2hands+: Ageing and sexual decline - be prepared...(part 1)

The way it was:

Shortly after my 48th birthday in 2000 I began to experience the most fantastic nighttime erections. They were exceptionally hard, like nothing I could remember from before (and I always had plenty of nighttime erections), and seemed to last for ever. These erections were an invitation to masturbate, even in the middle of the night!

At the same time sex with my wife seemed to be pretty normal and not greatly altered over the years. Sex was basically once or twice a week, and was virtually always initiated by me on waking with an erection. Actually I would normally wake with an erection many more times than we would have sex. Most times I would just nuzzle up to my wife´s back as she lay on her side beside me, and lay my hard penis up against her backside.

On the days when we had sex I only had to reach my arm over my wife´s body and put my hand on her breasts and I my body would suddenly "shiver" in anticipation of the sex to come. The reaction was strong and immediate and my erection was almost always immediatey ready for action.

Away from the bedroom my sexuality seemed as alive and well as at any time in the previous 35 or so years. Spontaneous partial erections were a constant part of my life. They could occur at any time, but some of their favorite times were while lying naked on the bad as my wife wandered around the room getting dressed; on getting up; on walking to the breakfast table; while driving; on arriving somewhere after a long drive; driving home after a night at the cinema; while sitting at my desk at work; on waking up after having dozed off in front of the TV; on trying on clothes in the changing cublicle of a shop; on walking to the bedroom at night; on undressing to go to bed, indeed it was very common for me to lie down to sleep with a partial erection. Sometimes these partial erections graduated to full erections, even inconveniently, if pleasurably, in places and at moments when I had to take action to disguise them.

Basically I was a very sexual person, with strong responses to those things which turned me on sexually, such as large breasts (in a small bikini...or anything else for that matter); some sex scene on TV; a woman breast-feeding (ladies forgive me); women whom I found attractive. Usually my response to this kind of situation would not be a full-blown erection, but rather a happy swelling of the penis acompanied by a powerful set of other bodily reactions such as speeding heart, sweating, general excitement. In general even if it wasn´t really erect or even partially erect my penis always seemed to have a life of its own, expanding and contracting constantly during the day.

The collapse:

This was the state of my sex life until just over 3 years ago. I had no idea that those super nighttime erections were in fact the forerunners of what has aparently proved to be a catastrophic collapse in my sexual response system. This collapse began at the start of September 2000 and by February 2001 I would say my sexual responses had reduced to 20% of the level of 6 months before. Today I would say the level has reduced to 10 or 5% of that level.

The super nighttime erections continued erratically until the last one just before Christmas 2000. I remember the exact time and place where it occurred. I had them for a period of about 6 months in total.

The last spontaneous near-full erection occurred in the deserted bathroom of an isolated petrol station around midday on the third day of a six day cross-country drive. I remember that moment vividly. My sex life would never be the same again.

Today I no longer have spontaneous erections of any kind, anywhere, at any time. These finally disapeared about a year ago.

That "shiver" in anticipation of sex has disappeared too.

Nighttime erections have also virtually ceased, or if they occur at all are extremely weak.

My sexual responses (in any shape or form) are now virtually zero. None of the things which produced spontaneous responses in me 3 years ago produces any kind of effect today.

The most marked feature of this whole process (other that the super nighttime erections, which were really quite extraordinary), was its erratic nature. In fact the super nighttime erections were probably part of this. I have often described what happened as being as if my whole sexual response mechanism became destabilized and began to oscillate erratically both above (the super erections) and below (a virtually total sexual/penile switch off of some three weeks which occurred at the start of September 2000) the original stable normal position. Although there were moments after the start of this process when it almost seemed that things had returned to normal, I can now, after 3 years, say that the overall trend has been steadily, and relentlessly, downward.

Health and lifestyle:

By now many of you must be imagining that I am a physical basket case, overweight, with high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, taking no exercise, and eating tons of junk food, or that I had been operated for prostate surgery, or am living on some sex-killing drug.

The sad truth is that today I am in excellent health, with almost perfect weight for my height, normal blood pressure, no known-of heart problems, non-diabetic, take morning walks of 4 to 5 kms. almost every day, and have always eaten a near-perfect diet partly thanks to my wife´s dedication on this matter, but also partially due to a natural preference for a low salt, high fruit, vegetable, and fibre diet. Although I don´t eat much meat I am by no means a vegetarian. Meat for me though is mostly fish and chicken.

When this whole process started I had regularly enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine almost every night for years, would normally drink several tins of beer at the weekend, was slightly heavier than I am now (though I still use the same trousers), and took little exercise, but felt generally fit and little different from years before.

(continued in part 2)