I have been with my girlfriend for 2 months. We are both young and healthy individuals. We don’t ever really fight about anything except for times when I am unable to maintain an erection during sex.
The first time this happened was back in February at my house. We were making out and touching one another and i had a full erection. I went down on her and while doing that I was able to maintain my erection. When I finally decided to get on top to penetrate her I was stopped because she had asked me to put on a condom. So I get out of bed to get a condom to put on. When I come back I begin to go soft. I start making out with her to help stimulate myself for another erection. I tried grinding against her body and kissing her more but that was it, my penis remained soft. This awkward moment was a shocker for me because this had never happened before and it was upsetting to my girlfriend because she had never experienced something like this and it hurt her self-esteem.
About 2.5 weeks later the same scenario happened, this time she went down on me and didn’t ask for a condom to be placed. I was enjoying everything and when I decided to go on top of her to penetrate, I had felt some type of de ja vu that made me think back of what happened the first time we attempted to have sex. At this point I begin to go soft and I saw in her face she was getting impatient and was not having it anymore. So we argued again, but it still happened a few times until April when we finally were able to have sex.
In April I had taken her to a motel and I felt comfortable since it wasn’t my room and I didn’t think I would have any de ja vu of anything. That day went really well. After the foreplay she was able to get on top of me and ride me. She made me cum 4 times that day. We were able to have sex a few more times after that and now the issue was that I was cuming fast.
It eventually happened again after a day in the city. We went back to my house and I started to kiss her and touch her while she was trying to take a nap. In the process my erection was hard but when it came time for me to put my penis inside her, I lost my erection and it lead to another fight. We made up and we were able to have sex again. We became officially together a few weeks later in May.
When we became official I felt the sex was becoming more consistent and that I was able to maintain my erection more and more for vaginal sex. Oral sex has never been an issue to maintain an erection for some reason, it is always when I am about to put my penis inside the vagina is when I tend to get soft. So for about the whole month of June we were going fine sexually and it seemed to me that my problems were over.
The first week of July is when the erectile dysfunction had happened again. We had finished a 5K run and we went back to my place to shower. We took a shower together hoping to have sex. I was erect until it came time to put it inside her vagina. When I had failed to put it in, my penis began to get soft and my girlfriend was upset. This then made me have flashbacks of the past times where I failed to have sex with her and it just stayed in my mind the whole time. Every time a situation like this has happened to me it makes it hard for me to get an erection because that is the only thing I can think about at the time. We argued again and this time the argument felt a little different because now we were official and more understanding of one another after knowing each other for quite awhile now. We were able to get through it and work it out.
After a few days had passed we saw each other again. I had taken her out to eat and what I ordered was seafood which contained a lot of aphrodisiac. My parents were out of state so I had the whole house to myself also. When we came back to my place we probably had the best sex so far since we have known each other. I was able to maintain an erection, we both came multiple times, and I was able to get an erection right away after ejaculating.
Now a few weeks have passed and I had her over my house early in the morning after I had work, since I work night shifts at the hospital. We had sex before going to sleep where I was able to make her come and vice versa. When I awoke from my nap she had been awake already and we actually had plans on going out, but I had an erection when I woke up and she went down on me and eventually went on top of me for another round of sex. My penis went inside her and she was riding me and I was humping her right back too. My parents were home and my bed was making noise so I tried to ignore it and keep going but in my head I became worried about the noise and it threw me off because I lost my erection and my girlfriend felt it and became upset. As soon as she became upset I felt like I was dreaming because I was now back in familiar territory that I once thought was over with already.
To summarize it all, my girlfriend and I rarely fight about anything else except for this issue with my erections not lasting long enough to put it inside her or going away when I am inside of her. In the beginning I used to blame it on different things like “since you asked me to put a condom on it threw off my whole vibe” or “if I wear a condom it feels weird on my penis so I began to get soft and when I saw your face how upset you were it was just hard for me to get erect”.
I know those excuses are meaningless and they were more of a defense mechanism for me on my part which was not very effective at all. I don’t want to use excuses that I might have been tired from the 5K or from working the night shift to maintain an erection either. I know I am not the most physically fit person either but I am healthy in terms of my lab results from blood work and I have not been sick since the 5th grade except for a time when I had a mouth infection from wisdom teeth extraction. I also know that the aphrodisiacs I ate were probably more of a mental thing to me rather than actually physically helping me.
