It’s the male sexual taboo that can destroy relationships and rob couples of a happy love-life. Yet erectile dysfunction needs to be discussed openly and with understanding, before it’s too late, writes Bettina Arndt.
Keith lived through a nightmare. He went from being a happily married man to a shaky soul who lost his wife, his marriage and much of his confidence.
It all started three years ago when the 61-year-old man’s sexual equipment began to fail. The couple had never had a problem before.
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“Our love life had been good, intuitive love-making, but largely without discussion.”
When Keith began to lose erections, he was utterly devastated and didn’t know how to talk to his wife about it.
He couldn’t discuss it, so he stopped going near her. “I withdrew from my wife. I wanted to make love to her, but I couldn’t, so I put up an emotional wall. I wanted to go on being a good lover to her, but I didn’t know how to do this without an erection.”
Instead of going to bed together, he stayed up later and later watching television.
She’d lie in bed wondering why he wasn’t interested in making love anymore: “Didn’t he find her attractive? Was he having an affair?”
Keith acknowledges that he was so caught up with his own drama that he didn’t give much thought to what his wife might be feeling.
“Here I was torturing myself, but largely unaware of how deeply I was hurting my wonderful wife. I wasn’t told until three years later that she had been equally devastated by the split in our relationship, that she had cried herself to sleep on countless occasions.”
Eventually, she moved out into the spare bedroom and the couple is now divorced — their 20-year marriage ended because they didn’t know how to tackle this common problem.
Huge numbers of couples are struggling with erectile dysfunction (ED), which affects 40 per cent of 40-year-olds, every second man in his 50s, 60 per cent of 60-year-olds and the numbers just keep climbing as men age.
Yet it is so rare that we talk openly about the profound impact of this problem on relationships.
We often find ourselves underestimating the demoralising effect of ED on a man’s confidence and masculinity — particularly when it happens suddenly, for instance after prostate cancer treatment.
Almost 20,000 Australian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year and most of them will suffer ED following treatments like surgery or radiation.
Tackling ED is a major issue for most of these men — often their top priority once they know they have survived the cancer. Yet this important aspect of their rehabilitation is rarely taken seriously — how often have you heard people giggling over Viagra?
That’s so different from the way we deal with a woman with breast cancer. When a woman suffers the loss of a breast through mastectomy, we understand what a blow that is to her confidence and sense of femininity, and we provide government support for breast reconstruction and prosthesis — as we should.
Yet the man who loses the sexual functioning of his penis following prostate cancer treatment receives no government money for ED treatments and very little public acknowledgement of his plight.
The good news is that most men with ED can now be helped. There is a range of effective treatments, which enable most men to regain erections.
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It was wonderful to hear from men thrilled to be able to get erections after years without them.
Here’s a man who’d just tried Viagra: “The first time was amazing. It felt like I was 20 again. This is the best thing since sliced bread, but much dearer.”
Read more of this story in the November issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: Has your relationship been affected by erectile dysfunction?
Video: How to deal with prostate cancer
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