How to Support a Partner Through ED

If your partner is experiencing erectile dysfunction, please resist the urge to immediately appoint yourself Head of Penis Rehabilitation.

I know you want to help. You may also be confused, worried, sexually frustrated, wondering whether he still desires you, or trying very hard to pretend you’re totally fine with everything because you don’t want to make him feel worse.

Meanwhile, he may be having a full-blown existential crisis over a body part that has suddenly stopped following instructions.

Laughing couple in their 40s cuddling in bed under a blanket, sharing intimacy and affection while supporting a partner through ED

ED can happen for all kinds of reasons: stress, anxiety, medication, hormonal changes, nerve damage, vascular issues, illness, surgery, depression, exhaustion, relationship problems, or some unholy cocktail of several of them.

If it’s new or persistent, it’s worth getting checked medically. But whatever caused it, there’s another issue to contend with at home: what the two of you start making it mean.

A penis that isn’t reliably hard can very quickly become evidence, in someone’s mind, that he’s unattractive, broken, incapable of satisfying a partner, or somehow less of a man.

Your job as his partner isn’t to convince his penis to cooperate.

It’s to make sure the penis doesn’t become the most important person in the relationship.

Take the pressure off his penis

This tends to start innocently enough.

“Are you getting hard?”

“Do you want me to keep going?”

“Is that working?”

“Oh. Did you lose it?”

“Maybe if I…”

And now there are two people concentrating very, very hard on whether one penis achieves the correct consistency.

Sexy.

Once an erection becomes the measure of whether sex is “working,” it’s incredibly easy for your partner to start spectating himself. Instead of feeling what you’re doing, he’s checking: Am I hard enough? Am I losing it? Has she noticed? Is she disappointed? Oh shit, it’s going away.

You’re watching too, because now you know he’s worried.

Congratulations. You have both been promoted to Erectile Quality Control.

Try getting rid of the test.

You can touch his penis when it’s soft. You can enjoy it half-hard. You can ignore it for twenty minutes. You can make out, massage each other, fool around, use your mouths, use your hands, get a toy involved, lie naked together or do whatever else sounds appealing without stopping periodically to check whether an erection has appeared.

A soft penis does not require an emergency meeting.

Make sure he knows you still fancy him

For a lot of men, ED hits far beyond the mechanics of sex.

I’ve worked with men who intellectually understand perfectly well that their worth isn’t determined by their erections and still feel devastated when their penis stops behaving the way it used to.

So tell him what you like about him.

And please don’t only say, “It’s okay, it doesn’t bother me.”

That’s kind, but it can accidentally sound like you’re reassuring someone about a regrettable rash.

Tell him you want him.

Tell him what you find sexy about his body. Tell him you love his hands on you. Tell him his mouth drives you nuts. Grab his ass. Kiss him because you feel like kissing him. If you enjoy being naked with him, say so.

There’s a big emotional difference between being tolerated despite ED and being obviously, enthusiastically desired while having ED.

He needs to know which one is happening.

Let penetration lose its starring role

A lot of heterosexual sex is organized around a fairly unimaginative script: kissing, touching, erection, penetration, orgasm, roll over and decide whose turn it is to investigate the noise the dishwasher is making.

When erections become unreliable, couples sometimes discover just how dependent their sex life was on that script.

This can be annoying. It can also be rather useful.

Your bodies contain an absurd number of nerve endings that have nothing whatsoever to do with penile rigidity. Mouths still work. Hands still work. Nipples remain employed. Inner thighs, necks, ears, backs, feet, perineums, buttocks and every other bit of skin have not received notice that sex has been cancelled.

And a penis can still feel pleasure when it isn’t hard.

You can stroke it, lick it, massage it, hold it, vibrate it, play with the testicles and perineum, or simply let genital touch be pleasurable without constantly trying to convert that pleasure into an erection.

If you’re used to penetration being the point of sex, this takes some adjustment. You may genuinely miss it. That’s allowed.

But penetration can become one option among many rather than the activity everything else is trying to lead up to.

Sex gets much more interesting when nobody is racing toward a compulsory destination.

Buy some toys. Seriously.

I love sex toys for couples dealing with ED because they immediately expand the menu.

They also take some of the workload off the penis, which frankly has been under enormous pressure lately and could probably use a union-mandated break.

If you enjoy penetration, use a dildo. If your partner enjoys penetrating you and wants something worn on the body, you can explore harnesses or other wearable options. Vibrators can be used on either of you. Strokers, sleeves and wands can all create sensation in ways that don’t depend on maintaining a particular kind of erection.

Cock rings and vacuum pumps can also be useful for some men. They’re tools, not evidence that anyone has failed Sex.

There can be some initial resistance to all of this.

A man may hear “let’s use a dildo” and translate it into “your penis is no longer sufficient.”

So talk about toys before introducing a twelve-inch silicone gentleman into the bedroom without warning.

The idea is expansion, not replacement.

Toys give you more ways to play. That’s true whether someone has ED or erections you could hang a winter coat from.

If you have absolutely no idea how to do any of this, I can help

This is actually a big part of the work I do as a sexological bodyworker and sex educator.

