What’s the worst experience you’ve had with your erection issue?

It depends on how you define ‘worst’ and what that means for you. Is worst the most embarrassing time, the time that you pushed a potentially great relationship away, the time that you can’t believe that one ‘got away’ or something else?

As much as we like to block out these stories they are often burnt into our memories. Writing them here is no small task and will be really emotive. But it’s a great first step to letting them go.

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In hindsight, my erection issues came on slow (over the period of about two months). I assumed it was to do with condoms, to begin with. I thought I had developed an aversion to them.

But then the moment I realized for sure was the morning after the night before. I went home with a girl I had known for years. We were in different friendship groups but with plenty of overlap. It didn’t work that evening when we were drunk but I didn’t take too much notice. It was only in the morning when we were sober and tried again that it didn’t work. And this time in a big way… absolutely nothing.

I was petrified. I will never forget it. My mind was racing, wondering how to fix it, wondering how she was going to broadcast this horrendous news to the world and how my life and friendships would crumble around me because of this.

I felt betrayed by my body in a way I never had before.

I’ve had ED issues for as long as I can remember but my worst experience was in September last year. I couldn’t get it up for the dude I was hooking up with (gay guy here) and he went from giving me, um, very forceful encouragement (“you need to get hard for me”/“c’mon, you can do it”, etc.) to almost berating me (“other guys don’t have an issue”/“why can’t you get hard?”/“just fuck me already”, etc.). Needless to say, I’ve never been so soft in my life as I was at that moment! Although I think his words came from a place of hurt (must be crap when your hookup is just totally soft when you’re getting down to it), they’ve stuck with me and I haven’t attempted penetrative sex since. For a spell through autumn I didn’t get an erection for weeks, not even when alone. Hoping to reattempt penetrative sex soon but not sure how I’d handle a repeat performance tbh. Sometimes it’s just easier to avoid the potential setback.

I had met this girl couple months at a class and we had gotten really close before I flew back to my state. I had an intimate moment with her and sadly I couldn’t continue any further because my inner critic got the best of me so I stopped. We kept in contact and a few months later I flew back for another class that she fortunately was in also! Our class lasted a week and since day 1 we started hanging out having dinner together.

This particular night we stayed a few extra. hours in class alone to study so the teacher had us turn the lights of and lock the place up after we were finished. We flirted all night increasing the sexual between us and as we were about to walk out the door after turning the lights off, I pulled her back in, put her against the wall and kissed her ( I was not full hard but it was enough for her to notice). She didn’t want to be caught so we ended up moving the fun in her car. She was in her panties only and I in my underwear and things were about to escalate when the inner critic took over and I just went limp! embarrassed by what just happened I immediate got defensive and made an elaborate plan as to why I had to all of a sudden leave!

Two days later, another opportunity arose. But this time I decided to tell her about whats been happening and I have no idea as to why.She was very understanding about it and made me feel comfortable talking about it and decided that we should hold off as it was also affecting her mentally thinking it was her fault which I assured her it wasn’t and there was nothing in the world I wanted to do than to have sex with her.

We continued hanging out the rest of the week, but every time we were alone we couldn’t keep our hands off each other! Finally one night we decided to try for the last time and of course I couldn’t get it up! And so there I was refusing to accept defeat, decided to wank off in front of her and got to a point where I was hard enough! So we got in position and I stuck it in! BUT to my surprise, my dick fell limp inside her! Ive never been more embarrassed in my life till that night. And since then it honestly has been hard for me to get intimate with any girl I try to pursue because the fear and the inner critic has got a hold of my mind!

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I had anxiety about my first ever sexual experience, and couldn’t get an erection for the first few times we slept together but nonetheless we got into a relationship and after time when I was comfortable with her and relaxed, things began to work OK. My worst experience was a few years later after we had broken up. I was on my second date with a girl I had met on tinder. We’d already slept together after the first date, but at that time she had her period and just wanted to kiss and cuddle, but the next morning there was so much excitement about the idea of seeing each other again. So, fast forward to our second date, we went for a meal, then watched a film, holding hands and kissing. When we got to her bedroom I felt so much pressure to get erect for intercourse because I knew it was what we were both waiting for from the first date. The more I struggled the more disappointed she looked and the worse we both felt. I ended up frantically masturbating next to her in a desperate attempt to get hard. The next morning she seemed very uncomfortable with me. I had a feeling we wouldn’t see each other again but I texted her a few times to suggest meeting up again, and she never responded. In hindsight I realise I could have focused more on her pleasure and indeed mine, but it really hurt to be ghosted as a result of what seemed to me to be my failure to be a man. I’ve been fearful of new encounters ever since, and to this day I struggle to get hard the first few times I’m with someone. It feels like there’s a ticking clock before I get discarded again. I am better now at finding other ways to give and receive pleasure and I think (hope!) this gives me more time to feel relaxed enough for an erection.

I was receiving oral sex from my girlfriend, which I was enjoying. When I started thinking about something else my erection went suddenly. When I managed to get it back we tried sex but it swiftly went again. Horrible feeling as I really enjoy sex.

My first experience was when I was 16 years old. I went to the girl’s house bearing in mind we’ve been talking for quite a while now and we both knew what was going to happen. I’d masturbating a lot since I was very young and not in the conventional way. I’d been doing the death grip method for a good 5 years at this point. When I looked up how to have sex well I saw these stories about masturbating before to make sure that you don’t finish too quickly so that’s exactly what I did with the same death grip method.So when I go to her house I was quite confident that I’ll be able to last a while but we started getting into it and I just felt limp nothing is going on. We tried everything else to just make to try and get me hard but nothing was working. I got so embarrassed that I made up an excuse to leave. We did the usual “oh we’ll do this again sometime” because next time we’ll be able to make it work and then I didn’t speak to her about this again.

