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I want to talk about some of my experiences with what has generally been mild erectile dysfunction in hopes that they will help another guy.
PART ONE: The past six years – I don’t want to take medicine!
I didn’t mark it down on my calendar because it was a day I had hoped to forget, but I’m guessing this happened when was when I was 52: My wife and I were having sex, and while inside her, I lost my erection. I felt embarrassed, and I didn’t know why I’d deflated. I was definitely enjoying myself, but I couldn’t get to the climax.
Over the next few months, and years, it happened again—and again. It seemed to be happening more often. For a while, I took some L-arginine, as I’d read that it might help. I thought it did, some—but I also wondered if it was acting as a placebo. For reasons I can’t explain, however, I stopped taking it after a few months.
I’m 58 now. I can’t put a specific timeline on the following, but over the years, the problems became worse. I generally had no problems getting hard (though it would take longer than it used to), but it was difficult for me to stayhard while inside my wife. Let me stress that during foreplay, my erection felt great. But during penetrative sex, there were often problems—and the frequency kept increasing.
I think the ED problems were made a bit worse by a couple of things: (1) Post-menopausal, my wife is really dry, so we have to use a lot of lube—lots of lube means less friction, less stimulation. (2) Once ED started happening, I’d get nervous that it’d happen again—anxiety about performance likely makes performance problematic. (3) While I think my cock is pretty big, my wife hasn’t been all that tight since she gave birth to a large (over 10-lb) baby after age 40. Before he was born, there’d be lots of queefing due to the tight fit, but I haven’t heard those sounds since he came along. Again, lack of tightness meant less friction.
Because I couldn’t stay hard easily, my “bag of tricks” became smaller. For example, while I loved giving long, slow strokes, those strokes weren’t sufficient to keep me hard. So, to ensure that I’d cum, once penetrative sex began, I’d stroke hard and fast so that I could shoot before I lost the boner. So, eventually, my only “trick” was fast pumping.
And sometimes even that didn’t work. I’ve faked several orgasms when I could tell that I was starting to lose it. Sometimes, after stroking awhile, it was obvious that I wasn’t hard enough to keep going, and I’d just stop. A couple months ago, I reached the point that probably half of the time, I wouldn’t be able to ejaculate while having sex.
Sometime within the last year, I started taking Horny Goat Weed (Walmart brand, and it has a few other ingredients in it). I also took L-Arginine. I thought these maybe made a bit of a difference, but I wasn’t sure. (I was quite willing to take supplements, but the idea of taking medication made me feel like I would be less of a man.)
Through it all, even though our sessions weren’t satisfying to me, and I’m sure weren’t as pleasurable to her, my wife still usually had an orgasm from my finger.
Things got quite a bit worse a few months ago, and while I could get hard during foreplay, by the time we’d shifted our bodies around and I started going in, I had lost so much of my erection that I wasn’t hard enough to enter my wife. I felt like shit. Performance anxiety made me want to avoid sex, so instead of our customary once a week session, it was stretching out to an attempt every couple of weeks. I think we went about six weeks like this.
You may be thinking, “Why didn’t he go to the doctor a long time ago?” General embarrassment is the main reason, and I was unwilling to admit to myself what was going on. I felt like admitting the problem and seeking a medical solution made me less of a man. And, seeing the doctor even less appealing was that my doctor was a family friend, and female—someone we go to church with. When she became my doctor about 15 years ago, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to talk about anything sexual with her should it ever become necessary. My worries were accurate. And I stopped going even for my annual physical. A few months ago, I tried to do an appointment with Roman (www.getroman.com), but one of their questions was about when I’d last had a physical, and when they found out it had been a few years, they said I needed to have one before proceeding further.
Let me add in a couple of points about me/us:
Part Two coming soon: Getting BlueChew
PART ONE: The past six years – I don’t want to take medicine!
I didn’t mark it down on my calendar because it was a day I had hoped to forget, but I’m guessing this happened when was when I was 52: My wife and I were having sex, and while inside her, I lost my erection. I felt embarrassed, and I didn’t know why I’d deflated. I was definitely enjoying myself, but I couldn’t get to the climax.
Over the next few months, and years, it happened again—and again. It seemed to be happening more often. For a while, I took some L-arginine, as I’d read that it might help. I thought it did, some—but I also wondered if it was acting as a placebo. For reasons I can’t explain, however, I stopped taking it after a few months.
I’m 58 now. I can’t put a specific timeline on the following, but over the years, the problems became worse. I generally had no problems getting hard (though it would take longer than it used to), but it was difficult for me to stayhard while inside my wife. Let me stress that during foreplay, my erection felt great. But during penetrative sex, there were often problems—and the frequency kept increasing.
