I wrote this because I wanted to share my story about my experience with ED - how it got started, how I got on the road to healing, and what I learned through the process. I’m in my early thirties now, and the original cause of my ED was entirely psychological. My intention is to give hope to folks who are struggling, to share advice that worked for me, and to remind folks that they aren’t alone. If you have questions or want to chat about anything in detail, please reach out.
----
The start
My journey started a few months after I ended a 4 year relationship and started dating again. On my fourth date with Alicia that summer, I took her back to my place, and we climbed up into the loft of the small SF room I had rented for a couple of months.
Alicia clearly knew what she was doing and what she wanted, and that intimidated me. It’d been a while since I’d been intimate with someone. In my old relationship, sex had gotten to a point of auto-pilot - we had a comfortable routine and didn’t really deviate from that for the last few years. In the loft with Alicia, it suddenly all felt brand new and strange, as if I had forgotten how to have sex.
We climbed up, started making out… and I couldn’t get it up. Anxiety crept in, and so for the first time I could remember, I couldn’t get an erection going. I wasn’t sure what it was - was it because we were drinking? Was it because I felt intimidated? I was confused since this had never happened to me before, but we called it a night and I didn’t think about it that much.
The next few times we tried to have sex, the same thing happened. I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. There were always other pressures - she had to wake up early for work, or something was bothering me from my personal life. I was getting into my head. Once sex became a thing that I had to think about, it felt like that was it. It didn’t feel possible for me to recover from that.
Each time it was more and more taxing on my body. I would stimulate myself beforehand to prove to myself I could get an erection. I would masturbate a few days before seeing her to try to “jump start” my system. I got more and more anxious. Mentally, it was starting to freak me out. I didn’t think this kind of thing could happen to me. In my solo sessions, I would be really anxious. Constantly testing myself - can I get hard in different situations? In the shower? When I woke up? just randomly? I had always had small anxieties about my sex drive - I’ve never had wet dreams that I can recollect. I don’t go from 0-100 easily “like normal guys” - foreplay is important to me. I don’t get turned on from just seeing pictures of hot women in bikinis. Was something wrong with me?
I started to notice the same pattern: when I started a session, I would become aroused and able to get hard, but when it came time for penetration, at any hint of trouble I would lose my erection, and it would be nearly impossible to recover from that. I felt hypersensitive to Alicia’s reactions. I told her that the best thing she could do was to help me take my mind off of this one thing, but during one session, I thought I saw her eyes checking to see if I was getting hard, and that really put me off.
Alicia was getting frustrated. To some extent, she blamed herself - perhaps I didn’t find her attractive enough? But mostly, she wondered what was going on with me, as I tried my best to reassure both of us that this was extremely abnormal for me and we were going to solve it. The situation came with a lot of tough emotions in general - it felt unsatisfying for both of us, with no resolution and no release, only frustration. It was hard to feel like our relationship was progressing without the physical chemistry. For this and many other reasons, we later broke up.
2nd partner
Perhaps, I thought, I could break the pattern with someone different. On the first couple of dates with Jane, we went back to her place and soon it became the same pattern - I was able to get hard at the start, but at the first sign of trouble my body would close up. I started to understand that our bodies do not cooperate under duress. I remember during one session where I lost an erection, Jane suggested we watch porn. I had zero reaction, despite turning on some porn that never fails to stimulate me when I’m solo. My body was done with me for the moment after all the anxiety and stress I poured into it.
However, Jane was very kind and understanding about the first few times. She was also quite experienced, which made her very confident that she would be able to “fix” me. On a weekend trip a few weeks later, we had a breakthrough during a session in the bathtub with a lot of foreplay. She slipped it in and I barely noticed. Once I was in, I tried to keep up the momentum since I didn’t want to lose it. Not too long after, I successfully orgasmed - it was such a good feeling to finally have that release with a partner after more than a month or so of struggle.
The next time we were back at my place, I was feeling great. We were on the couch, and again she slipped it in quickly. Part of the reason I had some success was that I didn’t have time to second guess myself - she just went for it without me needing to do anything. We also chose not to use a condom (she was on birth control and we got tested, please be safe!), which also helped streamline things. Again, I orgasmed super quickly, but I felt relieved. Two in a row! I thought I was home free. We started talking about strategies like pulling back when I was close so I could last longer.
Of course, after one successful experience, the goal had now shifted for me, from getting to orgasm with a partner through PIV sex, to now lasting longer. But during this session, I tried to slow down to prevent myself from orgasming too quickly, and… I lost the erection and couldn’t get it back up. A few weeks after, that relationship ended as well.
Getting outside help: therapy
At this point, I was very anxious about what was going on, and I wanted to “fix” my problem as soon as I could. I went in for a doctor’s appointment. I asked how often this ED issue came up, and she said it happened all the time. In fact, there was a health counselor that focused on men’s sexual health, since it was such a common issue. She mentioned that for me it was likely all psychological since I reported that I had no problems when I wasn’t with a partner. I asked for a testosterone test anyway, just to be sure, and it came back normal. Thankfully, my graduate school came with a required health insurance plan that covered it, so I thought, why not.
