Porn and Anxiety Are Destroying Men's Sexual Performance

Women are done playing the Damsel in Distress, an epidemic of erectile dysfunction is the result...but there's hope

Photo by Camila Cordeiro on Unsplash

When I grew up, sexual roles were unspoken but well-established. 

The man always initiated sex, typically with a kiss, and then proceeded as far as the woman would allow. The woman was passive and strictly followed the man’s lead.

A strange yet purposeful delusion persisted where women would behave as if they were inexperienced vestal virgins, in part because they knew this turned men on. 

A man’s pleasure mattered more than hers. 

Men were dominant during sex.

Pornography was limited to magazines and 16-mm film, requiring a home movie projector to view, which most people didn’t own. 

There were XXX peep shows but few men attended these public ejaculation factories. 

Said plainly, there wasn’t an erectile dysfunction clinic on every corner, nor did boner pills rack in the billions of dollars they do today. 

PORN:

I’ve never been turned on by porn. That is not to say I haven’t watched it.

My initiation to porn started with Debbie Does Dallas in 1978 when you had to watch intolerably bad actors putzing around with stale dialogue and by the time they got to making love it just didn’t turn me on.

I did dabble with Pornhub’s free videos and now understand how many get addicted to it.

There are a million videos for every imaginable sexual fantasy and fetish.

But as with any drug (and that’s what porn is), you ultimately require a larger dose to keep you satisfied.

I’m not saying I’m an angel, but I quickly realized that if I continued to go down the porn rabbit hole, it would affect my ability to perform with an actual woman.

MY THEORY IN A — PARDON THE PUN — NUTSHELL:

Many men can’t deal with women’s sexual liberation and their unwillingness to cater strictly to a man’s needs. 

Many men can only be turned on when a woman is vulnerable, innocent, and ever so grateful for whatever attention he is paying to her. 

I never dated a woman who wanted to have sex on the first date, and by the time I made her laugh enough to want to have sex with me, my sexual fantasies had built up to such a degree, that I would often go soft. 

I almost always recovered, but it was — in no small part — thanks to a compassionate, kind, woman, who didn’t pressure, make fun of, or make me feel like less than a man because I couldn’t produce an 8-inch, rock-solid, die-hard, protuberance. 

Losing an erection for a man has always been embarrassing, but now it’s paralyzingly, near suicide-inducing, ready-to-jump-off-the-Golden-Gate-Bridge, demoralizing.

I hazard to say, that most men being diagnosed with erectile dysfunction (ED) are suffering from something wrong in their head (the one with a scalp on it) not the other one.

That is not to diminish ED. Many men do have physiological, and medical reasons for reduced sexual performance and if medicine helps, that’s great.

This may be generational to some degree. 

Purposeful non-monogamy (polyamory), open relationships, and friends with benefits (FWB) are relatively new movements that are becoming more mainstream and accepted.

Some men, like me — pushing 60 — are largely stuck in a 1970s fixed gender mindset and have trouble adjusting to FWB or juggling multiple sexual partners….which, ironically limits performance-related sexual anxiety….consequently, many of us (at least at the moment) simply aren’t having much (if any) sex at all. 

I’m convinced a large part of many young men’s sexual dysfunction is related to performance anxiety (Holy shit, this woman’s hot, I’ll never be able to live up) and porn saturation. 

Sexual fantasies in porn are just that, fantasies. 

Few men or women experience the kind of mind-blowing, spine-tingling, toe-curling, scream-inducing, sex that is depicted in porn — just like one drink, one hit, or one shot in the vein, is never enough to satisfy a drug addict. 

My last, brief, relationship gave me a glimmer of hope. I met her on Match.com and we had a mutual understanding from the start that we’d be monogamous but not serious. 

We took things day by day. 

The sex was unpressured, somewhat routine, yet still deeply romantic.

I was 56; she was 49.

We talked, walked, traveled, partied, sang, swam, paddle-boarded, played tennis, ate too many times at Bob Evans, and, yes, had quite a bit of sex. 

She wasn’t my Damsel in Distress.

I wasn’t her Knight in Shining Armor. 

We were just two adults — one who happened to have a penis, the other a vagina. 

Most of the time she was my buddy, my best friend, and my companion.

Did I perform like a porn star?

No. 

Did she?

No. 

Did I love every second we were together?

I sure did. 

The social media and peer pressure on young men to perform like a porn star can be paralyzing. 

To the extent I have any influence on young men, I say this: 

I swear there are plenty of women who will ultimately find it infinitely more valuable to talk, dance, cry, share your dreams with you, and walk on a white sandy beach while holding hands, than whether you can produce an erection like a porn star. 

Stop being so hard on yourself.