E242: Penis Performance Problems: What’s Really Going On (And What To Do About It)

Is there a connection between being circumcised and having a penis performance issue? Can masturbating too often lead to issues? Can ED be stress related or just a getting older thing? Can low testosterone lead to ED? Can long-term porn use affect or cause penis issues? Hello and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts Vanessa and Xander Marin. I'm a sex therapist with over 20 years of experience and I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step-by-step techniques for improving yours. Make sure you subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had. Today we're talking about dicks. We are. Dick problems. Big dick problems. Small dick problems. All kinds of dick problems. All kinds of dick problems. It's actually size really doesn't matter for what we're talking about today. When it comes to your problems. It doesn't matter for a lot of things. It matters far less than most people think but for today's topic it has literally zero bearing. We're actually not talking about size because we're talking today about penis performance issues. We turn to our trusty Instagram community and we asked people, actually I'm surprised that nobody mentioned anything size related because performance could be related to size. Okay, yes. But I think the thing is yes, you could be like, oh I'm struggling to get hard because I'm worried that my penis is too small or like I come too fast because. I don't feel, I can't feel as much when I'm with my partner or I feel too much because they're too big. Wait, wait, no, we're talking about the gut. Oh, you're saying like. We got questions from all the people. Yeah, true. We put a question box out on Instagram and said, you know, we're talking about penis performance issues. Whether you have a penis, you sleep with a penis, like let us know what are your challenges. And actually nobody mentioned size. I mean, I think that's proof that sizes does really doesn't matter as much as you think. But I mean. It doesn't matter as much as most men think it does. But it does matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does matter. But it's more of like on the extreme ends, it does matter on. But yeah, I mean, I was going to say, yes, in theory, like a guy might be like, oh, I'm so stressed out about the size of my penis or feel like it's not enough that that's causing me performance issues. But I was going to say, I think it's still not about penis size, because like if you were to somehow fix your penis size overnight, I don't think that will actually solve the problem. Which by the way is not possible. I know there's so many men right now being like, oh, what is the way? Sandra, tell us, how do we fix it overnight? You don't. You don't. You accept the situation that you are in and you do your best to work with what you have on. But yeah, no, I mean, because I think that it's that is the same type of insecurity or fear or whatever. I have so many people of like, oh, well, when I have the body that I want or when I am at this certain weight or when I have the muscles, then all of a sudden I'll be X, Y or Z. And nobody, I've never actually heard someone that be like, oh, yeah, I set this goal. It took me two years to get there. And the moment I got there, boom, I just started living the life I wanted to live. Everyone's like, you know, at that point, you've already, you've already done this sort of psychological damage of telling yourself that you're not good enough, something's wrong with you, that by the time you get there, it's still not good enough. So, yeah. So let's talk about how we how we fix penis, penis performance problems that are not related to size. Okay. So yeah, like I said, we put a question box up on Instagram. We asked for questions from all sorts of people and we got all sorts of questions. So we're going to dive into them today and show you how to actually work with penis performance issues. I think one of the main things that I'm sure we'll get into is that so many of us approach them in the exact wrong way and we're just making it worse and we've done this. Yeah, we've done this ourselves. So we're going to teach you how to actually work with penis performance issues because, spoiler alert, they're not the end of the world. They're not. Okay. So first of all, by far and away, the most common questions that we got were around, like, what causes this to happen in the first place? And I just found that to be interesting that so many, there's just such a lack of information or honest conversations about this that most people are just like, I don't even know how this what happened, what causes this. So we have a whole slew of different questions that we'll go through all at the same time. And you know, I just realized we never defined a lot of the acronyms for it. So, ED is erectile dysfunction that is difficulty getting an erection. Now, the interesting thing with a lot of these performance issues is that we don't have super strict definitions of them. So like, what is, like, is there a time limit? Like, you're allowed 60 seconds to get hard. And if you don't get hard within then you have erectile dysfunction. Is it one minute, you know, two minutes, five minutes, whatever. But so in general, what we tend to go on is just the that person's experience of their body, where they feel like, God, like, I don't understand why am I not getting hard. I'm super excited. I want to be intimate right now. We're doing the things that we usually do that would help get me hard, whether that's, you know, oral sex, you know, the hand, my hand, your hand, whatever it is. And it's the stuff is not working after some amount of time. That's E.D. P.E. is premature ejaculation. And again, so that means you're orgasming too quickly. But we don't have a definite, like, real strict definition here. Yeah, most people, it's like, well, if I see it, I know. If I experience it, I know. But it's also a fine line. Is it 30 seconds? Is it one minute? Is it two minutes? At what point does it go from premature to mature, successful? I don't know. And it really depends. Like a lot of men, I've had men tell me before, like, oh, I feel like I have an issue with P.E. I can only go 20 minutes. You know, you're like, what? I'll spend my time. So typically, like the most common timeline tends to be around a minute or less or two minutes or less. But again, there's not like a super strict standardized definition. And then there's also delayed orgasm, which is when it takes too long. Why does no one say D.O.? Too long. Yeah, nobody says D.O. Delayed orgasm or even like difficulty orgasming or inability to orgasm. So first one was, could long term porn use affect or cause penis issues? Before we get into that, it is so interesting that so many people are so focused on what's the cause? Why did this happen? I feel like that's just such a that's such a very like Western medicine type of way of looking at it. I feel like we it's like, we're like, oh, well, we have all this research and all this technology and all this stuff like what caused it? And then what do I need to do to like undo that cause? But it's like, yeah, the reality is is I mean, we'll talk about