Erectile Dysfunction, Divorce, Internet Dating, and Performance Anxiety

So, you’re recently divorced, having not had sex in a long while, and you’re ready to get back in the proverbial saddle. You’ve found an internet dating site that looks good, provides an ample number of women who – if their photos are from this century – look attractive. You subscribe. Now you’re actually getting some “flirts” from them. 

This may also hold true if you have face-to-face contact with women who accept your flirts, but with that opportunity, you would have gotten divorced or into the saddle a long time ago.

The ultimate purpose of dating is sex. Yes, friendship, companionship, and even love may be in the equation as well, but unless you’re a 70+ year old that has – erroneously – decided that that part of his life is over, you’re going to want to make love to the woman you’ve approached, or whose invitation you’ve accepted.

And women want that, too. Don’t think for a moment that just because you ex-wife lost all interest in sex (with you) years ago, that women – including your ex when she gets back in the dating scene – doesn’t want to enjoy the physical aspect of a relationship. From the first date, she is evaluation you, just as you are sizing her up.

So you arrange to meet. You have coffee or a drink. Maybe you get along terrifically and there’s another date soon thereafter, dinner or perhaps a show. I personally don’t subscribe to the paradigm that a third date guarantees sex, sometimes slowing things down to enjoy the thrill of anticipation is a good idea. However, at some point, be it date #3, or #4, or maybe #2, you’ve got to be prepared to perform.

      There’s an aphorism, “When a dog chases a car, what does it expect to do if it catches one?”

      You get the woman. She’ll be yours if you ask, or maybe she’s asked you. “Care to come in for coffee,” has NOTHING to do with Arabica beans. You have sound reason to expect that you may have trouble getting a sustainable erection the first time you have sex with a new woman if you’ve been sidelined for a number of years. Here’s why:

• Pure psychology:  “Performance Anxiety” will set you up for poor performance just by the very thought of it. Asking yourself the question, “Can I do it?” is a sure-fire way to get this particular snowball rolling down the mountainside. 
•  Long-term reliance on masturbation: Your only source of release has been you. You will undoubtedly have a favorite way of exciting yourself and bringing yourself to ejaculation. You will have done this with some frequency – at times – and almost always the same way. But that could set you up for failure with a woman. A vagina feels different than your hand – or whatever. The sensation being different, you may have trouble maintaining an erection until her satisfaction. You may not be able to achieve orgasm and ejaculation. You’ve put yourself into a masturbatory rut. Try other ways of doing it. Here’s a web site that details various techniques. It looks like a gay site – it’s not (I think) – but don’t let that stop you from visiting. Gay or straight, masturbation is still auto-eroticism, it’s just what you think about during the deed that differs: Orgasmic Guy. (you probably don't want to view this at work.)
•  You’ve gotta blow the gunk out of your carburetor. For those too young to remember carburetors, before fuel injection, it was a very clever device to mix air and gasoline before it went into a car’s engine. They were subject to fouling, and from time to time had to be cleaned... or you’d have to get your wheels out on the highway and take it to 100 to really blow out the crud. Your erection mechanism is the same. If it sits too long without use – female use – then you need to get it used to female touch, attention, and arousal again. I’m not promoting illegal – and perhaps unhealthy – activity, but here’s where a good hooker might be useful. Or, any stranger with benefits that won’t be around to judge you on your new-found ineptitude. An alternative is to find a woman who understands that you’ve been off the rodeo circuit for a while and will give you some time to regain your lost eptitude. 
• Try a placebo. Take the boner-pill, but don’t invest in a year’s supply. Use Viagra or Cialis for the first few times. Yes, they will have physical benefits, but more importantly, they give you the confidence to overcome psychological roadblocks, masturbatory tunnel vision, and ensure reasonable performance while your erectile machinery gets used to a woman’s touch. Then stop taking them, they’re not good for you.

In conclusion, don’t second guess yourself. If you wake up in the morning with a sustainable piss-hard-on, or you get a little wood when the 20-something in your office bends down to file something in a bottom draw, your machine works. Take it slow when you’re with your woman. Make love, don’t shoot for just sex. She’ll like that and so will you.

Talk to your new mate. A woman should be understanding, maybe even encouraged by the fact that you just got out of a bad marriage and DID NOT “cheat” even though you were cut off for the last few years. Play that up: “I was still bound by my vows, and that’s why I sought divorce before dating again, and that took X years.”

If you’ve let yourself go – you’ve gotten fat and physically useless – then you may have some physiological reasons to be concerned, too. You may be too unhealthy to get an erection and have erectile dysfunction for real. Fortunately, while you’re working toward finding Ms. Next, you can make yourself feel and look better. Read my book:

HARD! Maintaining Potency, Eliminating Erectile Dysfunction, and Enjoying Healthy Sex for Life is not just for those with ED, but for all men who want to keep functioning throughout their life. A concise and powerful men’s health guide, HARD! provides a protocol for how to do everything right. 

