Trying Hard to Fight The Effects of Aging

I mean, functional penis. That is a big one, Ralph Brewer.

Sure.

I mean, okay, let's talk about that because that's another reason like women are kind of like a little bit discouraged and frustrated.

Erectile dysfunction?

Yes. And the men that won't admit to that.

Shameful thing.

Seek help. Get the blue pill, whatever, get a pump. Play around with it, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. But if there is no discussion there, and, you know, I can imagine a man's own frustration when his parts are not working the way he wants them to. But as a woman trying to get those parts to work, not knowing, like, this normally works, but now it doesn't, and that is frustrating. Not only that, it takes a lot more energy to manipulate a flaccid organ than an erect one. I think that if enough men or more men would admit, "All right, this is an issue," I think there would be better sex, more sex.

And, you know, and sometimes it's as simple as it's indicative of cardiac issues. The guy, if you have congestive heart failure, if you're obese and your blood pressure's through the roof. Smoking.

Yeah.

All of these things.

Alcohol. Yeah. They all impact on them.

It's the canary in the coal mine there. If something's wrong when that's not working, it's Mother Nature's way of saying you don't need to be going making any more babies, you got problems, you need to fix your body. So if you want to look at it that way, um, but there's also the component of anxiety and so forth that impacts you there. So some men— I've talked to some men that are very healthy, they, they go to the gym all the time, they got it going on, and they haven't had any activity forever from the wife. And then By virtue of him looking better and acting better, the wife's like, I'm ready now. And he's like, let's get it on. I'm, I'm so horny, I can't even contain myself. And they can't go through with the act. Nothing's happening downstairs. And he's like, uh, I've never had this problem before up until this very one moment when finally, after so many months or years of nothing, yeah, it's all up in your, in your head, so to speak, no pun intended.

And well, then the next time he's going to worry that it's going to happen again too, which is a perpetuating thing.

So it's not, um, It's something that's thrown out around a lot about ladies, and it's honestly not something I hear about very often in our world, is the erectile dysfunction. Whether that's as a virtue of shame on the men's part, or the men in my group, for example, are all pretty good shape, or they try to be, so they don't see it that often. I, I do hear from men talking about wanting to last longer. I've heard that one. Um, uh, uh, they're concerned about their woman orgasm But, uh, most of the men in my group are kind of anxious. So they're over— they're preoccupied again with, I want to be the best husband and lover I can be. That may not be illustrative of society as a whole, but, uh, obesity and bad health and so forth is huge freaking problem. Another problem is the old pornography. If you're a guy— definitely, if you're a guy that's used to getting the job done on your own in a matter of minutes or seconds, you may have a problem when you have a real human in front of you.

So, yeah, actually one of your guys, one of your guys reached out to me through Facebook Messenger and we were chatting for a couple of weeks and he was dating someone new and then the whole process of all of that, his first date, I'm like, "What are you gonna wear?" You know, we talked about don't wear too much cologne, like the whole thing. And then they started having sex and he was worried about lasting too long because he was, you know, hadn't been with a partner in a long time. He'd been taking care of business by himself and You know, this feels a lot different than a woman. And they were having a ton of fun together. And it's like, just relax. Like, it'll get used to that. Like, maybe cut back on the masturbation too now that you have a willing participant, a partner. And I'm assuming that all probably, you know, worked itself out. But yeah, he had been alone for a long time. So then once you start getting with a partner again, all the anxiety, but like, you know, not lasting long enough, but also am I lasting too long? And that's all where good communication comes in too. I'm sure she already knew he hasn't been with someone for a long time. Like, these are things that she was probably already just anticipating. But if they had talked about it a little bit, he wouldn't be in his head about it.

True, true. But it's also the whole thing of, in the early stages of the relationship, it's not supposed to be difficult. It's just supposed to be on easy mode. And it's supposed to be erotic and awesome.

In your 40s and 50s, though, it's not the same automatic awesome mode it was as in your 20s. Like, things just are different.

Well, speak—

our worries are different, our bodies are different, you know.

It's true.

I think it's normal that, that we don't have those same expectations. Maybe the men probably do, because the men, I think, always see themselves as, you know, 20 and virile, even when it's interesting.

Yeah, you're hitting on something there. We always talk about the stereotype of the women fighting age, you know, your Botox and your plastic surgeries, and women lying about their age, and women seem very fearful of age while men on the surface, we're all like, I'm the silver fox, you know, I'm an older, wiser man, all the women want to be with me. Yet, yet, boy, we fight age just as much. I did my last conference we had, I asked the guys in the group, just a quick show of hands, whoever's comfortable sharing, how many are on testosterone therapy? Over half the room raised their hand. I'm like, oh, wow.

Oh, okay. Now let's skid back a little bit to what does that do for their erections? Because you said like guys don't really talk about the erection problem all that much, but you also just said half the guys in the room raise their hand that they're on testosterone.

That's not necessarily an erection thing. It's a—

but it does help with erections.