this, but it's not like for pretty much all of this stuff, it's not like, oh, yeah, well, this one thing happened and then boom, it caused the problem. It's like a compounding. Sometimes it is. Okay, sometimes it is. Well, but really, it's a it's like a compounding series of things like something happens, you feel a certain way about it, you stress out about it, and then something else happens and you're in your head and it's like, it's like, we create the prison that we are in most of the time. I don't know if I agree with you on that one. To be honest, I mean, I think that it's a natural human tendency to want to understand why things happened. And as we'll get into it, performance issues can be caused by a wide array of things. And you're going to take really different approaches based on if something is like purely medical or physical versus purely psychological. So I think it I think it makes sense to start with the why does this happen? Yeah, yeah, true. I'm not saying that we shouldn't ask that question. It's not always going to be 100 percent clear. Yeah, yeah, we're not always going to like solve the puzzle. But I think it is worth asking like what might what might be going on here. Yeah, what might be contributing to the problem? I think that's maybe a better question because I think why? Why God, why does my penis not work? Yeah, because I think that when we get so hyper focused on, yeah, what is the cause when, you know, if we had a crystal ball and we go, oh, well, the cause is psychological. And like, these things happened and that created, you know, the psychological thing going on. We're not going to be that pleased with that answer. Like when we say what is the cause, I feel like most people are looking for like, give me the point to the literal thing that happened versus like, oh, yeah, like it's a psychological thing that doesn't feel like that. But again, I have had cases that clients that I've worked with where there has been one specific thing like the one of the examples that always comes to mind for me is a male client who was having an affair and he only had performance issues like literally as soon as the affair started, there was some part of him that was really, you know, torn up about the fact that he was having an affair. He was cheating on his partner. And even though it sounded really fun and sexy, and obviously he was super tempted, like his body was saying, nobody we're not going to do this. Yeah. So sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it is that specific, but not always. Yeah. Okay, let's move on. Okay, so let's get into the first question. Can long term porn use affect or cause penis issues? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. I know there's so many men out there being like, say no, say no, say no. No, unfortunately, well, okay, let me back up first and say that we think porn is a really nuanced and tricky issue to talk about. I think that the the basic reality of porn like or the the essential, yeah, the essence of porn, like there's nothing wrong with being turned on by watching people have sex. Yeah, we've had some form of that. Yeah, most society movies. Oh, I'm going even further back like most societies over time, there's been some form of like, of, of, of, yeah, of like people watching sex to feel an erotic charge, right? Or like talking about it, displaying it in some way, whether you know, sort of like in the written form, the drawn form or the visual form, obviously before TV, the only visual form was like literally watching. Yeah. So yeah, so as a sex therapist, you know, my perspective is there's nothing wrong with porn in and of itself. That being said, there are a lot of things wrong with how porn gets made these days. Like it's very difficult to talk about porn without acknowledging it's a horrible industry, you know, where people are taken advantage of, treated unfairly, unsafely, that a lot of the porn that gets made is gross, like showing violence and degradation against women, putting, you know, ideas in our heads of normalizing things that are very extreme, you know, just, yeah, not treating each other in very kind ways. I'm not talking about like kink or anything like that. I'm talking about, like, consensual kink. I'm talking instead about like, really showing unconsensual violence and degradation against women. But anyways. And then on top of that, that there seems to constantly still be issues, even in the sort of ethical porn circles or studios or whatever of hearing issues where things that, you know, claim to be ethically produced are not actually. Yeah. I mean, okay, we can't we can't go into a whole wide deep, you know, deep dive with porn. But yes, there are a lot of problems with the industry. And there are a lot of problems with the ways people consume porn. They're for sure are a lot of people watching way too much porn for way too long, losing contact with their own body because they're so focused on watching the porn instead, turning to porn as emotional soothing instead of just as this like fun addition to your sex life. So there are a lot of issues with how people use it as well. So to get back to the question, yes, porn usage can absolutely cause performance issues. So the most common things that I hear as a sex therapist are difficulty getting an erection and difficulty reaching orgasm and actually even difficulty like orgasming too quickly. It's kind of the whole trifecta of things. So what happens when you have an unhealthy relationship with porn is that like I said a minute ago, you're so focused on watching the porn itself that you're not paying attention to what's going on in your body. So that can lead to orgasm control issues. Like in order to have control over your orgasm, you have to be paying attention to, Hey, I'm getting really close. I might need to cool off a little bit. And if you're so focused on the porn, you're missing those signals, you'd never develop that skill of understanding, you know, when your body is getting close or on the flip side, right? Like you could be that you are not able to focus on your own experience and like, Oh, this feels good. Let me focus on that sensation. Instead, you're so used to like, Oh, I need to see this certain thing happen in order for me to feel good that when you are not watching it, you're having partnered sex, you're not able to tune into your own experience and be like, Oh, I'm here with this person. This is fun. This is nice. I'm feeling good. And so that could lead to delayed ejaculation, right? Like you're basically just like, Okay, I'm going, but like, I'm like looking for something that I can't actually see. Yeah. And it can lead to problems getting erect or having an orgasm because you when you're with a partner, you don't have that stimulation around and your body is so primed and used to having that stimulation that it makes it harder to experience, you know, to have your normal experience without it. So yeah, we'll move on because we could literally do a whole episode on just this topic. But unfortunately, yes, unhealthy relationships with porn, unhealthy consumption with porn can lead to a lot of performance issues. And I would even go so far as to say that it's one of the top three causes of