I say this because I have noticed that during the times that we have successful sex I am not thinking of anything that happened during the past, I am not thinking of making her come right away, I am not thinking of maintaining my erection during the whole process. My mind has been free and I find myself enjoying the present moment.
The times that I have not been able to maintain an erection I have found myself to be thinking too much. Like I get so focused on making her cum, or I might worry myself that I might not be able to maintain my erection and it always ends up not working out for the both of us at the end when I begin to think these things. And once this happens it becomes very difficult for me to become erect because my mind gets drowned in these thoughts.
I certainly do believe things have gotten better since the beginning when I couldn’t even maintain an erection to place my penis inside her. But I am also acknowledging the fact that this is still not normal to me because on a few occasions I still lose focus to maintain an erection for intercourse like when we were in the shower or recently when I had been inside her already and I lost my erection because I became more worried about my noisy bed.
There are certain things that I do over think and when I do bad results happen and when this happens I hate it because it has such a negative effect on my girlfriend and on our relationship.
I know she loves me so much because since the beginning, before we were even boyfriend and girlfriend, sex has been an issue for us. Even though it has gotten a little better there are still times where it fails, but my girlfriend has always been there to give me chances and be forgiving and understanding and pushing me to seek help.
It really means a lot to me how she has acted during these situations, and it has happened a number of times. We are both young to be experiencing this and I love her back just as much as she loves me and it kills me whenever things like this happens because I don’t want something like this to tarnish our relationship if it keeps going on.
I love her for who she is and how she has treated me since I have known her. I find her extremely attractive, sexy, and beautiful inside and outside. Every thing else between us has been great, no complains at all. Only when it comes to sex, this might be our one and only major issue. I do not want to lose her or mess up my relationship with her over something like this. What can I do or what do you think this is related to?
Reply from Dr Pinhas
Hi Gary,
You have all your answers to your questions, about performance anxiety, feeling secure in your relationship, and life’s normal stressors and their relationship to your erectile functioning. For such a bright guy, you have failed to appreciate the answers you posit in your question and narrative to me. Your sexual functioning with your girlfriend seems within the normal range, yet the BOTH of you have incredible expectations raising the bar so high, that its no wonder you are experiencing anxiety. When you reveal that your sex life is the only thing you and your girlfriend fight about, I say to myself, WOW!!.. When you guys are on sexually, things really look great for you. What might your fights be like when a situation is really dire., which, in my professional opinion, is not your ACTUAL sexual life.
Your anxiety that you cannot meet your girlfriend’s needs is basically your issue. It is a crying shame that she takes your anxiety personally, as if you are not into her…. I can see, from what you wrote, that you care deeply for her and are getting more comfortable with her. This is making you feel more secure and allowing you to function with less anxiety. As you so aptly express, when your mind is free you are A OK and in the moment…. but when you associate external situations with performance failure, you create your own secondary erectile dysfunction. You must be a dude who is really hypersensitive to pleasing the world…. as if your self-esteem rests upon it. Don’t misunderstand me…. it is wonderful that you want to please your girlfriend, but your sensitivity to her criticism which causes “fights” is the issue that MUST BE ADDRESSED. Unless you take on how disappointed you feel by her criticism of your sexual functioning, you will have a hard time getting out from under the performance anxiety. It is within NORMAL RANGE to lose an erection when you reach for a condom, hear noise in a house, have parents lurking around, are physically tired after a 5K run, are exhausted etc. What does she expect SUPERDICK?? You really need to give yourself a break. Loving relationships are more than the sum total of how long you last and how hard you are. I get that you are fearful that your “normative” functioning is prognostic of doom and gloom on the sexual front. If you do not stay in the moment and address your unrealistic expectations about being good enough “in the world”, never mind the bedroom, it appears that you will always struggle. Let unencumbered time take its course for the both of you. Learn each other in non sexual ways, feel at one with each other… laugh, talk, disagree on important issues like major differences in how the both of you see the world…. but to FIGHT over the lose of an erection which is normal for all guys from time to time…. ah come on.. try to be more kind to yourself. PS Read my earlier blogs on erectile dysfunction: What goes down comes up and sensate focus: the sexual give that gets. These blogs describe a wonderful technique called sensate focus which is most useful for performance anxiety. If you cannot make use of this on your own, I would strongly suggest engaging in sexual therapy where these exercises would be tailored to your specific situation. Hope this helps.
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