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This is the Biggest Lie We All Believe about Men and Sex

October 10, 20220 comments♥ 0
00:00 Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Bites, where I tackle your most asked questions and requested topics. These episodes are designed to be fun, quick, and to the point. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. So we always hear about women having a headache and not interested in sex, but very few people are talking about how many men struggle with low desire. In fact, the latest statistics,
00:40 and by the way, for obvious reasons, a lot of men, because they're supposed to always want it and always be game, are kind of ashamed of having low desire, so they don't really report it. but the latest statistics are one in five men struggle with low sexual desire. And this was before pandemic times and financial stresses and everything else. So what causes male sexual desire? It's kind of like this secret thing. Men don't want to talk about it. And even their partners don't want to talk about it because they take it personally and they think there must be something wrong with me because every guy wants it. Why doesn't he want me? So let's talk about the causes for male low sexual desire.
01:22 First of all, the most common cause is hormonal. And it's not just older men, certainly as men age and reach their mid to late 40s into 50s, their testosterone, which is that hormone of desire, is getting lower. And that affects your general sense of well-being, your energy, your muscle tone, your sexual response, and your sexual desire. Medications like antidepressants, especially if they are SSRIs, can negatively affect desire. But here's the interesting thing I find, or one of the interesting things about male low sexual desire, is that very often a man will shut down his desire for sex
02:03 if he is struggling with his performance. So very often a man has shut down from sex because of problems with erectile function, sustained arousal for some reason. It could be a medical reason or emotional reason or even a situational circumstance, or he is maybe reaching orgasm too soon or having delayed orgasm. And so something is happening in terms of his performance
02:32 and the way that he deals with it is just by shutting down sex altogether because let's just face it, For women, if you aren't sexually responding well enough, you may avoid sex because it's not fun and the cost-benefit analysis doesn't work in favor of having sex. And certainly, if it hurts, you're going to be avoiding it. But men, if he's not getting aroused or able to sustain his arousal, he can't have sex, right, because he needs to have an erection in order to have penetration.
03:00 So many men, because they're so ashamed or embarrassed of their sexual function issues, They actually look like low desire on the surface, but they're actually something else. And once that something else around their function is resolved, the desire comes back. And this is really tough also because whether it's an issue of sexual function issue affecting the low desire or just low desire, and I'll get to the other reasons in a minute, the thing that happens that I see so often with men is because non-sexual intimacy, kissing, holding hands, cuddling, and sexual intimacy are so intertwined for them. When they withdraw from the sexual intimacy, it all goes in the same bucket for them. So very often I find the partners,
03:47 especially the female partners of men with low desire, they're like, okay, it's fine if we don't have intercourse, but I miss the cuddling, the hand-holding, the awareness I felt he had of me, The connecting, the non-sexual physical intimacy and even emotional intimacy, because those are so tied for men, I find that when a man has low sexual desire, a lot of those other things go off out the window, which is really heartbreaking for their partners, but also for the relationship. So that's just a little ding ding for you to think about if you are a guy with low sexual desire. Now let's talk about the other causes. So hormonal medication. What I think is really cool is that if you talk to men over age 35, very often they won't have emotional causes for low desire. In other words, if their partner is being mean to them or they're not having their emotional needs met in the relationship, that doesn't really play as much of a role in their sexual desire. The only kind of stress, like women will lose their desire with chronic stress of any kind. The only kind of chronic stress that seems to really affect male low desire, especially
04:56 for the over 35ers, is financial or work-related stress. And I think the reason for that is because in our society, men have historically been raised to see that so deeply as a part of their masculinity, what they do in the world and how they support their families, that when that feels at risk, which it certainly has been over the past several years for many families and many men, when that feels at risk, it affects their sense of virility and masculinity, and they often shut down sexually as a result. For women, any kind of stress will affect our desire, but for men, it's very often financial or work-related stress. However, the under 35-year-old men who were raised by parents who really encouraged them
05:40 to be in touch with their feelings and to be able to express emotionally and to value emotional exchanges. I find that low desire is often even higher in those younger men from the emotional standpoint, because if they are feeling disrespected or disconnected or angry or betrayed by their partner, they too struggle with the vulnerability of opening up sexually because they're in touch with their feelings and they are blocking them out like older guys were taught to do. And I'm generalizing here, obviously. I mean, not all older men are one way and younger men another way, but this is really what we see as the trend. So, I do see a lot of younger men
06:28 with emotionally or relationally induced low desire. calculating route to avoid seeing poverty turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away then take the next exit let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty your donations help the united way fight poverty in thousands of ways like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. So what do you do about it? Well, first of all, you have to talk about it. You have to address it. Just like I say about female low desire, when sex is working,
