To me it’s a few fleeting moments where a partner and I start touching each other and when I then don’t get an erection my inner voice asks me “everything is perfect, why are you not aroused?” and “get an erection right now!” and then “what’s wrong with you?”
I don’t hear or see my inner critic in my mind. Not before sex or when in it. Interesting, I have ans I haven’t realized it yet.
My inner critic is a like fog. It is there in the back ground all the time. I do not know if my nerves or something else is the cause but there is no drive or libido. My brain wants to have sex but it’s like something is holding my body back at all times. My issue came about because of over medication by a doctor and tho my issue has been “addressed” I cannot seem to find my way back to sexual joy, drive and freedom. Like I said it is like there is a cloud or black box between my mind and body. I cannot figure out how to solve the issue. Either the lack of sex and confidence is effecting my health or visa versa. It has been going on for a while now and my patience and frustrations are harder to control.
My inner critic is me. He’s just next to me and criticizing every move. I have always been hard at first, but he keeps reminding me that it has a time limit and it will go limp eventually, which I don’t want to worry about but he’s always there.
My inner critic pulls my mind back to worry whenever I get close to a sexual encounter. He warns and cringes at what will inevitably happen. When it does, he laughs at me.
For me the inner critic feels like I am talking to myself in first person. As soon as I’ll feel some blood pumping into my penis and making it hard, I’ll enjoy myself for a bit, but when things start to slow down and my penis is only half erect, I will get nervous and get out of the Feed or Breed nervous system. Then my inner critic reappears and will all of a sudden start to measure exactly how hard I am. I might do this by trying to flex the muscle in my penis…Immediately afterwards I will ask myself whether or not that was a good decision, as the penis will only get harder if I’m relaxed and flexing the muscle is not relaxing at all. Ar that point my dick will soften again and my inner critic will say with my voice: ‘I knew it’ and I’ll start to feel frustrated and desperate.
My inner cricket is a small man, standing in my shoulder. It’s my voice but it’s cruel. Tell me that I’m not going to stay hard or that I can’t stay in this moment. That I don’t deserve to be here or to enjoy this.
My inner critic is like myself telling me, i know i won’t get hard tonight again or you have to get hard and maintain it, otherwise you’re a failure and it won’t be long till your partner leaves cause you cant maintain an erection
My inner critic is the same voice I navigate when managing highly stressful situations professionally. It identifies all the problems with a situation and rarely, if ever, the solutions.
My inner critic often shows me images of how disappointed my partner will be when I am soft, and how this will be a mark against me and they won’t want to spend time with me again.
So a lot of my problem is my size. I am not that big in my opinion, I’ve seen many bigger… but my partner cannot enjoy it… if he felt pain, I would go soft, and slowly we were doing it less and less and no longer happens… now I just associate it with pain and not pleasure per se. My mind is way hornier than my dick is and I feel like there is a disconnect of me getting hard when I actually want to and it is also mixed with a PA and ED. I have met with other people I find very attractive and I just can’t get out of my head about how I feel like I’m not nearly as physically attractive or worried about if they are even enjoying this as much as I am etc and it affects my performance of getting and keeping an erection.
my inner voice is encouraging me to perform but has a negative tone and then slowly gets more and more negative as it fails
My inner critic is in the guise of an early sexual experience that didn’t go well, it feels more condescending and puts shame on me
My thoughts distract me from being in the moment. I’m an engineer and everything I do in life has rules. Do this and then that thinking. Instead of being present, excited about being connected and close with someone my voice is talking to me about all the things not to do if you want to make them happy. Sometimes it’s so extreme I can’t even comprehend the present nature of what I’m doing, I’m simply not there. I’m trying to engineer my solution. The only thing that has worked for me is to become almost creepy with what I want to do to/with someone, give myself fetish thoughts, or immerse my mind in brutal porn style thoughts, or dominate in someway. But if I want to have connected, engaged, staring into your eyes and feel each other soul sex then I go soft. Instead of being present I’m thinking about thinking about thinking. Hahaha.
My inner critic is my own internal monologue of comparing myself to other men. I am a gay man and my early experiences as an early teenager were with other guys who were much more well-endowed than me. The superficiality of gay men places such an emphasis on the perfect physique and huge manhood, neither of which I have never had. There is plenty of that out there for straight men as well, I know. We all hear the sitcoms and comedians and jokes about sex not being long enough, everyone being obsessed with size. And having been with men my whole life, I know dicks are of all sizes, some men cum fast, some men can’t cum due to antidepressants, some men have erection issues. I try to be kind and generous but not everyone is. Even as a younger man I was never someone who could just get rock hard and stay that way. When foreplay changes or the focus isn’t on me, I don’t stay hard. I was never a long laster. All of this combines into just a cacophony of not being a real man, never being good enough, etc. And when you’re in bed with a bigger, harder, longer-lasting man, everything is self doubt. I have never been able to just disappear into the animal manhood of sex. I am always in my head. The only thing that ever helped is sildenafil/dapoxetine so I can get hard and last longer. But my stupid brain can even overpower that and still cause issues. This has been a lifelong issue (from 13 to 40 now), but lately the comparisons to “real” men just won’t stop. Every man I see I just imagine getting hard whenever he wants, being rock hard, and fucking long and great. TV and movies show sexually active older men and I feel like if a penis is supposed to work a man’s whole life, I need to fix myself, without pills. I worry the pills will make things work and I don’t want to completely lose sexual viability. I really have no hope of being in a committed relationship (even gay men in relationships have to be open to be satisfied, so an less-than-average guy like me is never going to feel like enough) so I want to be able to function to enjoy the rest of my sexual life. I thought this might be a way to try to get to some sort of resolution within a community of others with shared experiences rather than trying to go to a counselor/therapist who doesn’t really understand.
My inner critic is always wondering if the next thing I do is going to be what gets me hard or what I could be doing to just get my blood to flow where I need it to
My inner critic knows that I can satisfy my partner, but almost chips away at me during sex to remind me not to lose my erection, which causes that exact thing. Also, just knowing that I’m going to have sex makes me almost try and plan how I’m going to achieve satisfying my partner and myself. This adds an anxiety to sex which then I find becomes a vicious circle when trying to relax or control it.
I feel like I’m my own inner critic
My inner critik is from 2 voices. My own voice telling me that i wont get it up and the second one is the reaction of my partner that think it is her fault because she is unhappy how she look ( which i always she look goegeous)
My inner critic has morphed into a combination of all the negative experiences I have had regarding this issue. It constantly replays horrible embarrassing moments when I couldn’t perform. It is very hard to shut it out and sometimes it is impossible.
My inner critic sounds like my voice feeling petty for me… like it knows that I am not an expert or good enough for to have good sex. Also makes me feel ashamed of my body