If there’s one thing I could always count on in my marriage, it has thankfully been terrific sex.
Now, that doesn’t mean that in those sleep-deprived early years of marriage and raising babies that we were getting it on day and night like lustful 22-year-olds. But honestly, we married young so, yes, even amidst the exhaustion and mental, physical and financial stresses of young parenthood, sex was a way to bring us back together.
Of course, as years go by, our sexual needs and desires and that of our partner ebb and flow with highs and lows, with nights of tear-off-your-clothes intimate passion followed by nights of very vanilla sex that at its minimum, well, just simply does the trick.
So, after 25+ years of that kind of a mutually joyful and fulfilling sex life, I was completely perplexed when one day my husband’s erection was here and gone before I could even peel off my bra. He was similarly bewildered, and as both of us lay there looking at each other for some magical explanation as to what was going on with his once always perfectly functioning, uh, part, I immediately thought to myself,It must be me, right?
Because naturally, that’s the first place a middle-aged women’s mind goes when their sexual partner appears to not be into it. I’ve aged! Things are sagging! I don’t do it for him anymore! Of course, I was reassured it was none of those things, and that I was still very much wanted, still sexy as hell, and it was probably just “work stress” or “exhaustion.”
Sex went back to normal for a bit, but when it happened again a few weeks later, we couldn’t even get things started because something didn’t pop up enough to even come out and play. I went back to thinking it was me. And he went right to thinking it was him, which I later learned leads to performance anxiety.
A few uncomfortable weeks went by while I did my due diligence of WebMD searches on erectile dysfunction. I could tell he was at a loss as to what was happening, and that we needed to do something about it. Yes, we, because ED is not just a man’s issue, it is a couple’s issue, and as such it needs to be treated as a couple. I finally took charge and made us an appointment with a urologist, and together we marched in looking like a couple of nervous teenagers buying condoms in a drug store. The urologist was absolutely lovely, reassuring us that ED affects nearly 30 million men a year and is very treatable. He also told us right away how wonderful it was that we visited him as a couple, and just that fact alone meant no matter what the cause of my husband’s occasional ED was (or what the treatment was), we would likely find success because of our mutual dedication to the vitally important sexual health of our marriage.