A lot of people have never been shown how to pleasure a soft penis. They’ve never used a cock ring or pump and aren’t sure what they’re doing. They’ve never held a dildo before, let alone figured out how to incorporate one into partnered sex without it feeling weird or clinical.

I can teach you.

We can explore pleasurable touch that doesn’t depend on an erection, look at tools that might be useful, and talk through kinds of sex you may simply never have considered because penetration has always been the default.

Sometimes having someone say, “Here, try this,” is considerably more useful than another conversation about how everybody feels about the erection.

Talk about it when nobody is naked

The bedroom is a terrible place to have your first serious conversation about erectile dysfunction.

Someone is already vulnerable. Someone may already feel rejected. There’s possibly a condom sitting nearby judging everybody.

Bring it up at a neutral time instead.

You might say:

“I’ve noticed sex has started feeling stressful because we’re both paying so much attention to whether you get hard. I’d really like to take that pressure off.”

Or:

“I miss being physical with you, and I don’t want either of us to feel like touching has to end in penetration. Can we play around with that?”

Or even:

“I want to have sex with you where we genuinely don’t care what your penis does.”

Then ask questions and listen to the answers.

Does he enjoy having his penis touched when it’s soft, or does that make him self-conscious right now? Does he want you to initiate? Has he been avoiding touch because he’s worried you’ll expect penetration? Is there something sexual he’s always wanted to try? What would help you feel wanted and satisfied too?

You aren’t trying to negotiate a new sexual constitution in one conversation. You’re making it possible to talk about what is happening without shame hanging over the whole thing.

Don’t let affection disappear along with intercourse

This is one of the saddest patterns I see with couples.

Sex becomes difficult, so the couple stops attempting intercourse. Then one person becomes wary of initiating any touch because they don’t want to create pressure. The other person assumes the lack of touch means they’re no longer desirable.

Before long, nobody kisses properly anymore. Nobody cuddles in bed. Nobody puts a hand on a thigh while watching television.

The sexual problem has somehow swallowed ordinary affection too.

Protect that stuff.

Hold hands. Cuddle. Kiss hello. Kiss for longer than the perfunctory married-person peck. Massage each other. Lie together in your underwear. Spoon. Stroke his hair. Squeeze a butt when you walk past in the kitchen.

And sometimes explicitly say, “I don’t want this to go anywhere. I just want to touch you.”

That sentence can be enormously relieving when someone has started associating every intimate gesture with a performance he isn’t sure he can deliver.

You get to have feelings about this too

Supporting someone through ED doesn’t require you to become a sexually enlightened woodland fairy who has transcended all preference for erections.

You might miss penetration.

You might feel rejected when he loses an erection, even if you understand intellectually that it isn’t about you.

You may worry he isn’t attracted to you anymore. You might feel irritated that sex has become complicated. You may want him to see a doctor and be frustrated that he’s avoiding it.

Those feelings don’t make you unsupportive.

Just try not to deliver them as a verdict on his body.

“I miss penetration and I’d love for us to figure out some other ways I can get that sensation” is very different from “You can’t satisfy me anymore.”

Likewise, “Sometimes when you lose your erection I notice I start wondering if you’re attracted to me. Can you reassure me?” gives him something useful to respond to.

You are still two people having a sexual relationship. His feelings don’t become the only feelings in the room because his penis is being difficult.

Encourage him to get help

If ED keeps happening, particularly if it’s a new change, encourage him to speak to a doctor. Erections involve blood flow, nerves, hormones, medication effects and general health, so there can be useful medical information in a change in erectile function.

And if sex has become a horrible cycle of anxiety, avoidance, disappointment and trying again with even more pressure, consider seeing someone who works specifically with sexuality.

Sometimes couples arrive in my office convinced the problem is the erection. Then we start looking at the sex they’ve been having, the conversations they’ve been avoiding, the expectations both people are carrying, and all the things they’d stopped doing once penetration became difficult.

There’s often quite a lot to work with.

Sex can survive ED

You may both want the erections back. Of course you may. Nobody gets bonus enlightenment points for pretending you don’t care.

Pursue medical options if they’re appropriate. Experiment. Troubleshoot. Be frustrated sometimes.

Just don’t postpone your entire erotic relationship until his penis receives further notice.

There is still kissing. There is still sensation. There is still arousal, desire, orgasm, silliness, filth, affection, curiosity and the pleasure of another person’s body.

You can have deeply satisfying sex with a hard penis, a half-hard penis or a penis that has decided tonight it would prefer to lie there like a sleepy sea cucumber.

It’s invited.

It just doesn’t have to run the evening.

Need some help figuring out what sex looks like now?

You don’t have to invent all of this yourselves.

I work with individuals and couples dealing with erectile difficulties in a very practical, body-based way. We can work with soft-penis pleasure, arousal, touch, cock rings, pumps, toys, dildos, alternative ways of having penetrative sex, and plenty of kinds of sex that don’t involve penetration at all.

You can ask the questions that feel embarrassing to Google. You can bring the toys you bought and have no idea what to do with. You can learn how to touch each other without every sensation becoming a test of whether an erection appears.

Most importantly, we can take some of the fear, awkwardness and pressure out of the room and put pleasure back in.

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