Male Sexual Functioning

To no surprise to most of us, research has established that there is a connection between sexual satisfaction and overall life satisfaction. The most common area of concern is Erectile Dysfunction or “ED.’

Erectile dysfunction is said to effect over 52 million American men and the market for pills which promise a cure has exploded in the last few years, promising the ability to have sex anywhere, anytime with anyone and consequently a more satisfying life.

Although age has the strongest asssociation with severity of ED, it is not an inevitable consequence of age.

The results of our research suggest that while older men do have more difficulty with erectile dysfunction, it does not necessarily lead to lower levels of sexual satisfaction.

I will be posting a new page about male sexual functioning and would encourage those who want more information to refer to that page.

If you have had erectile difficulties, I would encourage you to post comments about you experiences.

I hated my 60th birthday. In fact, I hated it for the entire year before my birthday, and I really made quite a fuss about it. I told all of my family and friends that I didn’t want anyone to acknowledge it

I spent the day of my birthday looking behind doors and couches for people waiting to jump out and say, “Surprise!” It never happened. Everyone seemed to have taken me at my word.

Late in the afternoon, my partner called and said that two friends wanted to meet us for dinner. I smiled to myself, thinking, “At last, this is the plan.” I left work a little early to be sure to get there in time. I stopped at McDonalds for coffee and put $1.25 on the counter to pay for it. The clerk said, “That’s only 39 cents for seniors.”

I arrived at dinner but there were no balloons, no cake, and no “Surprise!” No one mentioned that it was my birthday. So I’ve pretty much been bitter about my sixtieth birthday for the last 5 years.

Mid-life begins when you start considering days left, instead of days lived. Late life begins when you starting checking things off your to do list, without having done them. How many birthday parties will I have left? How many gardens will I get to plant? Do I have time to buy a new puppy? You realize you probably wasted your money on that book, A Thousand Places to Visit before I Die.

Where I grew up in Nebraska, your value as a human being wasn’t determined in your life time, but rather upon you death by the number of people who attend your funeral. The thought crossed my mind that it might be a non-event, like my 60th birthday party.

But I’ve learned there are some freedoms that come from getting older. No time for bull shit! I don’t finish a book that isn’t very good. I don’t sit through a lecture which is boring. I don’t wear neckties. I don’t think about building a resume. I think about my earning essential rather than my earning potential. I turn down invitations to parties where I don’t think I’ll find anyone that I really like.

I try not to have regrets about the way my life has unfolded. I realize that life has been about making choices. I have gone through life opening some doors, and not others. I have entered through those doors believing that I had made the best choice that I could at the time. If the choice later seemed wrong, I’d just choose another door and open it.

Why would I regret any choice I’d made, if I thought it was the best choice I could have made at the time?

But there are fewer doors to open ahead of me now. I know that I must think more carefully about the remaining choices and I walk by a lot of those doors without giving them serious consideration. Life takes on more of a sense of urgency and there are some doors I simply cannot leave unopened any longer.

Slow Time

Over the holidays, I made home-made ice cream. My kids and grand-kids were visiting, so I brought out the White Mountain, cedar-sided, hand-cranked ice cream freezer.

For years I have been preaching that it is the only way to make home-made ice cream. I have bored them with my stories about this old family tradition.

As a child, we made ice cream on very special occasions. My father and uncles would get ice from the livestock tank, put it in a burlap bag (we called it a gunny sack), and crushed the ice with an ax. My mother and aunts put together the fresh cream and milk and poured it in the steel cylinder.

It was the men’s job to crank it. The youngest boys had their turn first, and the older ones, trying to prove their manhood, cranked next, wearing themselves out quickly. When it seemed the handle was impossible to crank any longer, the older men finished it while one of the young boys sat on the freezer to keep it from moving.

My kids don’t get it. They have little interest in this spiritual experience which connects me to my ancestors…except for my granddaughter, Josie. She came out on the porch with me, added salt when I asked, and when it was almost impossible to crank any longer, she sat on the freezer to keep it steady.