07:13 it's one small part of the larger working relationship. When it's not working, it really starts to fray the fiber of your connection. And it's like this 800-pound gorilla in the room with you all the time. So it's really important to talk about it and put it on the table and figure out what is going on. Is it an emotional issue? Is it a stress-related issue? Is it a relationship issue? Is it a medical issue? And the nice thing for men, not so nice for women, is that there are a gazillion forms of hormone therapy for low testosterone and all sorts of medical treatments for difficulty maintaining erections from Viagra to Cialis, to Levitra, and many others. So there are tons of treatments out there for the medical
08:01 causes of male sexual dysfunction, not only low desire, but difficulty sexually responding. But it does require a trip to the doctor. And a lot of men don't even want to talk about it. So that's why it's so important to address it. And then you want to go to a urologist with a U, urologist who specializes in sexual medicine. And they will give you a full checkup to make sure, you know, because what goes into sexual response is blood flow, you know, so your vascular system, nerve function, and hormones. Those three things play a huge role in sexual function. And a urologist who specializes in sexual function complaints, and there are many of them out there, will be able to assess and then provide therapies, whether it is one of those blood flow
08:52 enhancers to help with arousal, if that's what's needed, or hormonal support if you don't have enough testosterone and you're a candidate for that. So there's lots of things that your doctor can do for you to not only support your sexual function, but to support your desire, including if you are struggling with low desire as a result of antidepressants. calculating route to avoid seeing poverty turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away then take the next exit let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty your donations help the united way fight poverty in thousands of ways
09:36 like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. And if you are struggling for that reason, do not just get off your medication because listen, being depressed is not helpful for your sex life or your life in general, but also there can be side effects when you just jump off a medication. So you definitely want to talk to your prescribing doctor about any issues that you're having, and then they can either maybe sometimes lower the dose or add in something else or change the medication you're on in a way to alleviate some of those side effects, in addition to the urologist giving you supportive other therapies to help alleviate those side effects as well.
10:17 And communication, communication, communication. I see such a rash of heterosexual couples where the woman is just overwhelmed, overwrought, overstressed, angry, feels unsupported by her male partner. and is kind of, for lack of a better term, nagging him, angry at him, frustrated with him, expressing that to him. He's shutting down. And then he's not interested in having sex with her because he looks at her more like a critical and angry mother than a romantic and sexy partner. And that's certainly in the under 35ers. I see that really commonly. The other under 35 reason that I see for low desire in men, emotionally speaking, is technology.
11:03 Both because you as a couple aren't connecting. You're just sitting next to each other on the couch on your own technology, putting your energy over there rather than at each other. And also porn. Now, they're starting really early when brains are still developing. Your brain is still developing until you're 27, 28. So looking at porn actually changes the way that the messages get processed in your brain, not just once in a while. I'm talking about repeatedly and consistently and a lot of porn watching, and it's so readily available. And a lot of men kind of accidentally learn to use this as a stress reliever. And then the more stress they get, the more they look at porn. But the problem is, especially if you're a younger man,
11:47 it can make it so it's really hard. First of all, your body gets really used to quick reactions and quick sexual response that doesn't really work well if you're having sex with someone else. But also, it creates changes in the brain that can make it harder to get aroused with a real person. And so, I am seeing a huge uptick in the number of younger men who have low desire and difficulty sexually responding in a real relationship once they finally have one or when they have one because they've accidentally conditioned their system to the way that the brain operates with porn. One of the really interesting things, just to give you an example of how this works, is that it trains your brain to sexually respond
12:38 to a 2D image. When you see a 3D image, a real person, your brain, which communicates with your body to have an erection and get aroused isn't really congruent, isn't really operating. So there's really fascinating research coming out to just say, not that porn is evil, wrong, dirty, but it is certainly not good sex education about what really, especially for heterosexual men, that really turns on a woman, what a woman's body looks like, what women like sexually, how sex should be with a woman. It's not a good education for that, but it also is something that can negatively affect your sexual response over time if you aren't doing it in significant moderation.
13:24 Use your imagination, folks. Don't just let yourself be fed the 2D images. That makes a big, big difference. So the main thing to understand is that if you are a man with low desire or you love a man with low desire, you are not alone. There are so many people, one in five at least, and I think that's really underreported. And there is help available, okay? So your first stop is a medical doctor, a urologist who specializes in sexual medicine.
13:51 Get those hormones checked, blood flow, nerve function, medications you're on, and also to address the behavioral and emotional things I talked about that could be standing in the way. If you want more information about this or any other topic around sex, love and relationships, I'm always here for you, helping you learn to love and be loved better. Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food
14:54 Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away Then take the next exit Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. Where some see heroes and others see egos, Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes.
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