Am I the only LD here?

[Young at Heart]

Amber;

Good luck to you. You may want to do some research on you your H's ED. At 54 it could be the symptom for something medically serious or not.

It also is probably a huge mental/emotional issue for him. I did a 200+ mile multi-day bicycle event and couldn't "get it up" for love or money for a week and a half. That really shook my self-image to the core, even thought I knew the cause and knew (or tried to convince myself) that it would go away with time, it made me very emotionally uncomfortable. I can only imagine what that must do for your H if he views it as "just his future statis quo."

If you combine his mental self-image issues with ED and your past LD, you might better understand why you recent "stepping it up" and just having fun in bed may be working so well for the two of you. It is proably taking a lot of mental pressure off of him and making him feel better about himself and his relationship with you. I hope that this 180 of yours is making you feel better and not a failure, as you are not a failure.

I would offer three other thoughts that might help. First, there may be ways to make ED-sex more interesting or fun for you and your H. There are penis pumps and something called an Aneros Helix Syn Prostate massager that can be used to give him either erections (the pump) or orgasms (prostate massager) without classic foreplay. You might want to learn about them or other non-traditional ways of gaining sexual intimacy and think about what you would feel comfortable with. It could be an even greater 180 for your relationship.

Second, your original complaint about being the only LD person resonated with me. This was something my wife said to me many many times. There is another relationship author (Schnarch) who likes to point out that there is LD/HD in every aspect of life. Some people in a marriage are LD when it comes to chocolate ice cream for dessert, some are HD when it comes to watching football on TV, some are LD at going out to operas or ballet. In every marriage, couples need to negotiate about the right balance; whether it is the amount of chocolate ice cream or football watching. There is no "right" amount or "normal" amount for either. What you and your husband need to do is figure out what works for the two of you and that can only be done through communication and experimentation. And that balance may change over time or from season to season.

My final suggestion is you may wish to find a board certified sex theapist to work with you. My wife and I did and it literally saved our marriage. It was really hard, but it speeded up the rebuilding of our marriage incredibly. Again, good luck and you sound like you are committed to saving your marriage. Good for you!