problem for a lot of the situations where this matters. If you forget it or run out, you’re back to square one. And what’s the long-term plan here? Take it forever? What happens when you want to stop - are you just back to having PE for the rest of your life? It’s not a cure, it’s a crutch. You haven’t actually fixed anything.
The reality. Most guys just don’t want to do this. Going to a doctor for this is awkward. Getting a prescription for antidepressants when you’re not depressed feels weird. The hassle and the stigma alone stops most people from even trying this route. And honestly? I get it. I wanted an actual solution, not a workaround I’d be dependent on forever.
For me, the side effects weren’t worth it. Being dependent on remembering a pill before sex sucked. I wanted an actual solution, not a workaround.
But here’s the part that actually matters:
Why the hell do antidepressants work for premature ejaculation in the first place?
Seriously. The medical establishment just accepts this as fact and moves on. “Yep, SSRIs increase serotonin, that delays ejaculation, here’s your prescription, next patient.”
But that’s an enormous clue about what’s actually happening. If tweaking your neurochemistry changes how long you last, that tells you something important: your nervous system regulation and arousal reactivity are core to the problem. This isn’t just a physical thing. It’s not just about your dick. Your brain and nervous system are running the show.
And if that’s true - which it clearly is - you should be able to train those systems without drugs. Breathing techniques, arousal awareness, nervous system regulation exercises. This stuff works on the same mechanisms that SSRIs are brute-forcing chemically.
But almost nobody in the medical field is exploring that path. They’d rather write prescriptions.
We’ll go deeper on this in a future post - the real causes of PE and what the serotonin connection actually tells us - but this was one of the biggest insights that shaped how we built Control.
3. Outdated Techniques (Stop-Start, Squeeze, etc.)
You’ve probably heard these: the squeeze technique (stop and squeeze the tip to prevent ejaculation), stop-start (edge yourself, stop before you finish, repeat), and variations of the same idea.
Here’s my take: these techniques aren’t useless. We actually recommend some of them in Control, for solo practice sessions. Building exposure to high arousal without finishing is legit training. It helps you get familiar with your arousal curve, learn what a 7 vs a 9 feels like, and build tolerance over time.
But that’s not how they’re usually recommended.
The standard medical advice is to use these techniques during sex with a partner. And that’s where it falls apart completely.
Picture it: you’re mid-sex, you feel yourself getting close, so you stop everything, pull out, and squeeze your dick while your partner just... waits there. Maybe you do this two or three times. Sexy, right?
It murders the mood. It takes you out of the moment entirely. Your partner feels like they’re on pause while you manage a problem. And even when it works, it’s not like you’ve added ten minutes - you’ve bought yourself maybe another 30 seconds to a minute before you have to do it again.
More importantly: you’re not building any lasting skill. You’re just interrupting. Every time you have sex, you’re back to the same routine. Stop, squeeze, hope for the best.
These techniques have value as training tools. But as your entire strategy? As something you do during partnered sex indefinitely? It’s duct tape, not a real solution.
The Weird Truth: Reddit Was Better
Here’s something that surprised me during my research: some of the best information on treating PE wasn’t in medical journals or from doctors. It was on Reddit.
Subreddits like r/PrematureEjaculation had guides written by guys who actually dealt with this, did their own research, experimented on themselves, and figured out what worked. They synthesized information from all over, stuff the medical establishment largely ignores.
This is where I actually started making progress. But it took forever to piece together what applied to me specifically.
For a while, these community guides were genuinely the gold standard. But they have limitations too:
No single guide had everything. Different guides emphasized different approaches. Some focused on physical exercises, others on mental techniques. Nobody had fully consolidated the picture.
Zero personalization. PE has different causes for different people - and most guys have some combination of multiple factors. Trying to fix it without understanding your specific cause means you're probably wasting time on the wrong interventions. We'll go deep on the actual causes of PE, but the point is: a generic guide can't tell you which parts apply to you and which are irrelevant.
No feedback loop. You try something for a few weeks. Did it work? Hard to tell - there’s natural variation, other factors, good days and bad days. Without systematic tracking, you’re flying blind.
Sticking with it is brutal. Even the best program is useless if you don’t actually do it. And when you’re not seeing clear progress, motivation dies fast.
So We Built Control
We looked at this landscape - the broken medical advice, the incomplete Reddit guides, the apps that were somehow even worse than the forums, and saw an opportunity to build something that actually addressed all of these problems.
Here’s how Control works:
Deep personalization from day one. Yes, the onboarding assessment is long. That’s intentional. We need to understand your specific situation - not just how long you last, but your patterns, your history, your lifestyle factors. We use this to identify which combination of causes applies to you and build a plan that targets your actual problems.
A synthesized, complete approach. We took everything that works - the pelvic floor training, the breathing protocols, the arousal awareness exercises, the nervous system regulation practices - and consolidated them into a coherent program. No more piecing together advice from five different Reddit threads.
Built-in feedback and tracking. You log sessions. You do weekly check-ins. The app tracks what techniques you’re using and how your numbers change over time. This does two things: it shows you that you’re actually improving (even when day-to-day variation makes it hard to feel), and it helps us adjust your plan based on what’s working for you specifically.
Gamification that actually helps. Look, I know “gamification” sounds like startup buzzword garbage. But the hardest problem in this space is consistency. You need to do the exercises regularly for weeks to see results. So we added XP, levels, streaks - the stuff that makes your brain want to check in daily. It sounds dumb but it works.
I’ll be honest: the consistency problem is the one we’re still iterating on the most. If you have ideas here, email me at adam@controltheapp.com. I read everything.
Does It Actually Work?
This is the only question that matters.
We built Control based on everything I’d learned, got beta testers, and launched it. We believed it would work, but we had to get it to market to actually find out.
And……the results have genuinely exceeded what I could have imagined!
Now to prove this to you, I could point you to our testimonials. I could tell you about our 4.8 star rating on the App Store. I could share screenshots of DMs/emails from guys thanking us.
But we’re a data-first team, so I’ll let the data speak for itself.
Here’s a box plot showing change in IELT (Intravaginal Ejaculatory Latency Time - fancy term for “how long you last”) after 6 weeks of consistent Control usage:
The median starting point was 42.5 seconds. After 6 weeks: 265 seconds.
That’s going from under a minute to almost 4.5 minutes. For anyone who’s dealt with this, you know what a life-changing difference that is. That’s going from constant anxiety to actually enjoying sex. That’s “cured” for most practical purposes.
Now, this is early data from users who committed to the program. Not everyone sticks with it (the consistency problem is real). But for those who do, this is what’s possible.
Beyond the numbers, the feedback has been incredible. Guys telling us they’re not ashamed anymore. That they feel in control for the first time. That their relationships have improved. That the anxiety is gone.
This is why we built Control.
Try It
If you’re dealing with PE and you’re tired of useless medical advice and incomplete information, give Control a shot.
Coming Soon
This is the first post in a series where we’re going to go deep on this topic. Subscribe for:
- The real causes of PE - including the nervous system and serotonin connections that researchers keep ignoring
- How we calculate your Control Score - behind the scenes on the assessment
- Honest comparisons - Control vs Reddit guides vs other apps vs medical approaches
- Case studies - real user journeys with data