performance issues. Yeah, highly likely. Going hand in hand with that, somebody else asked, can masturbating too often lead to issues? So, you know, porn and masturbation hand in hand. Oh, hand in hand. They typically go together. But yes, the same, the same way like masturbation can also lead to issues. What we see most commonly is something that is called the death grip with masturbation. And that's where men and penis owners end up using a very firm grip during masturbation. They're holding on really tight and tighter than a vulva can ever possibly be. Yeah. And going very quickly as well. And so it when you masturbate that way, it can prime your body to need that level of stimulation. And then when you don't get that level of stimulation, you might find it harder to get an erection or to have an orgasm. And by the way, the same thing is true for any masturbation techniques for people of all genders. Like if you're only ever doing one specific thing, whether that's a technique you're using, always watching porn in a certain body position, using a certain fantasy, using a toy, like any of those things you can prime your body to need that kind of stimulation. And it makes it harder to get there without it. Yeah, we hear about that all the time from women who are struggling to orgasm with a partner and say, I have no problem orgasming on my own. In fact, I use this toy, I use this very specific setting, it happens very quickly. I know exactly what to do. And it's really quick. What's the problem? It's the literally the exact same thing as death grip where it's like, you know, you've trained your body to respond to a very specific type of stimulation that cannot be replicated during partner sex. And so it's like, yeah, we have to back ourselves out of that kind of dig ourselves out of that hole and and learn how to experience other types of sensation. But also with masturbation, yes, there's absolutely death grip. I mean, in theory, if someone is just is not using a death grip, just masturbating in a totally fine, healthy, acceptable way. But they are masturbating so often that that they're constantly putting themselves into the refractory period, which is, you know, after a man orgasms, there's some amount of time where, you know, he has, you know, hormones and stuff pumping through his body that basically make it so he can't get hard again. Like if you are doing it so often that you're basically like, you know, always in refractory period, then yeah, absolutely, that would create performance problems. That would create desire problem would be, you know, you basically seemingly not really ever want sex or be able to get hard. And so, you know, that might be approaching the point of like compulsive masturbation, which would be problematic in its own way, but not because of the way that you're doing it. It would be the amount that you're doing it. Okay, the next question was, can ED be stress related or just a getting older thing? We actually had a number of women asking this question. And a lot of the other ways that it was phrased were very doubtful. A lot of women were like, my husband tells me it's stress, but like, it can't be that, can it? He must be lying. Like they were really doubting that. And so I wanted to address this like, ED absolutely is stress related in so many cases. Any performance issues are stress related. Yes, it can also be a getting older thing. But like, I think we have this tendency to think of men as just sexual machines, like they just want it wherever, whenever they should be able to perform, whenever, whatever, like we even hear this in questions. It made me think about a lot of women who are like, well, when he's going down on me, he's not hard, that must mean he hates it. Yeah, or he was started hard and he got soft after five minutes of going down on me and like, show me a man that stays hard for five minutes with zero stimulation on his penis and I'll give him a high five. Who's not 14 years old. But yeah, I think there's this way we really do men a disservice where we think that their penises are just supposed to be perfectly functioning, regardless of what's going on in their lives. And I think it's really ironic coming from us women, because so many of us have experienced ways that our bodies don't do what our brains want them to do. Oh yeah. We have a very intimate experience with how frustrating and scary and confusing that is. And yet we put this pressure on our partners like, what do you mean you're stressed? You should be able to get hard. You know what? This is this is the exact opposite of guys being like, what do you mean? Mental load. You still have a bunch of things on your to-do list. What do you mean you can't get you can't have sex with me right now? What what do you mean you're thinking about doing the laundry while we're trying to have like, what do you mean you can't just turn that off? I think this is really similar. Exactly the same. I think I don't even think it's that hot. Like, I think a lot of men can't understand how you how women are not able to kind of turn off the ticker tape in their head temporarily for sex because most men have the experience of being like, okay, well, once we get going, I'm not thinking about anything else. It's meditative in a way. And then women, on the other hand, are like, oh, it can't possibly be stress. Like, you know, he's just it's just a horny man, horny guy, right? Like, he should just be able to drop everything. So yeah, interesting, interesting. I think it's a way that we're each doing each other a disservice. So stress has huge impacts on our sex life. I mean, we often say stress is the number one libido killer, you know, and in that way, it can affect your erections as well. Like, if you're not feeling desire for sex, you're probably going to have a hard time getting hard, right? So I encourage people to think of libido as a luxury for the body. Like, our bodies are very fine tuned figuring out what do I need to pay attention to? What do I need to direct energy and resources to what needs to function? And so think back to our caveman ancestors, right? So imagine that there's a caveman out on the plains, and they see a wooly mammoth, and the wooly mammoth starts charging towards them, and they have to run away from the wooly mammoth. But I'm horny, I need to have sex with this person next to me before we run away. No, it doesn't look like that. Your body is in stress. And it goes into let's put all the energy and resources into running quickly into getting away from the wooly mammoth. The caveman is not going to have an erection at the same time that he's running away from the wooly mammoth. Like, if anything, having an erection flopping around between your legs is going to slow you down, right? So in our modern days and times, obviously, we're not running away from wooly mammoths, but stress feels the same way to our body. Stress puts us into that like fight or flight experience of, you know, what do I need to do to get through this? So when you are stressed, your body is trying to figure out what is the bare minimum I need to do to like get through this moment to get out on the other side. It is not going to direct any energy or attention into getting you wet, getting you an