Had some issues with Ed before but mainly with girls I was not very emotionally invested in. Was horrible experiencing ed with a girl that I finally liked and cared about a lot. It made me afraid of losing her - which was a terrible feeling.

It all started with premature ejaculation. I was with a girl for the first time when I was 18 and I remember just blowing up like crazy after getting inside. This happened 5 times after that as well, I felt very ashamed. Oral sex I lasted way longer weirdly and really enjoyed it. It got to a point where I started microdosing on Viagra to stop my self from coming to early, which worked really well. In my last relationship it even worked without at times. But then relationship got harder and I started putting a lot of preassure on myself. In the bedroom I started not getting it up at all even when using Viagra. When we broke up and I started using tinder and went to a girls place, my dick just stayed limp, no matter what we tried. I even told her about my anxiety with a new girl and tried talking honestly about it but everytime we started making out I knew I was gonna fail and so I did

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never really experienced it too much, I had it on my very first time with my ex and I think its always been in the back of my mind since. then I had a few hookups which went well but I didn’t use protection. then I used protection for the first time in a while and it got soft Half way through, then I went to hookup with someone after a night out did stuff then got it up, she asked if I had a condom and before I had the chance to put it in after it getting up it had already gone down. then a girl I thought was really attractive the other day went back to hers and didn’t even use protection and nothing happened not even once.

I couldn’t get it up the first time I tried it when I was 17 years old. The second time with the same girl I couldn’t get it up again, and that’s when I got so scared/embarrassed, that I pretty much avoided having sex with girls until the age of 26.

When I was 15 I was dating this girl and we were hanging out in a park. We started making out and feeling each other up and then she asked me if I wanted to have sex. Me being hyper focused on losing my virginity I tried to power through it but I was very nervous. I was also trying to navigate my own sexuality at the time because I was finding myself a little bicurious.

Couldn’t make it work, so my first attempt at sex was not successful. She said that night it was fine but the next day she broke up with me, and then a few days later I found out that she’d told all of her friends at school. Not only did it cement a huge fear in my mind around performance, but it led me to question my sexually for years (I now can comfortably call myself a bisexual man with a strong preference for women).

I’m 31 years old and while I’ve had periods of not dealing with performance anxiety it’s come back worse than ever and I can’t penetrate my wife anymore.

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The worst? Easy. The most recent boner fail is always the worst for me. It’s a hope killer. Hope that I’ve been able to relax, or get my blood pressure drugs right, or enough sleep, or whatever… to have a reliable, solid experience. Every recent fail means I’m not yet able to put the shame - mostly that my wife’s feelings are hurt- behind me.

It’s a serious mood killer, when your semi-hard penis shrinks in the mouth of the girl you really like. I remember sleeping with a condom on, in the hope that the morning wood could be timeously harnessed and put to work before my anxious mind woke up.

I met a girl I really am into and in our first sexual encounter I was not able to perform. During making out I was able to get an erection but when in bed the erection was not hard, she was great about it but the semi erection did not last long and penetration was not an option. Left me feeling embarrassed and inadequate to say the least

A guy I dated made comments about my erection quality. It lowered my confidence.

Gay man here, I had only been out for around 2 years and sexually active for about a year. I’d only ever been a bottom so hadn’t really put too much pressure on needing to be hard during sex. Then I dated this guy who also had a preference for bottoming, so I thought I’d try topping him as I found him really attractive and we had gotten along really well. I couldn’t maintain an erection when we were having some fun and ended up just limply trying to penetrate him with no success. He didn’t react badly but I felt hugely inadequate and that I was incapable of being the top in a sexual scenario. 4 years later and I’ve still never topped, and always struggled to get hard when having sex because I’m always so anxious that my body doesn’t know what to do when I’m having sex. I haven’t even tried to top since then, and have resorted to always putting the other person’s pleasure before mine and even deflecting their attention away from pleasuring me in case I’m not able to get hard, to avoid the embarrassment.

11 years ago when I was trying to lose my virginity. She was doing so much work trying to get it up but I was just so anxious and uncomfortable (I wasn’t the most attracted to her either) and she kept explaining that ‘a normal guy would have it up by now’ eventually it got semi erect but when it came to using it, it went down soon after penetration. She went on to mention this story to the other people at work (we were co-workers in retail)

It probably started for me around the time I hit 40 or so, when my job and family demands started to get more intense. At the same time, my wife really got back into her fitness routine and got really attractive (she’s a hot blond with blue eyes, fit and trim, wears a size 2) and was getting lots of attention from other guys. The combination of the stress and my insecurity issues (I guess you could call them) played havoc with my boners.

I met a girl through a friend of mine, I very quickly got attracted to her and she did with me as well. If i wasn’t around her, masturbating to the thought of her was easy but the second we would come in contact I froze up.When the first faithful night came for us to have sex, she was initially giving me a BJ and even in that moment I couldn’t get hard. Even as I’m typing this it’s because I am too busy thinking of all the worst case scenarios rather than just enjoying the sensation.The hardest part from, sadly not my d***, was knowing that this would likely feed back to my friend and so the ruminating only got worse and worse.