ED, frustration and helping a partner?

[blackhat1888]

Hello all,

This is my first post here and a bit of a depressing one. Any advice or insight from the other side of things would be so helpful because, as you can imagine, it’s a topic not easily discussed with family and friends!

My boyfriend and I have been together about a year and have never yet managed to successfully have sex. He has erectile dysfunction and he says he has always had the problem. He can get an erection easily and can finish manually but not from penetration. Originally he thought it might be down to his diabetes so just accepted it but, after a trip to the GP, he’s discovered it’s psychological. This is not the end of the world, of course, it means it’s fixable, but he has told me that he had sex therapy with a previous partner and the therapist told him she thought he was a happy, positive person without any anxiety or self doubt. I believe it; he’s super self confident and positive all the time, which makes pinpointing the problem even more difficult.

Obviously, there’s more than one way to skin a cat but I’m really struggling to feel intimate with him because even if he’s not anxious about it, I am. Every time we try to have sex, I just wait for the moment it all comes to a stop. We have kind of given up on penetration and I end up doing other things so he’s satisfied but I, sadly, can’t orgasm by hand and mouth. I’ve never had an orgasm during this relationship and it’s starting to get me down. I care for him deeply, he’s everything I want in a man in all other areas. Obviously, I have a psychological issue around orgasming without a working penis that I need to work on too.

We have discussed things together and want to work on it, try to make it fun, forget about goals and just enjoy each other but I’m getting very frustrated and beginning to feel a bit bitter about my lack of satisfaction, which makes it difficult to just accept another episode of fun without a finish. I don’t want to lose him but I’m genuinely concerned it’s going to start affecting other areas of the relationship. We’ve had light hearted talks about the future and he brought up children, which made me want to cry because, if we decide we would like them but things stay the way they are, we won’t even be able to have children.

I suppose what I’m looking for is hope. Has anyone here been through anything similar? Have you overcome the issue? Does anyone have any avdice on how I can try to communicate my frustration without making things worse? If you’ve suffered with this, what helped you most? I’m desperate to help but just don’t know how when he maintains such self confidence and positivity already while I become more and more depressed about it.

Thank you in advance to anyone who managed to get to the end of this!

[talkhealth]

Hi blackhat1888

Thank you for your very open post. We are sorry to hear about your relationship difficulties at the moment. Have you both considered speaking to a counsellor or going to your GP together to see if there are any treatments or medications that could help?

Please keep us informed of your progress.

Kind regards
talkhealth