Archives for April 2016

Doctor’s Note: I’m at PAX East this year! If you’re coming to PAX, make sure to come to my panel: Video Game Romance – The Stories We Love, The Lessons They Teach at 8 PM EST in Arachnid Theater!

And now, your letters. 

Hi, Doc:

I am in a nearly perfect relationship with the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known. That “nearly” though, is kind of a big deal.

Background: I’m in my early 40s, she (call her “D”) is in her mid 30s, and both of us have been married to awful people in the past. We’ve been together more than two years and we’ve lived together for nearly a year. We communicate openly and honestly (about “nearly” everything; damn that word), treat each other with great respect and care, and can disagree without fighting.

The issue is sex. I was almost totally impotent for some time after my divorce, especially when another human was present. The issue cost me one promising relationship and led to a lot of embarrassment. I got over it by the time I started dating D, and things were very hot between us for the first nine months or so. Unfortunately, as we came out of the honeymoon phase, I started to have some issues again. D is very sexual, and she is particularly turned on by my arousal. When that became an issue, she started to feel badly about herself and worried that I was unsatisfied and not attracted to her anymore. I felt perfectly OK with taking care of her in other ways when I couldn’t get hard (in fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit), but she started to feel embarrassed by that, like she was using me. My reassurances and explanations did little to help, since her perception is that I will place her happiness above my own (correct) and say things that aren’t entirely true to make her feel better (not correct).

We went through a few more hot and cold phases, I talked to both my psychiatrist and a therapist (who offered no advice that I had not already considered and tried), then I got tired of feeling like a disappointment and got myself a Cialis prescription. This fixed the erection problem completely, and, for a while induced another hot phase. Unfortunately, while I still get hard readily (often when I haven’t even taken the meds), I have a lot of difficulty getting off when with her. I have no difficulty at all getting off alone while watching porn or whatever. This makes her feel bad (which she tries to hide), which makes me feel guilty and self-conscious, which makes it harder for me to get off, and so on.

After hedging around the issue a lot, we finally talked about it openly. Her feeling is that I am a lot more turned on by sexy things like porn (we both watch it, and there’s no judgement there either way) than I am by actual sex. I feel like I am turned on by actual sex, but my concern for her needs (her need to get off, her need for me to get off) makes it difficult to relax enough to get to an orgasm. I told her that I love having sex with her, even if I don’t get off (which is entirely true), but she feels like sex has become a chore for me, and that I only really enjoy the closeness and contact, not the act itself (not entirely correct).

In short, D is sexually unsatisfied because she feels selfish and awkward when I don’t get off, I can’t get off because I’m too worried about getting off, and we both feel bad for each other and for ourselves.

So, what do I do? I’ve tried the “No porn, no masturbation” plan, and it mostly just increased my feeling of frustration and urgency. We’ve tried experimenting in the bedroom, but I don’t have some fetish that’s not being satisfied. (My porn preferences go no further from the mainstream that lesbians and bondage, and the latter has proven more fun in fantasy than reality.) While we don’t think negatively of poly-type people, we aren’t comfortable with non-monogamy for ourselves, and I don’t feel any longing to be with anyone else. Any other ideas?

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A Brave New World of Sexual Frustration

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