erection. It's just not going to happen. I think one of the really interesting things about stress that we were like, we just don't give stress enough like chronic stress, enough credit. We've totally normalized it. Like, that's just what life is. Well, so here's the interesting thing, though. The way that we have evolved as humans, because remember, evolution takes place on a very slow timescale, right? Like it we don't evolve over the course of like three generations, it takes, you know, hundreds of generations for, you know, small changes to kind of like filter into the population, right? So we have evolved are the way that our bodies have evolved. They're meant to handle high but short periods of stress. And then like relaxation or, you know, no stress, right? Like if you kind of think about that lifestyle, it's like you're running from the woe mammoth, short, intense burst, and then, okay, danger is gone. That you're not really meant to be like, we are not, our bodies are not meant to be living with long term chronic levels of stress. And it's really only more recently in the, you know, kind of modern day and age that, you know, we don't really ever have those extreme like, oh my God, for the next 15 minutes, I am on full, I'm operating at 200%. I'm on full alert. And then for the next five days, easy breezy. Yeah. Right. That is not what our lives look like. We're pretty much never in those 15 minutes of fury stress situations. It's like, I'm operating at, you know, okay, I'm 20% stressed out. But for 24 hours a day or, you know, whatever, 18 hours a day that I'm awake, like I'm thinking about bills, I'm thinking about work, I'm thinking about my kids, I'm thinking about this and that. And what if this happens? And what if that happens? And so we have not fully evolved yet, I don't believe to be able to handle that level of stress. And so a lot of us go, Oh, well, it's not as bad as it used to be, right? Like we used, it used to be that like, I might die any given day because of, you know, whatever, you know, whatever predators are out there or whatever other like rival human tribe comes after us or whatever it is. Like, Oh, yeah, well, we don't have it that bad. But the reality is in terms of how our bodies have have to amend our men to handle stress, like, no, in a way, we do have it worse. And so I think that we underestimate that a lot. And yeah, I mean, when, you know, I know we work, we both work with a like functional medicine type of doctor. And like when you are getting into like actual like your blood work really detailed blood work, and all this stuff and trying to optimize your body, the one of the very first questions any doctor in that field will ask you is how are your how are your stress levels? And if you're like, Yeah, I'm super duper stressed, but I still want to optimize everything, they go, Sorry, it's not maybe this approach isn't for you. Like, you can see you have to be able to address that if you want to kind of work on all the luxuries, so to speak. Yeah, absolutely. So bottom line, performance issues can absolutely be stress related. It's I'd put that in the top three as well, that they're stress related. And I think that top three causes of you know, performance issues overall, and I think we need to give men more credit, all of us need to give more credit to how big of an impact stress can have on us. It doesn't matter, like our brains can be saying, Oh, I want to let go of this like horrible stressful day that I have, and I want to connect with my partner and I want to be intimate with them. And our bodies just aren't ready yet. I know that that was, you know, the time that I experienced the majority of the performance issues that I have experienced in my life was was all really 100% stress related on, you know, maybe there was some small contribution of hormone levels. Who knows, I didn't have them tested then. But they, you know, it was during a time where I was super, super stressed, and I was holding all of that in. Because I think here's the thing, look, I like, you know, I know I just gave a big spiel on stress. And I hope what you I hope you're not taking away from that. I'm just saying, Oh, you have to just cut all stress out of your life. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I think that we, especially men, when it comes to stress that whether it's financial familial job, career related, whatever, we think, Okay, well, I'm supposed to be able to handle this, and I'm not supposed to tell anybody about it. I'm supposed to just figure it out on my own. I'm supposed to not burden my partner with it. And I think that the first thing that we can do to fight that stress, yeah, I can't change the external situation. Okay, there's some uncertainty at my work. Okay, maybe we're in a tough spot financially, I can't change that overnight. Like I can't go boom, like, let's fix that. But what I can do is I can start saying, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm feeling challenged with all the stuff that's going on. I'm not, you know, I'm not telling you this because I'm looking for a solution. I'm just trying to vent. This is tough. This is tough. And I'm trying my best. And it's like, I think really just taking that first step of being able to let somebody, whether it's your partner, whether it's a friend, whether it's a mentor, whether it's, you know, someone more in the spiritual or religious space, whatever, being able to just say what is going on for you is the first thing. Yeah, you can't change the external situation, but at least we can kind of like start to open up a like a release valve a little bit on that stress. It's not it's not an overnight thing. Like we just got to rid ourselves of whatever is challenging in our lives, but we have to be able to start acknowledging what's happening. Now let's acknowledge that I am feeling stressed out because there's like a helicopter flying over our house that just won't go away. We tried taking a little break to see if the noise would go away. So apologies if you're hearing it probably doesn't show up in the audio, but there might be a little thunk of thunk in the background. Okay, I'll say one other thing about stress. Obviously, that could be an entire podcast episode in and of itself. Let us know if you want us to do one. But one thing that really helps that there's some interesting newer research on is about completing the stress cycle. So if you look back at actually if you look at animals, when animals are in situations like, you know, predators being prey is being chased by a predator and they escape it, you will see them physically shake off. Dogs do this too. If they had a weird interaction with another dog or a weird interaction with you, like they'll shake their whole body out. And that is an animal completing the stress cycle. And I'm guessing humans probably did this back in the day. Probably. Or to imagine you're you're hunting with a group of people and then all of a sudden you're getting chased by the woolly mammoth you're in your you're wearing you're like animal skin loincloth. Or whatever. And like, you know, you out you get you know, whatever you get away you escape. And then you're just like jumping around dancing with your with your people, right? Like you are literally completing the cycle there. So that yeah, that is our bodies recognizing, okay, I'm no longer in the stress mode anymore. I'm shaking the stress out of my body. It actually works. It helps us like close the loop on that. So that's something that you can try. Yeah, we do this at home. After we've had a weird interaction with each other or a fight or conflict or something like sometimes we don't want to do it. I almost always do not want to do it. I'm like, don't make me do that shaky thing. I don't want to do it. Because it's gonna make you smaller work. But it totally works to just like, I mean, and you just shake just you look like a crazy person. You look stupid. But do a little shaky shaky. And that helps release some of the stress from your body. I like this podcast sponsor so much. 