I wanted solutions to fix it immediately. How could this happen to me? I could imagine 40 years from now, but how could this happen when I’m still in my 20s? Robert, my new therapist, asked me to be patient. It would take time to undo the patterns my body had created around this. I would have to go easier on myself, and I would have to put less pressure on myself. I also needed to get more comfortable with my partners. Sex puts us in a very vulnerable position, so biologically, it’s hard to get or maintain an erection if we’re feeling anxious or frightened. I realized that the intimidation I felt from my first partner Alicia was very detrimental to my body’s ability to respond positively.
One of the most important rules I learned from Robert was to approach everything from a place of curiosity instead of anxiety. Instead of ascribing a judgmental “oh god, it seems worse today, what do I do,” finding a more observational “oh, interesting, this is how my body is responding today.” It’s ironic that the more we beat ourselves up in worry about something, the more it spirals and prevents us from healing. It took time, but once I was able to truly come from a place of curiosity, my body responded positively to the kinder way I approached it.
I started doing meditation on and off, since I knew that building my awareness would help me with noticing and not judging. Awareness with my senses and my body was also key to me finding my groove back in the long term, since I was always out of touch with my body. One simple sensory exercise I enjoyed was just going outside somewhere and then spending 10 minutes focusing on one sense at a time - just hearing, just seeing, just smelling, just feeling, etc.
As I built some awareness, I was shocked at how much tension I held in my body. What I’ve come to understand is that anxiety and negative feelings can manifest physically in our bodies. For me, because I was anxious about maintaining an erection, I ended up squeezing my pelvic floor a lot. This led my pelvic floor to become super tight, and it grew bad enough that it was tense all the time even when I wasn’t thinking about sex. I had to apply the same practice of being curious about that feeling rather than freaking out about it. I actually kept a log for several months and noted every day how tight my pelvic floor felt on a scale from 1-10, how alive I felt my sexuality was that day, and whether or not I had masturbated that day.
The last concept that Robert kept reminding me about was that sex isn’t just about penetration, or penis-in-vagina (PIV) sex. The ideal is to try to practice non-goal orientation, which involves stimulating each other without feeling like it has to lead to orgasm. This meant that I could focus at getting better at fingering and giving oral, which would lessen the pressure I had to have penetrative sex. I’m not going to lie - it’s more difficult than I thought it would be in practice. As a society, we’re just so conditioned to be goal oriented. Even if I communicated with my partner ahead of time and talked about being non-goal oriented, I still worried that they would be disappointed if neither of us orgasmed. However, I still think the concept helped and is something we can all work at.
Getting more outside help: campus sex counselor
I also found my campus sex counselor, Srini, surprisingly helpful. We talked about how the way I watched porn may lead me to be less interested in normal sex. The theory here is that porn is very different than regular sex - pornography is very visual, whereas sex is far more touch oriented.
He gave me some guidelines on how to masturbate more mindfully and retrain my body. In terms of using pornography, the goal is to reduce the amount of stimulation over time. He gave me a ranking: only using my imagination is the best, followed by text-based (explicit short stories, etc.) > audio-only > still pictures > vanilla video > hardcore video. If I could masturbate using less imagery, that was ideal and would help me be more turned on in real life situations. When we watch porn, we often take the role of the observer, watching others have sex. As much as we can, we should try to get in the mindset of the participant, which is easier with non-visual content. We can also tone down the type of content we watch. One idea he gave me was to search up “porn for women,” which can lead to finding more realistic / romantic content. He also recommended that I masturbate two to three times a week - any more and it would reduce my desire, and any less I wouldn’t get practice with mindful masturbation and trying to retrain my body.
Srini mentioned that medication (sildenafil, tadalafil, etc.) was an option, but he didn’t recommend it since it seemed all psychological for me. Taking the medication would be papering over the problem. I didn’t want to become reliant on a pill - it almost became a challenge for me to prove that I didn’t need to take ED medication to get better. I wanted to reverse the damage I had caused by doing the work myself. I treated it as a break-in-case-of-emergency option, and thankfully I was able to recover without it.
Reducing the stigma
The key for me over these next few months was to deescalate the power it held on me even as it disrupted my sex life. With the help of my therapist and counselor, I began to peel back from the denial and shame I had about my condition. At first, I couldn’t even admit it to myself that I had an issue. Subconsciously, the ability to have a sustained erection and have sex “normally” is directly linked with my masculinity. When I experienced trouble, I felt like less of a man. Who wants to admit that?
