Lou, those were some great links you posted to the other sex-starved relationship board. One thread in particular caught my eye: For those with husbands with ED . It has a lot of interesting info.
This post in particular spells out and corroborates the info I got from the book "Making Love Again" about sex life after prostate cancer surgery, i.e. that for a man, the "normal" process is to encounter a sexy stimulus/trigger FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY by a physical reaction (the erection or beginnings of one). In the absence of the physical reaction, the man perceives himself as NOT aroused. This post put it well. (The woman laments her husband's inability to articulate the sitch, but I think he does pretty well!):
Quote: I think this topic is difficult for many reasons, but the one that's daunting me is my DH's reluctance & inability to articulate what is going on with his body & in his head. (And then dealing with it, heh!)
He did tell me awhile back that he thinks of sex when his body registers arousal first. Some stimulus creates the first rush of blood, he feels it, and thinks "sex!". And with stimulation, it continues from there.
With the ED, he just doesn't get that first rush anymore. And if it does get started, maintaining the erection is very difficult (and I'm sure emotionally agonizing). So to consciously plan arousal by pill (or whatever) means replacing the initial cues that used to happen naturally. Which is hard for him to do.
What was previously "autopilot" requires deliberate thought & action, which doesn't sound so terrible, but I suspect it's a foreign notion to a man who finds himself dealing with ED after a life of the autopilot method.
Combined with the unpleasantness of Viagra or other chemical methods, I can sympathize (to a degree) with his letting it all slide. Sex just isn't easy anymore. And there are days I'm ambivalent about it myself.
I suspect that the men who get implants are ones who can't accept the idea of life without sex. They will do literally anything, risk surgery, to keep a sex life going.
My late H had penile implant surgery, and we thought that would do the trick. But his perception of arousal was still missing. Remember how I said I had to "unlearn" the connection between his arousal and his becoming hard? Well when we wanted to do it, he would just manually pump up the prosthesis, which did produce an E until you lowered it (and that part was nice-- you never had to worry about how long it took-- the E was there to stay). But the cycle of arousal, physical sensations, moving to the bedroom-- all of that was absent for both of us. God, that makes me sad to think about... It's pretty much just where I am now, too.
There's also a couple of long posts in this thread from a guy who repressed his sex drive in his marriage and now can't seem to find it. Worth reading.