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I also just saw that they added a bunch of new colors. So I would highly recommend checking that out. I get asked about that every single time I wear that dress. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash pillow for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to Q I N C E dot com slash pillow for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash pillow. Our next one is Kenlo Testosterone lead to ED. Hubby has low T and refuses to fix it. So yet again, the answer here is yes. Testosterone is really important to when it comes to sexual functioning. To function and general function for men. Yeah. I mean, and for women, it's just men have much higher levels. So absolutely. If he has low testosterone, he's probably having low sex drive as well, difficulty getting hard, all that can happen. So we're actually thinking about doing an episode about Xander's testosterone journey. We have to be really clear. We're not medical doctors. We're not giving medical advice. Like we cannot you know, dispense medical advice whatsoever. But Xander start because of this functional medicine doctor that he mentioned that we work with. Fortunately, you weren't having sexual side effects from it, but you did. Yeah, I'll say in a second. You finish all. Anyway, let us know if you're interested in us doing that episode. You can leave us a comment on Spotify where you can DM us on Instagram, we're at Vanessa and Xander with an X and let us know are you interested in that? Yes, I'm not going to tell you about my journey just yet today. But how it has been explained to me and personally the way that I've experienced it, you know, if you're a guy and you get your testosterone levels checked, you will see most labs that do the analysis will show you like what the acceptable or what the good range is. And the way it has been explained to me, the low end of the good range is for people that are reasonably fit or reasonably active, that minimum level is far too low to really be functional or positive for you if you are trying to have a reasonably active or reasonably healthy life. However, at that low end, the reason why it's at that low end of the range is there as sort of like, okay, is that for the most part, you're not going to have any serious adversarial side effects at that level. Like your levels would have to drop far below that before you completely lose all desire before you completely lose all ability to to get hard or to stay hard. And the way it was explained to me by the doctor is like, it's like, yeah, the sexual function is one of the very last things to go with low testosterone, you're going to experience a lot of other impacts like like lethargy, you know, low energy, maybe headacheiness, or like, you know, all kinds of other things that more have to do with like your activity level or how you feel. But like, it's, but yeah, like the sex is going to be one of the last things to go because it's one of the kind of biological imperatives for your body. That being said, you're not going to be thinking about it all the time, you're not going to be wanting it all the time. But if someone starts stimulating you, like you're probably going to get hard, and you're probably going to be able to function, that may not be the way that you want to function, though you probably can't get as hard as you would with higher testosterone levels, you're definitely not going to be thinking about sex as much, you're definitely not going to be desiring it as much. And so, yeah, I never experienced any adverse sexual side effects of it. But I did notice once I got my levels to a to a much healthier place, it was like, Oh, yeah, okay, like, my erections are much harder. I think about sex a lot more. I I I desired a lot more rather than kind of like desiring the the closeness that sex brings, like I actually desire, oh, yeah, I really want that. So it's like, just a very different experience level with my sexuality, which has been great. I love it. I'm happy with that. And so, yeah, I do feel for people in relationships where one partner has low levels, knows that and doesn't really want to seek assistance, because there is a lot of assistance out there that is medically sound, that is not very difficult to do. And the quality of life difference that's available to you is so extreme. So just huge vote for people to consider TRT, if their levels are lower, even if they're just towards the bottom end of the range, talk to a doctor about it. Yeah, I mean, I think that I hope people want to hear that episode, because I do think that if we like hearing a guy talk about it, we'll take away some of the maybe shame or embarrassment or just general like discomfort around it. I try to tell as many of my guy friends as possible. I know you're like a test off of Angelus. I'm like, you know what, like, because yeah, some people are always like, Oh, I can't believe you told me that. And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, like, I'm not I'm not ashamed about that. Because it's like, especially, you know, I'm I'm 40. You know, I think between 40 and 50 is a time when a lot of men start to see declining levels. And a lot of men wait too long. And then to get on TRT and then realize I just wasted 10 years of my life, I could have done this 10 years ago. And I would have been like, you know, see how the ton of energy I feel like I'm 20 again, energy wise on and I'm like, yeah, why would you not want that? So I don't know. