by Jacob Clark
And that, sadly, the body responds as one would expect it to.
By saying, “Okay. If you don’t need it any more we’ll just take that ability away from you.”
And it’s pretty darn hard to get the cats back into the bag once they’ve been let out.
It’s just as possible in my case that my ED wasn’t caused by my abstaining at all. That it was caused by the onset of my diabetes.
Erectile dysfunction is, after all, one of the symptoms of diabetes.
It was a double whammy if there ever was one.
Michelle told me, “It’s okay, honey. It’s just something that happens when men get older. We can survive without it.”
But I didn’t want to survive without it. Sex had always been a very enjoyable part of our relationship, and it wasn’t something I wanted to say goodbye to.
I told her so and she said, “Well, let’s do everything we can do to fight it then.”
That’s the tact we took when we declared war on my ED.
We won that war, and are back to enjoying a very fulfilling sex life two or three times a week.
It was well worth the fight.
From Michelle:
I vividly remember the night he came home from London. I would have preferred he come back early in the day, so we could have a nice relaxing dinner and cocktails before a “welcome home” romp in the bedroom.
But because of the time difference he didn’t land in New York City until 10:30 p.m.
I could have waited in Atlanta for him, but he would have had a layover and had to take a morning flight into Hartsfield the next day.
I didn’t want to wait that long to see him, and we hadn’t visited the Big Apple in awhile. So I chose to fly to New York to greet him.
I booked a nice mid-town hotel for a week and the plan was to play tourist, see some shows, see the Statue of Liberty (because despite half a dozen previous visits, I still had never been there).
And to spend a considerable amount of time in bed.
On the night of his arrival, by the time we claimed his bags and got back to the hotel it was past midnight.
By unspoken agreement, we decided to forego the physical romance and enjoyed a drink (actually a couple) on our balcony. He was too wound up from the travel to sleep, and I was too excited to sleep, so we looked out on the New York skyline and talked well into the night.
As I recall, we slept into the early afternoon the next day and would have slept longer had our hungry stomachs not awakened us.
We saw a play off Broadway that evening (not a very good one), had a pleasant dinner and retired to our room to have some fun.
The thing I remember most about that night, and the entire trip to New York, really, was my overwhelming feeling of guilt.
It never, not even once, occurred to me that perhaps there was a medical reason for his failure to get hard. Or maybe his fatigue from the long flight. Or maybe the fact he hadn’t used it in awhile.
All I knew, in every fiber of my being, was that for the first time I could remember I failed him. I couldn’t get him hard.
I hope I don’t offend anyone with my language here. If I do, I’ll apologize in advance. I grew up calling it a dick or a cock. It’s natural for me, therefore, to continue to call it such. I’ve always considered the term penis so… clinical.
And after all, we’re all adults here and this is a very adult discussion we’re having. We might as well talk as most adults do.
I remember that night, holding his dick in my hand.
We were in our fifties, and I knew it wouldn’t spring to life as it did when we were younger (I used to love it when we were in our twenties and he was rock-hard all the time). But still, the night before he left for Europe it had taken only a few seconds for him to begin to rise.
I had no reason to believe that on this night things would be any different.
It was flaccid, as it sometimes was, when we began our foreplay. That wasn’t a problem, as I considered myself an expert at stimulating him. I remember I wore a new nightgown that night. It was short, and sheer. Not quite the lingerie you see on prominent display at those upscale mall stores (you know which ones I’m talking about), but considerably sexier than what Jacob was used to seeing me wear.
He told me I was beautiful and lifted my hair to kiss the scruff of my neck.
Those four things together… his kissing my neck, his eliciting my moan, my attire, and my gently massaging his cock, should have been enough to make him rock hard.
Any two of those things would have done the trick before he left for his extended trip.
But on this particular night it just wasn’t happening.
His dick just wasn’t playing ball.
We didn’t let it stop us from doing other things, of course. He gave me oral sex for a considerable time and left me breathless. Yet even as I was in the throes of orgasm I remember feeling guilty that he was unable to find the same degree of pleasure.
I went down on him as well that night. His dick, though flaccid, still tasted the same. I love the way he tastes- always have. And to my knowledge my sucking him had never failed to give him an erection in the past.
On this night, though, it was a failure.
Oh, it stirred a couple of times. It even grew just a bit, although it never got hard enough for penetration.
And penetration was what we wanted the most that night.
We’d always, since the early days of our relationship, considered intercourse the best part of our lovemaking. It was the entree in our four course meal. The star on top of our Christmas tree. The thing which made us look forward to going to bed at night and which made us smile the next day.
