Q&A: Erectile Dysfunction Doesn't Have to Get in the Way of Pleasure
Try taking the pressure off! No pun intended.
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Q: I just read Come As You Are and went through the workbook. Both very helpful for understanding my sexuality. But I don’t recall any section on male erectile dysfunction. It’s hard enough working thru my past trauma and understanding my accelerators and brakes, but it makes it even more difficult when my partner has erectile dysfunction. Any suggestions on how to work on my own pleasure when his basic sexual functioning isn’t functioning? I find it hard to make progress on all the things you suggest in your book when my partner is having so much trouble in this area. Why can you suggest?
A: I can suggest a bunch of things!
First, almost everything related to your pleasure can be accessed without an erection. You don’t need an erect penis to experience your own pleasure by yourself, for sure, and you don’t even need an erect penis to experience pleasure with your partner. They have a lot of other body parts with which to give you pleasure and through which you can give them pleasure! Bodies are AMAZING in their ability to give pleasure – in the right context. It sounds like you (and maybe also your partner?) are experiencing the lack of erection as a negative context.
But second, erectile dysfunction is generally a simple and even fun sexual difficulty. Here are some steps you can take.
Step 1: Don’t frame it as “DYSFUNCTION.” Your partner is not broken, just as you’re not broken, even when things don’t work as expected. Thinking of the absence of erection as a big ol’ problem or a disease is what creates the negative context that prevents your brains from interpreting your sexual connection as a safe, fun sexy, pleasurable place. That’s a conversation you and your partner should have.
A couple of communication tips for that:
The only “wrong” thing to do (by which I mean something that will cause your relationship to deteriorate) is to make a big deal about the erection, tell your partner there’s something wrong with them, they need to get help, it’s a PUH-RAHHHHHH-BLUM that needs to be FIXXXXXXXXXT.
The process of getting an erection begins not with an increase in arousal but with a decrease in things hitting the brakes; when there’s worry about being broken or about being judged as broken or inadequate, does that worry let the brakes release? Of course not. So apply the same type of thinking and feeling to your partner’s sexual functioning as you are to your own trauma healing and your own accelerators and brakes. Nonjudgmental, compassionate, kind.
Most of the time, difficulties with erection are psychogenic, meaning they’re not caused by a biological or medical problem, they’re caused by psychological issues. That can be depression, anxiety, or other diagnosable psychological difficulty, but it can also be as simple as performance anxiety. Worrying about sex, including worrying about getting an erection, is an excellent way to prevent an erection.
Erectile difficulties can also reflect relationship difficulties, which hit the brakes as much in people with penises as people with clitorises. If both of you are struggling with your own sexual functioning, that could be a sign not just of two individuals with struggles, but of a relationship disconnect that shows up in your sexualities. That could mean therapy is the right choice for you, if you don’t feel like you can both equally stay kind, compassionate, nonjudgmental, and curious while you discuss your mutual interest in improving your erotic connection.
Step 2: Let your partner read Come As You Are, or just send them directly to chapter 6, the chapter on arousal nonconcordance. It’ll help take the pressure off.
Step 3: Take all attention away from the penis. Penises are shy. If you put a spotlight on them and wait for them to perform, they’ll only hide away. Shift attention away from the penis and it can relax and breathe and respond to its environment without worrying about whether or not it’s meeting anyone’s expectations.
Step 4: Have some sex where the whole point is for y’all to play with a soft penis. Soft penises are a lot of fun! They stretch and (gently) twist and you can fit them AND the scrotum all in one hand. Do all the things with your mouth and hands that you might do with an erect penis, only do them with a soft penis! This isn’t about trying to get an erection to happen, it’s taking the fact that erection isn’t there as an opportunity to enjoy new and different kinds of play.
I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about this (though most often an optimistic and playful point of view is what will improve your sexual connection.) People on both sides of a struggle with erection may tie a lot of Meaning to a lack of erection. The person with the penis wonders about their sexual “adequacy;” their partner wonders whether their partner really is attracted to them. The person with the penis worries about being judged; their partner worries that they’re not good enough to make an erection happen. Those worries—not the (absence of) erection itself—are the real difficulty. People may even feel that their whole IDENTITIES are tied to their own or their partner’s erection.
Let me say this emphatically: THEY ARE NOT. Our culture has lied to us by telling us that “virility” or “masculinity” or “prowess” or anything else are “proven” by erection. Erection is just blood flow to the genitals. It doesn’t mean anything in particular. All the feelings you have about your partner’s erection, and all the feelings they have about it, are based on those lies we have all been told. The process of freeing yourselves from those lies is the real goal of therapy. It’s not even about the blood flow.
I hope that helps. It might not be the answer you were expecting or even hoping for, but that’s exactly my point. I can’t tell you how to get your partner to have erections, because the erections are almost beside the point. Your shared erotic connection, your feelings about each other’s sexualities and your own. That’s what matters. Not the erection.
Long story, short, erections come and go. They can be fun, but they are only as important as you decide they are.
I recently recorded a podcast with Ruby Rare for a series called In Touch.
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