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it, guys. It's it's pretty straightforward. You're going to have to get more blood tests than you used to. But it's totally worth it. I don't know. It's like, you know, I have low vitamin D levels, which I'm just realizing sounds like such a low D. Is that another problem? Yeah, well, it got fixed once you got on your T. I started getting more D. Just kidding. No, but I, you know, I have low vitamin D levels. So I take a vitamin D supplement. I would never feel embarrassed or ashamed to tell somebody that, oh my god, my body's not producing enough vitamin D. I have low vitamin D levels, too. I know. So I think we need to look at it in the same way. You know, if our bodies just aren't producing what the optimal level is, we take supplements for it or, you know, we do other stuff for it. So what's the issue? Anyways, well, we can get into that more if you want us to make the episode. Okay, here's our final question about potential causes. Is there a connection between being circumcised and having a penis performance issue? And this is, I think the only one on our list for the answer is no. There are not any connections between being circumcised and performance issues. There potentially are connections in just how much sensation one is able to feel, because the reality is when you are circumcised, and I know this from experience, because I am circumcised, is that, yeah, basically the foreskin, or sorry, not the foreskin, the head of the penis is less sensitive because it is not covered all the time. If you are uncircumcised, the head of your penis is basically covered with foreskin until you get hard. And so it has a lot more sensation because it hasn't been desensitized by like bouncing around in your pants, basically. And if you are circumcised, then, yeah, like the reality is I probably have some percentage less sensation than an equivalent guy that hadn't been circumcised as a baby. Yeah, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you, you know, somebody who is intact, which is the language that we prefer to use. Someone who is intact would orgasm quicker because they are more sensitive. No, it's just you are feeling more sensation. And that's actually why, as a sex therapist, why I am a proponent of leaving men intact. There isn't really any convincing medical research. And again, I am not a doctor. Everybody has got to talk to their own doctors, make their own, you know, personal decisions. But the research that I have done into this, there really isn't like super clear medical research showing like you will have all these health benefits. Or, you know, if you do it or health challenges, if you leave, you know, leave boys intact, there just really isn't any benefit. And you're taking away extremely sensitive skin, like some of the most, you know, sensitive, innervated skin on our bodies. It just doesn't make any sense to me to do it. So that is a big old thorny complicated issue. That's actually, yeah, cute. I'm going to get some comments on this episode. I refuse to talk about it on Instagram because it just like explodes. People feel so strongly on one side or the other. And again, like, I don't have a dog in this fight. If we were to have kids, I would choose not to circumcise them. I would leave them intact, but everybody's got to make their own decision. So that's a little pillow talk special. You get to hear about between you and me. We'll talk about circumcision on the podcast, but we'll not talk about it on Instagram. Okay, next question. How do I bring it up to my partner that I think they may have a penis performance issue, but they don't seem to recognize it? Xander, how likely is it that a man would not know that he has an issue? I'm curious on your take on this. Highly unlikely. He knows. I think it's for most men, it's a head in the sand issue. Like, if you have your head buried in the sand, you know that there's sand all around your face. You just don't want to look up and see what is going on around you. So I think that, okay, if you are having ED, if you are struggling to get hard, 100%, you know what's going on. If you are having, I think that there is the possibility that maybe there's not some awareness. If you are having less extreme versions of premature ejaculation or delayed orgasm, let's say that it's sort of, you know, if you're coming in like 30 seconds every single time, I think you know that you have, that something is happening. You know that this is not ideal. Likely. If maybe say that it's like you're coming in two minutes every single time, you've never been able to go longer than that, then maybe I could see an argument where you're maybe like, okay, well, this is just way, you know, this is how it's always been. My partners never said anything. They must be good with it. I think so many of us live that life. Well, yeah, no, we've been together for 10 years and no one's ever said anything. She must be stoked. Or even like maybe past partners, maybe they were just like, yeah, you know, I can't orgasm during sex. Yeah, great. Do your thing, you know, yeah, you could. Yeah, I could see you having that idea or it's like a partial head in the sand where you're like, oh, maybe use a problem, but no, no, it's probably cool. Let's just not talk. It's probably fine. Let's just not talk about it. I could see like with the one exception would be with delayed orgasm. I think so many, this is a really interesting topic. So many men think that they're supposed to last all night long, a really long time. And so many women don't want intercourse. So this is a huge misunderstanding in male, female couples. And I think it's a conversation that every male, female couple needs to have of, hey, what's your ideal length of intercourse? I think you'll find that you're on really different pages and it's important to get on the same page. So if you're a guy thinking, yeah, you know, I'm going 30 minutes, that's normal, that's expected, that's what I'm supposed to be. And the woman's like, oh my God, you're rubbing me freaking raw, dude, like let's wrap it up. That could be a situation where he doesn't realize what's going on. Okay, so let's go through each of these, like what should a partner do? And I actually don't know the gender of the partner here, but what should somebody do if they're, okay, so let's start with erectile dysfunction. Okay, for ED, I think this is probably the most sensitive one, I think, on because I think that that's an interesting side question. What do you think men feel more embarrassed about not being able to get hard or coming too fast? I don't know. It's hard for me. You feel personally the most embarrassed. It's hard for me to say honestly, because my experience with performance issues has been all three kind of at the same time, which I think is also a common experience where it's like you experience, you experience one, let's say, like I'm just going to throw out a hypothetical example, or it's like, okay, we're having sex. It's great. We have sex consistently, awesome. Something happens and I struggle to get hard. And I'm really embarrassed and oh my god, that was that so embarrassing. I feel so emasculated, right? Because I think this is what I was about to say. I think that men, we place so much value on the ability to get hard. That is how we show our masculinity in so many ways. It's a lot of pressure on a little penis. It is. It is a little guy. But, okay, so that happens and you have that experience and you don't have any history of being able to talk about stuff like this with your partner. So it's a super awkward experience. She's feeling like not validated. Yeah, because unfortunately, we as women do this. We're like, we take how quickly and how hard he gets as a sign of how sexy and attractive we are, which is fucked up. So I know you're feeling a certain way about it and whether or not you've come out and said it or you're just acting it out. Is everything okay? Yeah. And then I'm coming up with some random bullshit excuse, oh, I'm just stressed. I'm just all I was thinking about whatever. No, you don't say I'm just stressed. Now all these women are going to be