I think the ED problems were made a bit worse by a couple of things: (1) Post-menopausal, my wife is really dry, so we have to use a lot of lube—lots of lube means less friction, less stimulation. (2) Once ED started happening, I’d get nervous that it’d happen again—anxiety about performance likely makes performance problematic. (3) While I think my cock is pretty big, my wife hasn’t been all that tight since she gave birth to a large (over 10-lb) baby after age 40. Before he was born, there’d be lots of queefing due to the tight fit, but I haven’t heard those sounds since he came along. Again, lack of tightness meant less friction.
Because I couldn’t stay hard easily, my “bag of tricks” became smaller. For example, while I loved giving long, slow strokes, those strokes weren’t sufficient to keep me hard. So, to ensure that I’d cum, once penetrative sex began, I’d stroke hard and fast so that I could shoot before I lost the boner. So, eventually, my only “trick” was fast pumping.
And sometimes even that didn’t work. I’ve faked several orgasms when I could tell that I was starting to lose it. Sometimes, after stroking awhile, it was obvious that I wasn’t hard enough to keep going, and I’d just stop. A couple months ago, I reached the point that probably half of the time, I wouldn’t be able to ejaculate while having sex.
Sometime within the last year, I started taking Horny Goat Weed (Walmart brand, and it has a few other ingredients in it). I also took L-Arginine. I thought these maybe made a bit of a difference, but I wasn’t sure. (I was quite willing to take supplements, but the idea of taking medication made me feel like I would be less of a man.)
Through it all, even though our sessions weren’t satisfying to me, and I’m sure weren’t as pleasurable to her, my wife still usually had an orgasm from my finger.
Things got quite a bit worse a few months ago, and while I could get hard during foreplay, by the time we’d shifted our bodies around and I started going in, I had lost so much of my erection that I wasn’t hard enough to enter my wife. I felt like shit. Performance anxiety made me want to avoid sex, so instead of our customary once a week session, it was stretching out to an attempt every couple of weeks. I think we went about six weeks like this.
You may be thinking, “Why didn’t he go to the doctor a long time ago?” General embarrassment is the main reason, and I was unwilling to admit to myself what was going on. I felt like admitting the problem and seeking a medical solution made me less of a man. And, seeing the doctor even less appealing was that my doctor was a family friend, and female—someone we go to church with. When she became my doctor about 15 years ago, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to talk about anything sexual with her should it ever become necessary. My worries were accurate. And I stopped going even for my annual physical. A few months ago, I tried to do an appointment with Roman (www.getroman.com), but one of their questions was about when I’d last had a physical, and when they found out it had been a few years, they said I needed to have one before proceeding further.
Let me add in a couple of points about me/us:
- During my 40s and maybe even into my 50s, I was still jacking out an explosion most nights. My wife really only wanted to have sex on the weekends, but my drive was such that I really enjoyed, as part of my routine, a good squirt every couple of days (if not daily). Plus, I found that if I jerked it on, say, a Thursday, I’d have much better control when we made love during the weekends. When these ED problems started, my goal became not to cum from jerking, but just to edge (and edge and edge).
- It’s implied by the above point, but I generally had no problem getting hard for masturbation. I could tell it wasn’t as hard as it used to be, but it seemed hard enough, and I almost always could bring myself to cum.
- I’m in shape. I run 3 miles, 3 times a week. I don’t have any health issues, though my cholesterol is higher than it should be (I don’t’ take any medication, though my doctor has recommended it).
- One of the things I’ve noticed over the last couple of years is that while I still think I get hard fairly easily, it has been more difficult to stay hard. For example, if I get a boner and want to take a picture, by the time I had my camera ready, I’d usually deflated more than I’d wanted. During foreplay, the same thing would occur—if I ever let my mind wander, the wood would weaken.
- Another downside of this is that my dick was smaller. Whereas a few years ago, I’d typically measure about 6.75 inches, gently bone pressed (and even 7 a few times), I was tending to measure at about 6 inches. I knew that I wasn’t getting as hard, and so I didn’t have as much length. (That’s a tough thing to admit.)
- My wife and I don’t do a very good job communicating about sex. (Or other things, for that matter, but that’s a whole other story.) We were both raised in very conservative homes, and I think even after nearly 30 years of marriage, we still feel somewhat embarrassed talking about our sexuality—especially my wife. So, while we had a few brief conversations about my struggles, they were more of the nature of me saying “I’m sorry” and her saying “That’s OK.”
Part Two coming soon: Getting BlueChew