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Sometimes a couple may decide to work on their relationship before they try to fix the man’s potency. If your doctor suggests that you go to a counselor, he might be giving good advice. If you fix the erection problem, but because of emotional difficulties in the relationship, your partner isn’t happy with the result, you might have taken the wrong approach. Howard did.
Howard, a 55-year-old successful businessman and former professional athlete, arrived at the doctor’s office with his fiancee, Christina, a slightly plump, attractive widow of 45. Howard and Christina looked like a happy couple about to embark on a second marriage after knowing each other for several years. But their facade crumbled within a very short period of time.
Howard explained with some hostility that he had come to see the doctor only at his fiancee’s insistence. She thought he had a problem. The short blonde woman smiled, but she refused to participate in the conversation, and all the doctor’s attempts to involve her yielded nothing. Finally, Christina excused herself.
Once his partner was out of the room, Howard reiterated that Christina was the problem, not him. He was perfectly satisfied with his ability to get and maintain an erection. Furthermore, he explained that he took great pains to sexually satisfy his fiancee. He appeared quite knowledgeable about male and female physiology and talked about many different ways to achieve sexual pleasure.
At this point, the confused physician decided he would talk with Christina alone. She was somewhat reluctant, but she agreed. First Christina double-checked the door to the doctor’s office to make sure it was securely shut. Then she sat down, looked the physician straight in the eye, and declared, “He doesn’t get a good erection. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t!” Christina’s shy, somewhat timid manner disappeared: She insisted that Howard was fooling himself about his ability to function; she was sure that her partner’s erections were not satisfactory.
The doctor decided that a complete physical examination of Howard was in order. Howard turned out to be in excellent physical condition. He had no chronic diseases which could cause erection problems; he had normal blood pressure, and wasn’t taking any medications which were known to cause potency difficulties.
To test Howard’s ability to get an erection, the doctor gave him a penile shot. Within a short period of time, Howard obtained a full, firm erection, demonstrating that his essential-to-erection blood-flow system was in good working order. “This is just like the erections I normally get,” Howard declared with obvious satisfaction.
The doctor was curious to see if Christina would agree with Howard’s assessment. But although she came into the room, Christina refused to look at the erection.
What was going on here? How could Howard and Christina differ so radically about what happened between them? The doctor was puzzled, but he was sure of one thing: Howard and Christina were not communicating, and that problem needed to be solved before any possible erection difficulty was addressed.
The doctor pointed out that since Howard and Christina had strong differences in perception they might benefit from some counseling. Somewhat to the physician’s surprise, they agreed this was a good idea. On the doctor’s recommendation, they made an appointment with a psychologist who was also a well-trained, experienced sex therapist.
The therapist saw Howard and Christina together, and separately. She also gave them some tests to determine their attitudes towards sex and gauge their sexual experience.
All the results pointed to much unresolved conflict between Howard and Christina that was due to problems other than sex. She was very upset at her fiancee, but she was unable to express it directly. Instead, even with the evidence of his erection, she denied that he was able to function sexually as he thought he did—something which was of great importance to him.
In this case, the physician was able to determine in fairly short order that Howard’s erections were not the major problem, but were just singled out as the target. If the doctor had concentrated his efforts on “fixing” Howard’s erections (which didn’t even seem to be “broken”), the communication problem would have remained unresolved, leaving Howard and Christina unhappy and at odds with each other. Instead, the couple agreed to see a professional counselor who would help them deal more directly with their anger.
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