Erectile Dysfunction, ED and Relationships

Getting beyond platitudes and generally good, but relatively unusable, advice about how to cope with erectile dysfunction in an ongoing relationship is difficult. If I hear myself or someone else say something about communication being vital, I may just throw up.


Of course, if your aren't in an ongoing relationship but would like to be and you can't get it up, you're really out there on your own. At least you don't have to hear about how important good communication is or get helpful advice from a partner.


Not that that isn't true that good communication is vital. It is, but that knowledge and $2 will get you a cup of coffee that tastes like they forgot to clean the coffee maker, which is probably true too.


Communication is basically just a pipe. You can run good things through it. You can run bad things through it. Things that help. Things that hurt.


They say that you can't use a map to get where you want to go until you know where you are. You can't use communication to get where you want to go until you know where you are too. And if you aren't really sure where it is you want to go in more than broad terms, the trip can get really interesting, . . . or overwhelming.


Maybe coming at it in a non-threatening, low pressure way. How about word association? Or maybe description of inkblots? Maybe a set of cards with cartoon situations on them where each person talks about what's going on, like in the old Stanford Binet IQ test, "put these cards in order." Just some ideas to do something different.


Can a female partner really understand just how incredibly confusing and upsetting erectile dysfunction is? I suppose so. I hope so. Depends on how committed and patient and curious she as she talks and listens.


On the other hand, I can't help but feel that if you haven't had one of these live things with a mind of its own in your pants for forty, fifty, sixty years, it seems unlikely that you'll be able to really understand the effects of it suddenly just lying there. (I know, I know, that kind of statement goes both ways. And that's true, but the subject is ED here.)


Guys have been getting erections since they were in the womb. Everyone manages that in different ways and it is not without its ambivalences, but when it goes it is a major loss.


I think one factor is that guys often are told that they need to communicate better with their partners, but don't really get into it.


As long as we have a hard part of us that is looking for something to be pushed into, communication may stay marginal from our point of view. But, lose that and now the only way anything is going to happen is with good communication, give and take, using a more feminine approach if you will, and we're in a whole new ball game. Very likely a ballgame that we never would have chosen, don't know how to play, and one that we're very tempted to sit out.


So, what to do? How to learn a new game that we don't even want to admit we have to play?


Or, do I have this all wrong? Really. What do you think?