like, I knew the stress thing was a lie. You have to come up with a different excuse. No, no, but I think the thing is, is that I'm trying to give the example of like something happens out in nowhere and we just go into, oh my God, I need to say something so that she doesn't think it's about her. Okay. Because it's, I know it's not about her, but I know that she won't, if I just say it's not about you, I know 0% chance she believes me. And so it's like, I haven't had the time to reflect on what is truly going on for me. Something happens one time. It's not worth being like, oh my God, I have to identify the one cause. It's if it becomes a pattern, then it's like, all right, now it's time to really reflect. I think the problem though is often something will randomly happen and we let it get under our skin. We let it get in our head. And this is the example I'm trying to give. Okay. So I can't get hard one time. It's super awkward. I know that you're feeling a certain way about it. I'm feeling a certain way about it, but I can't really tell you because I'm because you think it's about you and blah, blah, blah. It's this whole fiasco. Then I'm like, all right, well, I'll try again tomorrow. Will will show her everything is fine. Right. So then we start, I won't even say start having sex. We start making out. We see, you know, I start initiating whatever. And I'm thinking, all right, get hard, motherfucker, get hard, get hard, let's do this. And I'm probably coming in a little hot, maybe kind of aggressive. Maybe I'm like, oh yeah, go down. You know, I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to be doubly sure that I get hard. And I'm so focused on we are not having this problem again, that I overshoot, we start having sex and I'm like, oh, I just came. Oh my God. Right. And so then that happens. And you're like, oh my God, I'm right back to being embarrassed again. And so then you're like, all right, no worries, we'll try again tomorrow or the next day. And then you're like, oh my God, can't do that. Gotta last, gotta last, gotta last. And all of a sudden, you're so focused on God, a last, all of a sudden you can't come. And for me, it was like, I got into that cycle and I felt like we couldn't talk about it. I didn't have anyone else. Yeah, this is early in our relationship. It's super early in our relationship, like first couple years, probably in the first year or two, I don't know. And it's just, you're just ping-ponging around between all of those things. And it's like, I just can't, and it wasn't like every single time, sometimes it would be okay. But then it's like, let's just say you're in the middle of sex and all of a sudden you have this intrusive thought, hey, remember that time you couldn't come? Mm-hmm. And you're like, oh God, is that happening? Wait. And so then you're like trying to be like, oh, can I get myself to that feeling where I'm like, oh yeah, if I kept going like this, I get there. And then it's like, you're just like, then you're in your head and you're doing all kinds of stupid stuff and you're not in the experience. I want you to answer that. What individual event feels more embarrassing for you, not being able to get hard or coming too quickly? Not being able to get hard. Coming too quickly is I can say, and I don't mean I can say, like I can make the excuse, I can legitimately say, girl, you were so fucking good, like I could not control myself. And I think there's, there's, that's a powerful thing to be able to say and really mean it. Because that does happen occasionally. I'm like, I could not contain myself. Sorry, not sorry. I think though, when guys are like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. That's when you start, you start internalizing that shame. I'm a bad boy. Like I'm a bad boy, not in a sexy way. Like, oh God, I shouldn't have done that. But like fucking own it. That's what I say. Yeah. No, there have been like a few, it doesn't happen very often, but there have been a few rare times over the years more recently where that's happened. And you said that to me and I'm like, sorry. That's your problem. Not mine. You're too good. As long as you are, this, we're going on a little tangent here, but as long as you are, like if that happens, you'll be like, let me take care of you now. That's the key. You can just be like, sorry, we're done. Yeah, I'm out. Yeah. No, no, no, sorry. So yes. You gotta lose back around. You'll be like, oh man, that was so good. You were so good. I just absolutely couldn't control myself. Like I'm a lost cause. Let's take care of you. Let me show you. Yeah. Let me help you out. Let's go back to the question. So let's start with if your guy is not getting hard, how do we bring it up with him? I will say like one thing that I noticed with you early in those early days is like once it started happening, I could tell that you were putting and we were able to like talk about it eventually and I learned more about how, you know, you were putting so much pressure on yourself to get hard immediately. Like it was like if it wasn't right away, you were starting to get stressed. And from my perspective, like I didn't have that expectation. I was like, I like to ease our way into it. I like playing with each other's bodies. Like I'm not trying to go from clothes to your penises inside of me in 30 seconds flat. Right. So like this was not a problem for me. So what I learned was helpful for you is I would tell you like, you know, I'd focus on you. I'd use my hands or my mouth and I'd say like, just relax and let me take care of you. And eventually like as we started talking about it more openly, you started realizing you're like, yeah, I'm putting all this pressure on myself that it has to happen immediately. And I was just able to say to you, like, I'm happy to focus on you. Like take a little time. And it would take it would, it cracks me up because it would take like two minutes. You know, we're not talking about like 20 minutes of me like working real hard to get that thing up. But it, you know, you just needed that permission. So I think making especially at the very beginning, if you guys haven't talked about it openly yet, like make it sexy and just say like, let me take care of you. Why don't you just lay back and relax and let me take care of you. You also helped reframe for me or not reframe, but just show me that my perception of time when I'm worried about how quickly or not I'm getting hard is so worked compared to yours. Because like she would be focusing on me. And then, you know, and then I feel like, oh my god, this is just not happen. It's just been forever. It's not happening. Maybe it's time to call it. I'd say something. She'd be like, she'd be like, it's been two minutes. Like we like, we were just getting started. And it was just getting loose. Yeah. Once I once I realized, oh, I thought it was like 10. I thought it had been 10 minutes. Like, oh, okay, can I just relax? And seriously, it's the moment you start to be like, yeah, like I how awesome is this? My partner is just 100% focused on me. I can just lay back and focus on this sensation. She's happy to do this. She enjoys doing this. I get to like, I deserve to enjoy this. Boom, hard in a second. Yeah, that's actually