The following Sunday at church I told one of my fellow Deacons about my experience. She responded that her favorite memory of her grandfather was when they made ice cream, and he asked her to sit on the freezer.

It isn’t about the ice cream. Trust me, I know good ice cream. It is about moments where we feel connected to those who gave us traditions and those who will carry them on. It is about slow time.

We live in fast time, a fast food world, where food is prepared and eaten quickly, often while driving in the fast lane. We don’t just sit and visit on front porches. If we make ice cream at all, we let an electric ice cream maker freeze our ice cream, while we attend to a dozen other tasks or silently stare at a TV.

Much of what we eat comes from our farm. My friends think we’re crazy to can fresh peaches, spaghetti sauce and pickled beets. We eat beef and lamb we’ve raised from animals which spend their short lives living as animals should, amongst blue birds and wild flowers.

I hope to make small foot prints during the time I’m on this planet. My hope is to leave our farm better than I found it. I want to thumb my nose at the agri-business industry, with its mono-cultured, e-coli tainted, trans-fatted, antibiotic and hormone enriched products. I don’t want to be a part of the Wal-Mart-ization of the world.

I want to spend some slow time with my family and friends around my White Mountain, cedar-sided, hand-cranked ice cream freezer, while reminiscing about similar moments from a long time ago.

I’ve never met a truly evil person. As a psychiatrist, I had always expected that I would. I have evaluated many people who have done some pretty evil things, but in getting to know them, I’ve always discovered that they are just human beings who’ve used some very bad judgment and made some very bad choices.

A few Sundays ago, Pastor David Ruhe, of Plymouth Congregational Church, said, “Lasting peace will never come until we can see the good in our enemies and the evil in ourselves.” That sentence has grabbed my brain and shaken it ever since.

As a psychotherapist, I know that we cannot make progress in relationship counseling until each person has stopped blaming the other person for their miseries and has come to accept their own contribution to the conflicts between them. The critical question is, “What have I done to contribute to this conflict, and therefore, what do I have the power to change to make it better?”

It strikes me that the greatest problem we face in this country is the terrible polarization which exists in our society. “America, right or wrong.” “You’re either for me or against me.” “Right or left.” “Red States, blue states.” “Gay or straight. Black or White.” “Good or evil.”

These are labels used to define “other-ness,” and being other is to be “less than.” But are we not all one?

Cannot most of these problems be resolved when we begin to see the good in those who are “not like us,” when we begin to see the humanity in all those who do not perceive the world as we see it? “Ethnic cleansing” is nothing more that the ultimate expression of this polarization of thinking.

I cannot help but believe the solution to the problems in Iraq, the immigrant problem, gay rights and every issue that confronts us, will only come when we begin to ask ourselves, “What have I/we done, that has contributed to this and how can I change it?” Can progress ever be made as long as we continue to blame others and label them as evil?

I’m feeling very sad as I write this. A dear friend told me that his son had not remembered him on Fathers’ Day. I am sad for him, for myself, and for every gay father who has experienced disappointment.

Many gay fathers are the best fathers I have known, but sadness comes from the loss of the dream, the damaged image of being the perfect father.

Some partition off their sexuality to remain in traditional families while feeling like an imposter; others have chosen to or been asked to leave. Either way, the consequence is loss, and depression may result when something of great importance is lost.

Depression also can result when there is a gap between expectations and outcomes. Often, when men tell their families they are attracted to other men, they have struggled with that conflict for years. Since their anxiety is now diminished, they expect their families will share their enthusiasm!

But that anxiety has now been dropped in the laps of those they love, sometimes at a time when their children are struggling to find their own identities.

The solution?

• You will always be the father.
• You are different but not defective.
• Strive to be good enough, not perfect. No father can live up to the ideal.
• Recognize that conflicts in values are only resolved within, not by seeking approval from others.
• Give your family time to resolve the conflict within their value system. Recognize that their search for resolution began much later than yours.
• Lower your expectations, while remaining constant in your commitment to having a relationship with your loved ones.