It can, it can, or it can be a detriment. When you monkey around with hormones, it gets weird with the body. To make it short, the body is always trying to be in a state of equilibrium. So, when you introduce like this outside source of testosterone, for example, the body's like, Well, I better shut this down. Or it says, well, I better counteract with other, to make it super simple, other hormones like estrogen. Do you know that men can take so much testosterone that they actually become feminized? They grow breasts. Yeah, they grow breasts. They have edema, water weight gain. They get emotional. Then they go to the doctor. What's going on? Your estrogen is through the roof because you took too much testosterone. Lower the testosterone. Here's a pill for the estrogen. And then they get back to normal. That's when some erectile dysfunction can come out as a result of that. Um, but most of the men I talked to, why did you go on the testosterone? My energy was down. I was going to the gym and nothing was happening in the gym. I just didn't have a lot of energy for life. My muscle tone was nothing. And I just want to look like He-Man, to be honest with you.

I see these—

I see these ads, you know, with these 50-some-year-old guys with ripped abs and they look muscular. I want to be that guy, basically. Um, I don't hear much in the terms of to fix my erectile dysfunction.

I wish you would have asked that specifically. Maybe next time you have a conference, there you go. Okay, how many guys are on and then say, how many of you have noticed a change in your erections? I would love to know the answers to that.

I, you know, I would say what most of the guys say is their baseline libido goes up. So they're just at baseline hornier because of the testosterone.

See, their wives are probably like, oh, Jesus.

Wonderful.

Yeah, that's the last thing they wanted.

But that's illustrative of these guys are like fighting time. I want to be the young virile dude forever. As much as I can and maintain my health. And they look at their wives and go, why would you not want to? Why do you not want to follow alongside of me and fight Father Time and go to the doctor and do the same kind of thing? And some women say, you're right, I do. Well, I would say, from what I've seen, most women say, no, I'm— the menopause thing is just a natural part of life. I'm going into what we call grandma mode now, you know, that, that That's kind of behind me.

Interesting, because I do not see that at all. If anything, what I see on my side, I'm not quite there yet either. So, I'm not surrounding myself with all of these women, but in my women's groups and stuff, and they're varying ages, what I find is that women have a very hard time getting help through menopause. And so, they give up because the doctors don't listen. It seems like nobody really knows what the hell to do. And, with a female, our bodies are going through this cycle every single month. So, I could go get my estrogen checked today and then in 2 days from now, it's going to be something totally crazy different. So, trying to replace that is tricky. And, I think women just kind of give up because we're not listened to faster than the men. I think the men are like, "Oh, what's your testosterone? Here you go." Maybe test it once or twice again, but I don't think it's nearly as—

Yeah. It's difficult for the women, for sure. But most of the men I talk to start off by going to their general practitioner, their family doctor, who knows nothing about any of it, and basically laughs them out of the room and says, "You're not a He-Man, dude. You're a 47-year-old father. Just stop it with the testosterone. You're fine. Just cut it out." And so they go to a private clinic. And that's what a lot of the women do. The market hears this frustration from the men and women, and there are clinics all over the place for hormone replacement, everything. And there are, uh, those that specialize in menopause treatments and so forth. And it is more difficult for the ladies than it is for the men. You know, they got the— for the men, it just seems like, here's your testosterone, get out. And the man's like, woohoo, I feel so much better now. For the women, it's like, well, we have to balance your estrogen, your progesterone, your testosterone, your this, your iron levels are too high, you know, all this other stuff.

A lot.

It's a different little cocktail, and it takes a lot of juggling balls to get it just right. But for some of those women, they say, I am so I did this. I feel like a million bucks. I had the hot flashes, I had this, and it was awful. My joints were aching. Now I can actually function again and go for my jogs. And yes, my libido returns. It's great. Well, other women say, I don't notice anything. It's so, so funny how we're just so different.

I think it just, you know, I think it hits everybody different. One of the main things too that I've heard is that painful intercourse is one of the main things. So it's not just like, oh, I'm I'm just not into it or I'm bored with it. It's like if it actually physically hurts, and yes, like the vaginal tissue becomes thin and dry and all these things, and not wanting to talk to your partner about that, I'm sure it's a big part of it.

Yeah.

But working through that as a team, I think like when you get married, you know, if we're together forever, like we're going to get old together. We're going to go through some shit. But once all that stuff comes and then she goes on her own path and tries to figure it out by herself and is not including her partner in this part of the process. So he has no idea what's going on or how to support or how to be helpful, or how to change their sex to where it's more enjoyable with all these new changes, you know, but all that requires communication, first and foremost.

And you talk about you, you're like, no, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, in my group, I hear these women are actively trying to get help with this. It's, it's again, we're showing my audience consists of mostly a lot of anxious guys that are trying like hell to make their relationship better. And who do these guys match up with? The polar opposite, these avoidant women that are like, sex schmex, that, that we had our babies, we're done with that. And so those ladies are not going to go to get the hormonal treatment and try to do better, especially when Mr. Anxious is sitting there going, maybe it'll improve our sex life, huh? And she's like, oh God, here we go again. So that's who I, that's who I talked to, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, that sucks.