Erectile Difficulties

Thusly quoth Sam Cohen:

To start this question a little background is needed. I am a 27 year old male and I am a virgin (yes you are reading this right). This situation is partly by choice and partly not. This last weekend the time was finially right and I truly care for this girl with all my heart and I know we are right for each other. When the time came (here is the problem) I suffered from what she called "performace anxiety", I understand this is common, but I really wanted to be with her. We still had a great time but I want to know if there are ways to overcome this. She didn't seem upset (quite the opposite actually during the evening :-), but I know she also wanted this to happen. I am hoping we will have another chance this weekend and I hope someone can give me some ideas. Please help.

First of all, congratulations on finding someone so special. You might want her to read this as well. Most men know surprisingly little about how their bodies work, and most women know almost nothing about male physiology. The basic assumption that, "everything you need to know just hangs out there," doesn't help.

I'm not a medical professional, but the information I can give you comes from college classes as well as personal experience. And it's free advice, so weigh it accordingly.

Let me start by refuting some common assumptions that might cause problems.

1. Males do not automatically become erect in the presence of a female they are attracted to and remain erect until they ejaculate.

   Erection is a primary sexual arousal response. It is a physical response based on a fairly complex physiological mechanism. Attraction and sexual desire are psychological states. The psychological state and the physiological reaction are connected through an even more complex chain of psychophysiological reactions.

   In English, that means that a delay or even a failure to achieve erection does not necessarily reflect how the man feels about the woman or how attractive he finds her. (I'm assuming heterosexual for simplicity of pronouns. The sex of the significant other is not particularly relevant.) It also means that under some circumstances, a man may lose his erection during the course of an encounter and regain it a few minutes later.

   There are any number of things that can interfere with the normal functioning of this mechanism. To better explain such effects, let me first explain, briefly, the mechanism in question.

   The penis contains three long tube-shaped structures that resemble balloons filled with sponge. In the flaccid state, blood flows normally into these structures from arterioles and back out through venules. One of the first physiological effects of sexual arousal is increased blood flow and muscle tension in the genital area. These two effects combine to cause more blood to flow into the spongy structures (cavernous bodies) in the penis, and less to flow out. The cavernous bodies fill with blood and stretch to their maximum size. I suppose a better analogy would be filling a plastic bag with water.

   As long as the state of increased blood flow and increased muscle tension is sustained, the erection will remain. If, for whatever reason, the erection subsides without an ejaculation, it can be recovered relatively easily. After ejaculation, however, the male reproductive system goes into a refractory state during which it is difficult to maintain or achieve an erection and impossible to ejaculate while the organs involved recover.

2. Alcohol doesn't help. News flash! Alcohol is a depressant! A little alcohol may help by depressing your inhibitions. Too much will depress your arousal.

3. Male ejaculation and orgasm are not the same thing. They are almost always simultaneous, but they are different phenomena. Ejaculation is the physical phenomenon of ejecting semen through the urethra. Orgasm is the subjective experience of intense pleasure that is linked with ejaculation. One can occasionally occur without the other. This isn't relevant to your problem, but I just thought I'd mention it anyway.

Now, what should you do about your problem? First of all, don't worry about it. Erectile dysfunction is the most common sexual problem reported by males. It may sound cliche, but it happens. I'm glad the two of you were able to enjoy each other's company anyway instead of letting this problem become more serious than necessary.

Don't let penile-vaginal intercourse to orgasm be your goal. Set aside some time when you can lock the doors, take the phone off the hook, and ignore everything but each other. Sleeping together at night doesn't count as setting time aside. Setting time aside means *in addition to* the time you would normally sleep.

Factors to watch out for, possibly plan for and allow more time for, include stress and exhaustion. If either of you is stressed out and/or tired, you may need a good deal of extra time and patience. My favorite prescription for stress is a good, long, firm, gentle, skin-on-skin full-body massage. Be prapared for this to lead naturally into a nap. The more erotic version of this kind of massage could also lead into passionate sex, depending on how tired both parties are.

Exhaustion is a killer, though. The one time I experienced this problem, it was a combination of stress and exhaustion that I traced the cause to. Stress can be set aside by leaving all your problems outside and relaxing. Exhaustion can only be cured by sleep. If you think that your problem might be caused by being too tired, try sleeping first. Perhaps when you wake up to intimate cuddling, caressing, and maybe some teasing, you won't have any problem.

(Thread tie-in warning) Apparently a number of people who post here have various difficulties sleeping together with their respective SO's. One problem I've experienced, especially when one or both of us was naked, was waking during the night and becoming aroused by my lover's hot, naked (or at most scantily clothed) body no more than a few inches away, if not cuddled against me. I'd generally lie there, wondering whether she was awake but not wanting to wake her by finding out, until I fell asleep again. I didn't get much sleep that way, but I slept better than I would have alone.

Having been through that, I would suggest that others in the same situation decide beforehand how much sleep they both need and set an alarm when they go to sleep. If you wake up significantly before the alarm goes off, just go back to sleep. Assume your lover is asleep and nothing is going to happen for a while yet. If, however, you wake up a few minutes before the alarm, that's a different story.

Summary: Take your time, watch out for stress and exhaustion, let your only goal be to enjoy each other. You can make love to each other in other ways than penile-vaginal intercourse. Relax, enjoy the intimacy and total openness of being alone with your lover and sharing your sexuality and giving each other pleasure. Your problem will most likely solve itself before you know it.