When you understand the origins of your sexual problems, you can change the beliefs which lied behind your difficulties. And then, than heavens, you can train your body to respond to physical arousal, rather than mental arousal such as fantasy or the anticipation of sex, you can enjoy a much more reliable sexual response to stimulation and become fully potent again.

Sounds easy? Well, the amazing thing is that it can be – and even those cases of erectile dysfunction which have been written off by the medical profession as physically based can respond well to this approach.

Erectile dysfunction

You do not need to put up with impotence – there is an effective cure for the majority of men who suffer from loss of erection during sex.

Good communication is part of your way to help solve erection problems and cure your erectile dysfunction

I mentioned earlier that good communication is vital to intimacy, a good relationship, and most of all a good sex life. If you’re having trouble communicating about intimate matters with your partner, and you have erection problems, this could be part of the problem.

Video: You need to talk about sex.

For one thing, words are less susceptible to misunderstanding than other forms of expression, like touch, or facial expressions. But talking about sex goes beyond this: it strengthens the bond between a couple and it makes for intimacy and a relaxed attitude to sex. It reduces anxiety and it provides reassurance that your needs and wishes will be fulfilled. If you have a problem with your erections, it becomes even more important to talk about sex.

Unfortunately men often think that talking about their feelings is feminine, and a real man should be the strong, silent type. Men may not even know what they want from their partner sexually, and therefore be even further away from being able to express it.

And of course you may think that if you express what you secretly desire she will judge you for it. But the truth is this: as far as sex goes, anything and everything can be incorporated in a couple’s sex life without shame, provided that both agree and there is no coercion by one partner to get the other to agree to something they don’t like.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because you see what you want as somehow “wrong” for a man it is ether a bad idea to ask for it or impossible to get it. Your partner will probably be delighted to explore it with you – whatever “it” may be. 

And it’s always enjoyable to find out if you like something or not. In short there’s nothing unmanly about asking for what you want, no matter how off-beat it may seem to you. Communication is even more important when it comes to sexual problems like erection problems.

Furthermore, there’s no harm in telling your partner that she’s doing something you don’t like. If she touches you in a way you don’t like, or sucks your cock when you don’t want her to, for heaven’s sake tell her. The same goes for anything else that happens between you in your sex life! This kind of communication is essential to sex, erection problems and erectile dysfunction in particular.

You may be laboring under the illusion that a woman should know exactly what you want and be able to provide it for you, even when you don’t communicate it directly. The reality is that she will never know exactly what you want – and in any case it is your responsibility to tell her. You certainly can’t blame her for your erection problem if you’ve never communicated your wishes, needs and desires to her. Nor, indeed if you have never examined the archetypal shadows with you that may be causing the problem.

There are many examples that would serve to show how inhibited a couple can be about their sexual needs, even when they have spent years having sex. For example – do you know if your partner masturbates, and how often? Why not check it out with her?

Needless to say, it’s just as important that a woman communicates her wishes and needs to you, especially if you’re not very sexually experienced. But you can help that process by talking to her, by asking her what she wants. This is just another example of how good communication is essential for helping a couple to solve sexual problems including erectile dysfunction.

There’s another compelling reason to engage in a healthy dialogue about sex with your partner. If you never talk to each other about sex, you are likely to spend a lot of time fantasizing and worrying about what is going on for her, whether you are satisfying her, what you should be doing, and so on. This energy takes you away from being in the moment, and just “doing it”. Being in the moment solves all kinds of problems for you both.

Points to check:

• Do you know enough about female sexual anatomy?

• Does she know enough about your sexual anatomy?

• Have you spent time looking at each other’s sex organs?

• Are you willing to spend time looking at your partner’s sex organs in a non-sexual way, as if you were doing a medical examination? Are you willing to ask her to show them to you? If not, why not?

• Is she embarrassed about the idea of you discussing your erection, how you feel about your erection problems, and how she feels about the lack of your hard penis, able to penetrate her? If so, is she relaxed about sex, or does she have an up-tight attitude contributing to your sexual issues?

• Has she tries to make you erect with oral sex? Has she asked you if this would help you to  become more aroused and work towards solving your erection problems?

• Have you explored your partner’s vagina with a finger, found her G spot, tasted her vaginal juices, and breathed deeply of her intimate scents? (Has she tasted her own finger after she’s had it inside her vagina?) Does this make you more or less aroused? Does it help your erection or not?

• Has she explained to you the difference between stimulating her clitoris and her vagina, and how this feels to her?

Asking for what you want as a first step to solving erection problems

Why not try something simple which will help you communicate your desires and wishes to your partner?

Take a piece of paper each and tear it into five pieces. Write on each piece one thing that you would like your partner to do for you, then place them all in a hat and draw one out in turn each time you have sex. The partner who has made the request can then have his or her wishes fulfilled by the other one. This is not only a great way to say what you want but a good way to get talking about your sexual desires and wishes.

As a development of this, you can agree to make a request of each other every time you have sex, alternately, first one partner and then the other. In this way you will develop greater ease and comfort when making your sexual wishes clear and when talking about sex. All of this easier communication can only help to make things more relaxed and more intimate, an produce an environment in which you are much more likely to be able to solve your erectile problems.

