If you’re one of the 10% of men who have erection problems at any one time, you need to be committed to dealing with the issue. Happily there are some really helpful quick fixes for erection problems like Viagra, which can get you back to full erectile capacity pretty quickly. However, you still need to underpin the chemical cure by dealing with the underlying source of the problem: if you don’t do this, sooner or later you’ll be right back to where you started – trying to have sex when you don’t have an erection.
The long term solution for erectile dysfunction.
The best way to treat erection problems for the long term is to use methods which are essentially the same as a sex therapist would use. In short, you learn how to get aroused in your body, not in your head, so that your erection depends on stimulation from your partner, not from your fantasies.
Treatments based on the methods used by professional sex therapists
Most men have an erection problem because they are more focused on their heads than their bodies. In effect, they are out of touch with the part of them where sexual arousal really begins – in the body.
When you have no fear of losing your erection, it doesn’t actually matter if you lose it during sex from time to time (which in fact is what happens to all men), since you know that you’ll be able to get it back quickly and without any worries.
Getting out of your head and into your body
I described earlier how it is possible to separate mental arousal and physical arousal. The basic thing you need to do to enjoy sex more is to get out of your head space (mental arousal) and into your body (physical arousal). In other words, to stop thinking, fantasizing, wishing, speculating and imagining, and to start enjoying the sensations your body has to offer you.
The best way to do this is to treat your problem with a technique called Sensate Focus. This helps you stay in touch with your body and what it is telling you – especially about how aroused you are.
Before you do any of the specific exercises for erection problems, go through the Sensate Focus exercises with your partner. This will undoubtedly make you feel more connected and emotionally closer, as well as allowing you to enjoy the physical experience of sexual intimacy with a partner.
Furthermore, it helps you to associate good feelings in your body with the experience of being sexually turned on, which makes it helpful for men who don’t have much sex drive or who don’t find they get very aroused.
And it also helps to lessen anxiety, since when you focus on the “here and now” – that is to say what is happening to you, and what you are doing, at this very moment – you can’t spend as much time worrying about what might happen (e.g. losing your erection).
The basis of sensate focus is the simple but often forgotten fact that sexual arousal is – in its most basic form – all about physical sensation. As adult men, if we become more used to getting aroused by imagery, imagination and fantasy, we can lose the simple pleasure of what it feels like to be aroused in our bodies.
Now, that’s not to say that fantasy is wrong. It’s very exciting, it’s what men do, and it adds spice to our sex lives. Watching a beautiful woman undress and imagining her making love to you, or watching a porn film and imagining what it would be like to be in the place of the actors, and other such fantasies, can be very exciting.
But the point is that when these things and others like them become the primary focus of your sexual arousal, then you might have a problem.
The way you get aroused has become too focused on what you think as opposed to what you feel. In fact you lose your sense of how aroused you are in your body when you focus too much on what is going in in your mind. This can be a problem when you get older – you may need physical stimulation to get an erection, and you may have simply lost your awareness of this aspect of sex!
What’s more, if you depend on fantasy to get aroused, you leave yourself open to the chances of losing your erection during sex if you can’t get the right fantasy going at the right moment, or if you suddenly think of something that distracts you from your fantasy – like, “How hard is my cock?” or “How am I doing with her? Is she going to come?” You’re basically too busy thinking about your performance to get aroused, be fully in the moment, enjoy the physical sensations of sex, or pay attention to your partner.
For example, if you focus on what it feels like to be caressed by your partner, you won’t be able to worry so much about whether you are having an episode of erectile dysfunction.
When you’re enjoying what is happening to your body, you’ll be much less inclined to create your own excitement in your head! The simple fact is this: if you have erection problems, sensate focus will be a reliable and consistently successful way of treating them and getting an erection firm enough for intercourse.
Questions about fantasy
You may be wondering if it is normal to fantasize or not. If you use fantasy a lot during your sex life, you may well believe that all men do the same. The truth is they do – but maybe not so much as you. It’s not wrong, but it’s unhelpful to your sexual pleasure, definitely contributes to premature ejaculation, and certainly is a major factor in erection problems.
And it may also be a worry to you that without sexual fantasy you’re never going to get erect, let alone be able to ejaculate. The answer to that, as you will see, is that first, you’re not giving up sexual fantasy completely, and second, you’ll soon discover there is a better way. The essence of this treatment for erectile dysfunction is that you can only control what happens in your body when you first become well aware of it.
Something else that may be important: body image problems are not unique to women, though they certainly occur more often in women. If you feel self-conscious about being touched by your partner, because your body is not all it might be, then tell her this! She’s certainly going to be able to understand that! Once you have talked about it, you will probably find that this issue loses its power over you.
If you really have a big problem being touched, you need to ask yourself if this is the result of physical or sexual abuse when you were a child. if you think it may be, then please see a professional psychotherapist before you start these exercises. That way you can have the underlying problem treated before the erectile dysfunction.
In any event, you’re always in charge during these treatment exercises and you can stop what’s happening at any point if the treatment becomes too threatening. The treatment exercises can be found in a book on delayed ejaculation – they are exactly the same as for erectile dysfunction. You can see it here. Read the section on sensate focus, which is the relevant section for delaying with erectile dysfunction.