Ralph Brewer discusses erectile dysfunction through a personal anecdote, exploring psychological factors like stress and rejection alongside medical solutions. He references Emily Nagoski's "Come As You Are" to explain how partners' libido works differently, and covers treatments from blood tests to Cialis, which originated as a vasodilator.
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Oh, absolutely. I, no joke, no bullshit. I just spoke to a gentleman right before this meeting going through the exact same thing where it's been up and down, mostly down with the sexual relationship with the wife. She's in her early 40s, perimenopause and everything else. And in his situation though, to her credit, she is trying. She really is. And she sounds like a great woman. She's really trying. She feels horrible for not doing her part as wife. Et cetera. Um, every now and then the planets align and they get it going. Usually it involves vacation—surprise, surprise—get her out of the house away from the kids and all that stuff, and they had to have it going on. Um, but, uh, this last time they got together on vacation, he was sharing that, uh, uh, the old Johnson wasn't working right. And he's like, what the hell? And it wasn't a matter of desire. He really wanted to. He was ready to go, and it just wasn't cooperating. And he went to the doctor over it, and the doctor's like, it's nothing necessarily wrong with you. I can give you Cialis, maybe that will help with something. But, and the doctor said to him same thing I said, which is, and what you hinted at here, Joel, is the whole anxiety, it's in your head thing. It's, you know, if you've been turned down for months at a time, made to feel kind of weird for having the desire, made to feel less than, in his situation, he's watching this stressed out wife going through all these changes and she feels bad for not being able to do things. And he's an admittedly ADHD guy who has a really high, high, super high libido and she can't keep up. And all this spinning in his head. And then finally it's dropped in your lap. Here you go, have at it. And he's just like, ah, the body's not cooperating. It happens. And I do think it's probably all in your head, so to speak, no pun intended, your big head. And, um, uh, so what are your next steps for, uh, trying to see if you could remedy this or prevent it? Yeah, human sexuality is weird. The more you read into it and research it and everything, you're just like, how did we manage to procreate and create billions of us? Because it's like there are so many mechanisms, and honestly, most of them are all mental in nature, or emotional in nature is probably a better way of putting it. That get in the way of, of sexiness, if you will. Um, there is a book that really illustrates the complexity and holy shit nature of the female libido, is a book called, um, Come As You Are. You can see the double entendre of the, the title there, by Emily Nagoski. And you read it, and it's exhausting to read. I did a review on it years ago. It's basically a woman saying, hey, however you are is fine. And in fact, there's a lot of different permutations of female sexuality, and there's a lot of things that get in the way of it. There's a lot of things that spark it, and they're also— they're all a surprise to us women. You know, you have a woman that is just like, mentally, I'm there, I'm ready to get it on, I've never been more turned on, and her body is just like, it's not happening. Like, no lubrication, you know, not to be crass or anything like that, but like, everything down there seems to show I'm not into this. Well, she's like, no, I'm very into this mentally. While there are times when she's like, I don't want anything to do with this man, ew, yuck. And yet the body is saying, let's go. And she has multiple orgasms and she's like, this makes no sense. So their version is just really head scratching. While with ours, it seems to be limited to, I'm ready to go and the old willy's not working. Um, which can be, um, how old of a guy are you? Okay. So I would assume probably heart disease is not a concern at this point. That's something the doctor right away, you know, I'm no doctor, I married one, but I'm no doctor, but right away, you know, they'll do the blood pressure and probably a blood test and all this other stuff just to rule that out. But I'm going to presume probably not the case. And then that'll follow up with under any stress lately, anything going on in the marriage? How often are you guys having? Oh, then they'll probably be like, yeah, well, that's pretty normal. Maybe the Cialis will help you get over the hump, so to speak. More double entendres there. And see what happens there. But a lot of men do kind of freak out in that moment. Because it's something we've, you know, especially us younger dudes. Us younger, listen to me. I turned 50 this year, by the way. I've never had those issues, knock on wood. Another double entendre. I'm just full of them today. But I'm sure it's coming. I saw a, I'm sure it's coming. Yeah, here we go again. I saw a stat which showed— I'm sure I could bring it up, but I'm too lazy to do it— the, the rates of ED. And it was something like between the ages of 30 to 50, it was relatively low, and then from like 50 to 60, it just jumped in the, the, the instances reported by guys. And then it just goes up from there. 70s, it's higher than the 50s, 60s, and so forth. So it seems statistically it's coming for us all, so to speak. So be prepared for it. Keep your heart in check, blood pressure. Don't— you know, there's such a thing as like, uh, oh, people giving Cialis, for example, as kind of a daily therapeutic. Um, you know that those drugs were invented for, uh, blood pressure purposes. They're vasodilators, so they open up your blood vessels, which allows the blood to flow through freely, which lowers your blood pressure. That's what they were made for. But it also had the, the side effect of the prolonged erections thing. So they realized they could sell more of them by selling it as a boner pill versus a blood pressure med. But it seems to be perfectly innocuous and safe for most men to take like a really low dose of it every day. And it does both— helps with the blood pressure and helps with the, with the erection thing. Maybe something to look into.