another thing that I would recommend too, is if your partner is struggling with getting hard, spend more time focusing on him. You know, we talked about this earlier that a lot of women and men have this expectation that it should just like, oh, we're starting to take our clothes off, you should instantly be hard. But especially as you get older, penises don't get hard without a little love. So don't have the expectation that like, just from making out or him going down on you, or, you know, anything like that, like he should be hard, focus on his body, like use your hands, use your mouth, you can use toys if you want to, but like, give him more stimulation. And tell him and show him that you truly enjoy that. Yes, it can't be like, that is a huge, yeah, that is, that is such a huge part of it. Because yeah, so yes, sometimes, you know, Vanessa would say, Hey, let me focus on you. And that's great. And I also eventually realize that another thing that was happening is in moments where she wasn't offering to do that. If I noticed, say, maybe I like lost my erection in the middle of sex, occasionally, or something like that, that would be like, Oh, God, now I have to like, ask her for help. She probably doesn't want to do it because she's not offering it. We were already in the middle of intercourse, like, this is going to be such a bummer for her. And I realized I didn't feel like I had permission to just ask for what I thought I needed in that moment. Because it's like, Oh, she doesn't want to do it because she's not offering. And once I raise that concern, she's like, Hey, I fucking I love going down on you. I love touching you. Like, yeah, I don't have any problem spending a couple minutes doing that, whether it's at the beginning or whether it's in the middle. And I guess I was really in my head being like, Oh, well, it has to be perfectly reciprocal. And like, I didn't really spend any time on her. And then we started having sex. So I don't deserve to ask for anything else. Or, you know, so I really got in my head about that. So I was able to say, lay all out, Hey, here's what I've been worrying about. And she's like, No, like I want to make sure that you have what you need in order for us to have this experience together. So that was so helpful. We're always like, Oh, she likes doing this. And I don't need to be like, it isn't a tit for tat, like, okay, I give her five minutes and that buys me five minutes. Now that's no, to be clear, that's not saying men, you deserve like all the blow jobs you want without needing to give anything in return. There needs to be some equity or some fairness, but it doesn't have to be a 50 50 thing. Yeah. Um, that's for you to discuss with your partner. Now I do want to say, or, you know, what do you think if because we just said it's so important that you show your partner and you tell your partner that you enjoy it. So what if what if you don't really enjoy it? Oh, then I think you need to do because I think that that is happening in a lot of you need to do some reframing in your head that like, yeah, that are, you know, sex is us having a shared experience of intimacy and caring about each other's experience. Of course, so many of us, you know, we grow up seeing all these stupid sex scenes on TV and movies and porn and it makes it look like sex is so perfect and easy and effortless. And it's just supposed to happen and we're not supposed to talk about it, but that's just not the reality of how bodies work. And again, especially as we start to get older. So I think the real intimacy in sex is having that care for each other and being willing to work through the trickier things. So if you're and I'll be fair, like I'll be honest, like there have been times where I, you know, something wasn't working for you and I took it super personally, especially, you know, in those early days in my, you know, I was 23 when I met you those early days where I'm like, Oh my God, I'm ugly. I don't like my body. And you know, I was dealing with my own insecurities. Oh, I shouldn't have to do this because of all the because of me because of all this. So there definitely were times where I felt like frustrated that I had to focus on you. But I matured and grew up and realized like, no, it's not a half to like this is just a part of sex. And I also was able to tap into compassion of realizing like you were hating those moments, like you were tortured, you were beating yourself up. And I was able to realize like, Hey, I can relate to this. I've had moments of my own of like, I want my body to do this thing and my body won't do the thing. And so recognizing like you're not doing it on purpose, you're in way more, you know, psychological and emotional pain than I am, like that just helped me realize like, Oh, okay, like I can, I can help you out. So. Yeah. So shifting out of that, like that. It's something I have to do like this is just part of the, this is just part of sex. Or yeah, so, so it's like, it could be unrealistic expectations of what male bodies are supposed to do. Because if you have that expectation, Oh, well, it's just supposed to boing, be hard. Or like it's supposed to happen at, you know, whenever you want it to like hit a button and boom, if that's your expectation, then of course it's gonna feel like, wait, well, I shouldn't need to do anything else. Right. So it's like, yeah, can we reframe that expectation? If it feels like, if it feels like it's something where, Oh, well, this is supposed to be how I feel good about myself seeing how hard you get is the only way that I can feel sexually validated, then that's probably something to work on. Because then of course, if that's coming up for you, then you're like, Oh, well, I shouldn't have to do this for you. Like then it's then I'm not getting the thing that I need out of this. So it's like, okay, maybe there's some ways to find some validation in other ways. Or it's just, you're truly not enjoying it because you don't have very good technique or you don't know, you don't feel super confident in your technique, then absolutely get our foreplay guides, work on your technique. These are solvable problems. We have so many women and men who've gone through our foreplay guides being like, I thought I wasn't into giving oral or manual sacks or whatever, until I realized, Oh, there's like all these different techniques and there's some ways to really enjoy myself while you enjoy yourself. Okay, we'll put the link for those foreplay guides in our show notes, but we have to stop here when we're like in the middle of this question. We have to stop prematurely. We have to stop prematurely. We got to it. We got too excited. We got to it. Just a handful of the question. We have so many more questions in front of us, but like time flew and I don't know what happens. This is a good episode, so we're definitely going to have to do part two because I think the people are going to want it. Do you want part two of this? Do you want Xander to stop your own journey? Do you want us to talk more about stress? Let us know all the things. Was this a good tease for you? But we got to stop. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Pillow Talks. Join us again next week. We release new episodes every Thursday.