Erectile Dysfunction Can Be Distressing for Sufferers
What do you think of when you picture Jerry Hall?
Legs up to her lashes? Cascading golden tresses?
A sexy Texan drawl? I’ll bet you my last dollar that you don’t think of erectile dysfunction. And yet, la Hall, blond bombshell extraordinaire, has just become an ambassador for campaigning organisation SortED in 10, which aims to help men overcome their embarrassment about faulty hydraulics.
Well, if Jerry Hall can’t get a man aroused, who can?
And Jerry has freely admitted that there have been nights in the past where she couldn’t ‘get no satisfaction’. Hall’s frankness helps make an important point: erectile dysfunction (ED) has nothing to do with a lack of sex appeal on a woman’s part, although it is hard for a woman not to feel inadequate if her chap can’t, er, rise to the occasion. The fact that the man will most likely be dying inside doesn’t make it any easier for a couple to discuss the real reason why he has failed to sustain an erection. And yet 50 per cent of men over 40 will experience a problem of this nature. In most cases physical factors are the cause and there’s an effective medical remedy.
‘Go and see your GP’ is the golden message.
We all know about drugs like Viagra, which has put the spring back into many a male’s step, but I was at a sexual dysfunction conference recently where a cardiologist said that when a man complains about ED, the first thing he checks out is his heart. If it isn’t working on full power, there won’t be enough blood pumped into the penis to sustain an erection.
And it’s not just older men who can suddenly lose their mojo. A couple of men I know in their early 30s have confided over the past year that they’ve lost all sense of desire and find it hard to get erections. The common factor in each case has been depression and prescription drugs. One of these chaps replaced the antidepressants with an intensive course of counselling and things are beginning to perk up, so to speak.
Psychological factors are often at the root cause of a wilting member. I once had a prolonged courtship with a lovely man who would run through every seductive manoeuvre in the erotic canon – except penetrative sex.
At first I thought this was very romantic. ‘He’s taking things slowly,’ I sighed to myself. But after five months I began to realise that there was a problem, so I decided to tackle the topic. It turned out that he had had a series of very demanding girlfriends – hardcore feminists who wouldn’t allow penetrative sex, and women who became scornful if his stamina and desire didn’t match theirs. Eventually he became so confused that he found it hard to get an erection. I told him that I didn’t give a damn whether we had sex or not and that, to me, he was fiendishly handsome and seductive whatever he did. That very night the problem vanished. It has been clear to me ever since that erectile dysfunction is not just a man’s problem, but a condition that needs to be tackled by both people in a relationship.
Tags: ed, Erectile Dysfunction