I am a gay man and have been married to my husband for 12 years. I sometimes lose my erection during sex, leading me to avoid it for long periods. My problem is my sexual script, which intellectually I don’t believe, but still cannot seem to set down. My husband has a larger penis, a more typically masculine and societally attractive body and is older, more experienced and more skilled a lover than I am. I know none of this matters and that sex should be about mutual pleasure and connection, but I cannot help but feel inadequate, leading to performance anxiety. My husband is kind and reassuring, but this has been going on for our whole relationship and I feel stuck and frustrated.
Being distracted during sex , whether it is due to any kind of anxiety, lack of confidence in your body, fear of losing your erection, fear of disease, germ phobia, stress about external life situations – or any one of many possible thought intrusions – will easily arrest your enjoyment of a sexual process, and often lead to sexual dysfunction. Rather than allowing negative thoughts and fears to intrude during erotic experiences, it is important to focus simply on the purpose of eroticism – pleasure. This is not easy for people who have become invested in achieving excellence of performance, or even just being able to maintain an erection. Switch your approach to sex, ask for your partner’s support and cooperation in being able to stop and relax whenever negativity intrudes and refocus on just giving and receiving pleasure. If your anxiety is generalised (it occurs in many other situations) it is important to seek formal treatment or proven methods to calm you.
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Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.
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If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