The powerful experience of falling in love is something that each and every one of us wants to do during our lives.

A friend said to me, years ago, something to the effect that if we’re not in a relationship we’re all looking for one, and if we are in a relationship we’re all looking to make it better.

At the time I didn’t really understand this, because I think at the time I was in a place of great difficulty in establishing relationships, but over the years I’ve come to see what he said is true. This is because the Lover Archetypal energy in us is programmed to connect with others from the day we are born to the day we die…. but it is also the archetype which can be most easily wounded, so that our ability to express love cleanly and clearly is very fragile.

The essence of a good relationship is being able to empathise and connect with your partner in a way that makes them open up to you so there is an experience of shared intimacy. However, for men and women the energies in building a relationship may be different. The Lover in women wants to connect – as does the Lover in men – but the primary attraction in men to the Lover in women may be a man’s Magician energy. (Read about the Magician energy, the Magician archetype, here.)

That shared intimacy is undoubtedly a development of the intimacy that develops (automatically) between child and mother (and father) when the baby is born. Indeed, this is the primal model for all our later relationships, and it’s the primal model for falling in love which we take through life. Let me explain.

When a baby is born, she or he is entirely dependent on mother for food, for well-being, and indeed for its very survival, so the baby makes every effort to make the mother bond with it, to make the mother fall in love with it.

It does this by smiling, by gurgling, by enjoying sensual touch, and by mirroring its mother’s (and of course its father’s) emotions. There’s a program in the human brain which enables this behaviour of lovers – deeply looking into each other’s eyes and enjoying sensual sharing enables a baby to fall in love with its mother – and vice versa. (You can read about the development of these responses in this book, which is all about shadow, human development, and the archetypal model [King Warrior Magicain and Lover ] of personality.)

When a baby falls in love with its mother, its mother falls in love with the baby, and the baby’s survival is assured. But sadly, we all know there are many babies born into the world which are not wanted – their experience after birth is negative – they don’t bond with their mother, their mother doesn’t bond with them, and their model of intimacy is forever affected thereafter.

In fact, if a baby has not bonded with its mother satisfactorily, it will pick up the message that it’s not lovable, or that it’s incapable of loving, and will carry that message through the rest of its life into adulthood.

As you may well imagine, a baby in this position is going to experience great difficulty in forming intimate relationships as an adult.

Indeed, she or he may avoid the pain of adult relationships because the experience it had as a child was so painful.

There’s a deep wound to what we call the lover archetype, the part of the individual that holds the loving and sexual energy so necessary for connection with another human being.

In the situation where somebody has a deeper or lesser wound to the lover archetype, their ability to form a relationship with another adult, at least a relationship of strength and equality, will be impacted.

There are ways to overcome this of course in adulthood and there are many therapists and therapies available to deal with these problems.

The point I’m making is not so much that you can overcome these difficulties, as to indicate the ways in which these difficulties may affect your desire to have a relationship in the first place.

You see, if you’re experiencing a desperate need to fall in love, or a desperate need to have someone fall in love with you, then it’s likely that you have some kind of emotional wound or difficulty in your lover, and it will impact the way in which you express your desire to be loved.

And of course there are plenty of good ways to love, all of which can express your intimate whole adult self openly and honestly to a relationship or sexual partner.

One good way of recovering your natural innate human ability to love, is simply being in a loving relationship that is open and honest, where each partner is working towards the benefit and growth of the other, as well as their own growth and individuation.

And there are other aspects to any human relationship.

Sexuality is a massively important aspect of sexual and emotional relationships between adult human. And it’s fair to say that if you want someone to fall in love with you you probably also want to have a sexual relationship with them.

Sidebar – a video diversion about love

You can discover the truth about sexual enjoyment here. Many of us are restricted in our level of sensual and sensuous pleasure, not fully sensing the level of sexual pleasure that we’re entitled to as human beings.

If you want to know how to pleasure a woman, there’s plenty of information here. (If you don’t understand what pleasure a woman means, it means taking her to orgasm – and sure, it’s equally true that a woman can pleasure a man – indeed men look to women for sensual experience because women tend spend more of their time and invest more of their emotional energy in the lover archetype than men do.)

But essentially sexual pleasure is about enjoying not only an intimate sexual relationship, but about constantly striving to enjoy better and better orgasms, so that the pleasure you can gain from your intimate relationship increases naturally as time goes by.

You see, many people don’t make an effort to increase their sexual pleasure, indeed a lot of men don’t make any effort at all to pleasure their female partner, expecting her to provide them with sexual fulfilment while offering none in return.

But the best way of being in a loving relationship is to offer and receive mutual sexual pleasure, and to understand that between the two of you, the potential for human expression of sexuality is almost infinite.

There is also a way of expressing sex that becomes transcendent, taking you into a spiritual realm. We won’t deal with that here, but the point I wish to make is that the level of sexual pleasure which most people experience is far below the potential sexual pleasure that a couple in love are capable of feeling for each other.

To enjoy your full birthright as a human being with sensual pleasure, it’s worthwhile learning those sexual techniques which expand the bounds of possibility beyond what you’ve already learnt in your previous relationships, with your previous partners.