This was a very difficult place to be. I knew I couldn’t just ignore these feelings, either - in order to get on the road to healing, I had to get help and face it head-on. I did a lot of research during this phase that debunked some common myths for me. I’ve rephrased them as truths here:
Truth #1: No one is alone in their struggle. So many men and women across the world are dealing with performance anxiety during sex at this very moment. This situation is normal, can happen to anyone, and doesn’t make us any less than.
Truth #2: We’re not machines, we’re humans. Male porn stars often use enhancement drugs to maintain the sustained erection required for a long shoot. A guy should NOT expect to have an erection that is rock hard all the time during sex. Also, I thought I needed to go from zero to hero immediately upon seeing a naked woman, but that’s simply not how it works.
Truth #3: Everyone has different tendencies. Some guys easily orgasm during sex in 20 seconds, while others can go for hours and still not orgasm. Both can be frustrating in their own ways, so we have to build awareness of ourselves and find solutions that work for us.
Telling my story
According to Brené Brown, a shame and vulnerability researcher, we conquer shame by sharing our story, and I came to understand what she meant. One of the biggest steps I took to healing happened when I revealed what I had been dealing with to the two roommates I lived with. We had lived together for a year and a half by that point, and I felt enough trust with them to know that they would be understanding, so I told them the whole story. Even talking about them about my experiences made my body tense up, as if it were remembering all the painful moments I put it through, but afterwards I felt a sense of freedom - this wasn’t something I had to hide from the world anymore.
Over the course of the next year, I ended up telling my story to a few more friends, and it turned out two of my other guy friends also had struggled with this. One of them had overcome it mentally - there were some times that he couldn’t get it up, but he was able to shrug it off and understand that his body wasn’t feeling it that particular night and that it was okay. The other friend had managed it successfully in the past, but it resurfaced and he was working through it again. I talked to some of my girl friends about this as well, and more than one of them said it was something they came across frequently, and they even asked me for advice on what would be the best thing for her to do in that situation.
I wish it were easier to talk about this and other topics related to sex in our society. There would be a lot less stigma and stress around situations that are very normal. Instead, many of us choose to hide things, feeling ashamed about it. It took a lot of time, but becoming open about it with myself and my close friends has helped me a lot on my journey to healing.
Working on communication
Although I had made a lot of strides mentally, I still had to overcome the actual physical piece. There was a chicken and egg thing to this. Part of the problem was that a new partner meant less security, less understanding, and less patience. This made the likelihood of resolving my ED much harder unless I had a steady partner to work things out. But, because I couldn’t establish the same physical intimacy I wanted to, it was just a little bit harder for me to get into a steady relationship.
By necessity, I learned how to communicate more effectively. Initially I fell victim to wishful thinking and stayed silent about my condition, but of course at any sign of difficulty, I would get into my head and have doubts. Fumbling with a condom usually would provide exactly that point of trouble that would make it difficult.
In a new relationship, I think it’s a great idea to take it slow and have some initial sessions focused around getting comfortable with each other’s bodies, keeping it at oral instead of having penetrative sex. Not worrying about penetration kept things fun and softened the harsh expectations I had for myself.
I also communicated what I thought would be helpful for my partner to do when we were going for penetration. For me, most of the problem was in the fumbling phase between foreplay and sex: trying to put on a condom, inserting myself in, and then trying to find stimulation to get fully hard. There was too much time and too many steps that could result in trouble. So that I could think less, I asked my partners to put the condom on and put it in for me. Another way to reduce barriers was to get tested for STDs and go without a condom, provided we had another form of birth control going.
Instead of what I feared, the partners I had a conversation with ahead of time actually viewed me more positively when I revealed I struggled with ED. They saw me as confident since I was willing to open up about it, and it reduced their own anxieties about sex.
Recovery
I decided to focus on the last semester at grad school and not worry about dating and sex for a while. During those six months, I continued to practice mindful masturbation when I could - having sessions where I would try to involve my whole body in terms of touch, and trying to use pornography that wasn’t as stimulating. I also varied up the positions of how I masturbated - sometimes I stood, sometimes I sat or lay down.
It took another few relationships, but the mental and physical work I put in finally paid off. In the current relationship I’m in, I’m lucky to have someone who was very understanding right out of the gate. Traci and I communicated upfront, and she was amenable to taking it slow and trying to be less goal-oriented. After four sessions, we successfully had PIV sex, and over the course of the next months with her help, my body rebuilt positive patterns and I regained my confidence. It’s been almost a year with her now with only a couple hiccups here and there, and I’m feeling much more resilient and confident these days with my sexuality.
This journey wasn’t easy, and I’m sure I forgot some of the more painful moments I’ve had over the past couple of years, but I’m grateful that I went through this experience. It was very much an awakening for me in building awareness, learning how to deal with anxiety, and learning how to communicate. I feel much more resilient as a person now after going through a difficulty that I felt tapped at my core.
Now that I’ve gone through this, I want to help others find healing. I’m curious - what parts of my story resonate with your own experience? How does your situation differ? Let me know if you have any feedback about my story. Thanks for hearing me out.