Jacob always said we were as well suited sexually as any couple could be. I always loved the way he felt inside me and almost felt deprived when he had to leave me. He was talented, in that way… slow and gentle when I wanted him to be, yet capable of a ferocity which quite literally rocked my world (and left dents in the bedroom wall from the bed frame banging against it).
He was a patient lover as well. Although he knew that sometimes it was difficult for me to have an orgasm during intercourse, he always held himself back until I had done so at least once. Usually twice. And when he was ready he timed his so we could climax together: in my mind, the most joyful way to finish a night of lovemaking.
This particular night wasn’t so joyous. My oral stimulation wasn’t helping, and it finally dawned on me that the reason he was trying to draw away wasn’t because it didn’t feel good to him.
But rather it was embarrassing to him.
One of the things he told me later was that there was nothing sexy about my sucking a limp dick. And that he asked me to stop because he assumed it wasn’t enjoyable to me.
I assured him that wasn’t the case. I told him that I loved the way he tasted. And that he tasted the same whether he was hard or flaccid.
But he had this look on his face. He was humiliated and perhaps a little bit depressed.
It was a look I’d never seen before that night, but would see many more times in the coming months.
He kept apologizing. He kept saying he didn’t know what was happening. Perhaps it was the time change. Or maybe the alcohol. He didn’t drink much in Europe because he’d always hated drinking alone. And we had several cocktails that evening before we started our foreplay. So perhaps that was it, he said.
I, on the other hand, was apologizing as well.
I felt as though perhaps I wasn’t sexy enough. Wasn’t pretty enough. I remember actually getting out of bed at one point and going to the bathroom, where I stood before the mirror and examined my face.
Had I gotten that much older during he months he was gone? Had I gotten so much uglier that he no longer found me attractive?
I examined every wrinkle, every gray hair, trying to remember what I’d looked like months before, before he left.
It occurred to me that I was a hideous old hag. Of course he didn’t find
me attractive. Why would he?
I felt I must have aged a dozen years in those few short months.
I returned to the bed feeling defeated. I’d let him down. I wanted so much for his homecoming to be special. To be perfect. To be filled with warm memories we’d talk about many years into the future.
Instead, I let him down.
It was all my fault.
The last thing I remember about that night was falling asleep on his chest, his dick cupped in my hand. I assumed that at some point it would spring to life, waking both of us up so we could try again.
When I woke up the next morning he was already up, sitting on the balcony and drinking his morning coffee.
He was deep in thought.
I never was much good at reading minds, but I was pretty sure I knew the things going through his mind that particular morning.
He felt like a failure. And so did I.
For the next few days his flaccid dick became the key topic of discussion. We sat on a bench in Central Park and worried together whether it was just a temporary condition or might be permanent.
On a crowded ferry I very subtly rubbed my body against his, hoping I could stimulate him. I felt the bulge in his pants but it never got any larger.
My first trip to the Statue of Liberty was ruined, largely to disappointment and my own feelings of inadequacy.
The last night we were in New York City we had dinner plans, then cancelled them at the last minute. We were in our room, searching site after site on the internet, trying to find the answers to our questions and to see if there was any validity to our concerns.
And we had lots of concerns. It wasn’t just the fact that intercourse had always been very enjoyable for both of us, and not something either of us wanted to give up.
No, there was much more to it than that.
He felt like a failure, that he could no longer perform for me. This was despite my reassurances that he could still please me sexually in so many other ways.
I, on the other hand, felt totally inadequate. I felt I was no longer attractive to him. No longer sexy. My memory went back to the days when I’d bathe in the tub, and he’d walk into the bathroom to shave. He’d see my naked body in the mirror as he shaved, and I’d watch his dick as he did so. I was always fascinated by his dick, both because I found it extremely sexy and because I was intrigued by the way the whole thing worked.
Anyway, in those days all it took was his seeing my wet and naked body in the tub to get his flaccid dick erect. Usually within seconds, with no touching, no stimulation of any kind.
I couldn’t help remembering that and comparing it with our new situation. My fondling it didn’t help. My sucking it helped a little, but not much.
I understood his feelings of failure, for I felt the same.
I felt ugly. And old. And worthless.
I was so bothered, those first few weeks, that my mind ran away with me. I became irrational.
I became jealous for the very first time in my life.
I knew, in my heart and my soul, that Jacob had always been completely devoted and faithful to me.
He’d never strayed, not even once, in all the time we’d been together.
But then again, I’d never given him a reason to stray.
And now, in my panicked mind, he had one.
For weeks I let my imagination run away from me. I had dreams of him looking for someone younger, someone sexier, someone capable of making his cock rock hard simply by his looking at her naked body.
I began to wonder whether it was possible everything we had was gone.
Whether he might be out there looking for my replacement.
So he could trade me in, like a used car with too many miles on it.
