Got a minute? Sex researchers Masters and Johnson found it's possible to recondition sexual responses. They developed the squeeze technique, by which a man -- working closely with his partner -- can learn to exercise control over his ejaculation. Simply put, when the woman feels that her partner is becoming aroused, she puts her first and second fingers just above and below the coronal ridge (imagine holding a cigar) and her thumb on the underside of the penis. She applies pressure for about four seconds front to back, never side to side. The mistake most novices make is to wait until the man is experiencing ejaculatory inevitability (pulling his hair out, bouncing like the springs of a flat-bed truck, shadow-boxing with the big one). Rather, you use the squeeze throughout the foreplay -- before insertion. Once you've mastered this, you can switch to a basilar squeeze technique, in which either the man or the woman slows his excitement by squeezing the base of his penis (again, front to back) for about four seconds.

Here's another method that doesn't involve a partner: In her book, PE: How to Overcome Premature Ejaculation, Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan describes a start-stop method that will teach you the sensations of orgasm and what it feels like just before you come. When you masturbate, "stop stimulating yourself when you reach a high level of arousal, near orgasm. Stop for a few seconds -- not long enough to lose your erection but long enough for your excitement to go down a little. Then start the rhythmic stroking of the shaft and tip of your penis again. Interrupt three times. Let yourself come on the fourth time as fast and as freely as you can. During this whole experience, try to concentrate on your pleasurable penile sensations. Do not try to hold back." The method involves moving onto a wet masturbatory technique (using petroleum jelly or soapsuds) to simulate the vagina. You focus on your own sensations, learn to stop and then to let go.

To make this easier, Kaplan suggests learning to rate your sexual arousal: "Rate the degree of your sexual excitement (not your erection) on a subjective scale that runs from zero to ten. Zero is when you are feeling absolutely no excitement at all and ten is when you reach orgasm. You should have been stopping penile stimulation when you were at about eight and a half. If you tried to go until nine and a half, you went a bit too far, and if you stopped at four or five, you ended the stimulation a bit too soon. Remember, the aim of this program is not tokeep your excitement down until you want to come. That is no fun at all, and besides, that doesn't work. The objective is for you to learn not to ejaculate while staying at the intensely pleasurable sexual plateau stage that precedes orgasm and to be able to relish the delicious sensations of being highly aroused instead of trying to hold back. During intercourse, most men stay somewhere between five and seven, except for brief peaks of eight or so, until they are ready to go all the way." The scale is useful for gauging your behavior during intercourse. For example, if you reach an eight and a half during foreplay, don't try to penetrate. Let yourself cool down (refrain from rubbing or thrusting against your partner's body). The pace you adopt to keep yourself at six may be just the kind of luxurious lovemaking your partner desires most.

And here's more: In an article in "Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality," Daniel Weiss and Dr. David Marcotte suggest that by learning to relax the pubococcygeus muscle (the muscle used to control urination), a man can avoid premature ejaculation. The authors believe that the method is superior to the squeeze technique invented by Masters and Johnson, because it does not require partner cooperation or interruption of the lovemaking. We don't know of any gyms devoted to the relaxation response, but two experiments by Raymond Rosen suggest the shape of things to come. Rosen hooked up 40 male students to a red light and had them listen to a recording of pornography. The light would go on whenever the student got an erection and go off whenever he quelled the erection. Students soon learned to go from full erection to half-mast at will and were better at doing so than those who had not been hooked up to the light. In a related experiment, Rosen told students to try to increase the size of their erections -- an orange light would change intensity according to size. By the end of the study, students who were guided by the light were able to turn on at will. Rig up something yourself and work out.