Available at BN.com/Nook, Apple, and Amazon/Kindle.

Also available in all eBook formats for immediate download: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65109.

Erectile Dysfunction or Erectile Disinterest?

Back in my 20s (1970s), if the wind blew in the right direction, I could get an erection. The mantra back then – entirely in resonance with the zeitgeist – was “any portal in a storm.” Women, exercising their new liberation, were doing the same, though their metaphors are a bit more challenging.

Now things are different, and I’m not just referring to the biology. Along with a maturing body, that has slowed with time, and is less immediately responsive to the moment, there is a maturing of the mind. While able to “fulfill the promise” in some situations, it is not willing to perform in others. What’s going on?

It is easiest to explain by example. [Note: for the benefit of women reading this, the exact opposite will be true. You’ll have to find a blog discussing “Vaginal Dysfunction or Vaginal Disinterest?” at another site. That being said, the remedy for the physical manifestation of frigidity can be found in a tube, the use of which has no physical side effects and costs only a few dollars. No so for ED.]

Scenario #1 – generally applies to married couples

It has been a long time since you’ve had sex with your wife. It’s your anniversary, and whether by obligation, or perhaps some spark of remembrance of feelings for you early in your relationship, she makes herself available to you. But you’re not in the right mindset. You may have been working hard in the yard all day, or she’s treated you like shit for the past week and right now, you really don’t give a fuck. That translates into not being able to give the fuck. You don’t have erectile dysfunction, you have erectile disinterest.

Here I’ll interject a suggestion for the women. Men need foreplay, too. And, like you, it starts well before you hit the sheets. As Sinatra used to sing, “Try a Little Tenderness.”

Scenario #2—applies to any relationship that has expired

How many times have we heard about a divorce in which the couple stayed together far longer than they should have mostly because “the sex was great?” These are 28 year-olds breaking up, not 50+ year-olds.

You may be in a relationship – long term marriage or short term endearment – that has expired. As men and women in our 50s or beyond, we get habituated very easily to just having someone around. Whether there is cohabitation, or just the ritual of getting together Friday night, departing Sunday afternoon, we like having another person there. We enjoy some aspects of the companionship, but it’s more a matter of just not being alone in your own home, day after week after month. Finding someone new is just such a pain in the ass.

The moment will arise when she feels physical engagement is appropriate, but you won’t arise to meet it. You’re just not really interested anymore. The feel of her skin on yours, the smell of her, the shape of her, just doesn’t turn you on. Performance is dampened, often to the point of extinction. You don’t have erectile dysfunction, you have erectile disinterest.

Scenario #3—generally applies to new partners

You’ve met someone new. Perhaps you were introduced at a party, set up by a well meaning friend of relative, or made the arrangements yourself on an internet dating site. She’s “nice looking” and has all the parts. You go out once or twice. Maybe the ominous third date has arrived. She invites you in for coffee. You’re sitting on the couch which has a floral design reminiscent of your grandmother’s when you were a kid. She has a collection of Hummels on a shelf unit. 600 Hummels. There are magazines on the coffee table. She subscribes to the Christian Science Monitor and Macramé Monthly. You didn’t know any of this. In the brighter light of her living room, you realize that she just doesn’t look like the woman you were sitting opposite across a candle-lit table at the restaurant.

You don’t want to insult her, so you move close and kiss her. After a little of that, she takes you to the bedroom. She goes to the bathroom to freshen up. You disrobe and get under the sheets. She walks out and slips in next to you. You just don’t wanna do it. You keep running “any portal in a storm” through your head like an erectile mantra, but you just don’t have any feeling in the guy. I won’t run through the remainder of the scene, but you have erectile disinterest, you don’t have erectile dysfunction.

Those of you who have followed this blog know that I’m not an advocate of ED drugs. Their side effects can be extreme and their cost is outrageous. But having a pill or two, especially if you’re 50+ and just getting back into dating, may be on the “OK” side of the cost-benefit equation.   

Take a pill so you can perform regardless of the size of her dog that’s staring at you as you mount her.

2nd Edition updated May 2012.

HARD! Maintaining Potency, Eliminating Erectile Dysfunction, and Enjoying Healthy Sex for Life is not just for those with ED, but for all men who want to keep functioning throughout their life. This concise and powerful men’s health guide provides a protocol for how to do everything right.

Available at BN.com/Nook, Apple, and Amazon/Kindle.

Also available in all eBook formats for immediate download: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65109.