We sat down one night and I voiced my concerns. He took me in his arms and kissed me. First tenderly, then with passion. We made love, and it was wonderful. But there was no intercourse, and that diminished the joy. It felt good physically, but neither of us could deny there was a major piece of it that was missing.
It turned out we each blamed ourselves.
For something that was the fault of neither one of us.
That was the night we decided that we enjoyed the sensation of him being inside me too much to just give up on it.
We didn’t know what we were up against. Had no clue, really, what it was or what it would take to defeat it.
But we decided to fight it anyway.
Chapter 1: What is ED, Anyway?
And why does it think it has the right to swoop in and suck the joy out of our marriage?
In clinical terms, Erectile Dysfunction doesn’t sound like the hideous monster it really is.
The American Medical Association describes it as such:
Erectile dysfunction or impotence is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual activity in humans. A penile erection is the hydraulic effect of blood entering and being retained in sponge-like bodies within the penis. The process is most often initiated as a result of sexual arousal, when signals are transmitted from the brain to nerves in the penis. The most important organic causes are cardiovascular disease and diabetes, neurological problems (for example, trauma from prostatectomy surgery), hormonal insufficiencies (hypogonadism) and drug side effects.
Medical speak. Yucko.
But let’s break the definition down for some clues how to treat the problem.
Ask a dozen people what the most powerful part of the human body is and you’ll get a slew of different answers.
Many will say the human heart. After all, it works twenty four hours a day for every day of your life without ever taking a day off or even an hour to rest. Pretty powerful indeed.
Many will say the lungs, and for the very same reasons. The lungs never stop, unless we intentionally try to stop breathing by holding our breath. And all that does is make us pass out, at which times the lungs will start us breathing again without our permission. Ask any kid throwing a tantrum whether it’s possible to hold their breath until they die. It isn’t. The lungs are our friends and allies. And pretty powerful ones at that.
Body builders and those into physical fitness may say the legs are the most powerful parts of our human bodies. And that may be true, if you’re talking about sheer brute strength. The upper legs contain our most powerful muscle groups. Try doing a dead lift without the aid of the legs. Most people on a leg machine can leg press more than their body weight. The legs are powerful indeed.
But only those who say the brain, or more specifically the human mind, pass this particular quiz.
The human brain weighs little more than a cheeseburger, yet determines whether we live or die. It drives every decision we make. It powers everything our body does, whether consciously or subconsciously. Think about it. It keeps our body functioning even when we sleep. It is the control center of us. Without our brain we’re nothing but a big slab of meat.
Want to know how powerful the human brain is?
You can actually will yourself to death.
Don’t believe me? Consider all of those people who’ve been in relatively good health, until they meet a major goal or milestone.
How many times have you read about the lady in the local newspaper who was ninety five years old? And who tells the reporter she wants to make it to a hundred? And she lives another five years, and then passes away quietly in her sleep a few days after her hundredth birthday party?
Or the couple who’s been married sixty years, then passes away within days of each other.
In the first case, the old lady had a goal she was determined to reach before she died. Once it was reached, she was content. She’d won. She’d conquered her goal. There was no longer any more reason to fight off the inevitable.
In the latter case, the first half of the couple finally succumbed to old age. The second half merely gave up, not wanting to go on without him or her. And simply willed himself or herself into eternal sleep.
The AMA says that erectile dysfunction is “is most often initiated as a result of sexual arousal, when signals are transmitted from the brain to nerves in the penis.”
So, then, the brain is where the erection starts. Not the penis, as most would believe.
The brain is the boss in this and every other case. The mind is our enemy or our friend when it comes to ED. We can give up and accept ED as inevitable. Or we can use our mind as our friend and ally. We can decide we will not suffer the disappointment and humiliation of a flaccid penis. And we will find ways to work with the mind (and sometimes trick it) into achieving our goal.
Let’s focus now on working with it.
We work with our mind by opening it up. Opening it up to explore new techniques and methods which have been known to aid in our impotence problem.
And then to go one step further to try new things. Things we may have never thought of before.
Only when you consider all the possible courses of action as tools to help you with the problem can you find the right combination of tools to fix the problem.
You don’t go to fix your broken car armed only with a screwdriver.
You take a tool box full of tools, because you don’t know what you might encounter or what you might need.
Fixing erectile dysfunction applies the same principle.
Fill up your toolbox with a variety of tools. Then figure out which ones you need, and get them working together.
Every one of us is different. What works on one of us may or may not work on another.
The trick is to gather as many tools as possible, then to find which ones work on your particular body. In all likelihood, it’ll take several such tools, working in tandem, to get your penis functioning again.
We found our set of tools. Now we’re going to help you find yours.
But you have to keep an open mind. You have to be willing to consider everything.
If you’re not willing to do that, you’ve already given up.