Difficulty achieving and maintaining an erection in my late 20s

Hey everyone.

It’s been quite a while since the last time I posted, so I’ll give you a quick update. For the past few months, I haven’t been PEing at all. I don’t have any new gains to report, but then again, I wasn’t expecting any since I’ve put PE on the backburner. I started a new job and it brought along some new stresses that I’m not used to. I do plan to get back into PE *very* gradually, but I’m writing this post for a different reason.

I met a girl and we’ve been dating for the past month or so. She is a fairly conservative girl who wants to take things slow, and I’m totally fine with that. There are times when we make out (read as “passionately kiss”) for an hour or more. In the past week, we’ve progressed a bit further. However, herein is where the problem lies.

I’ve been having difficulty getting and maintaining an erection. On the first occasion, I couldn’t get hard at all. On the second occasion, I achieved a partial erection; I whipped off my pants in about 4 seconds and started stroking my penis to get a full erection. But the more I stroked, the more flaccid my penis became. I was extreeeemly embarrassed after both encounters. She kept thinking that it was her fault in one way or another, but I reassured her it that it wasn’t.

After much reading on TP, I realize that there could be many factors involved (stress, performance anxiety, low testosterone, poor health, etc.) The majority of my erections have come from watching porn. Even though I’ve been limiting myself to masturbation/ejaculation to only 2-3 times per week, I’ve noticed that my overall libido and general “horniness” has diminished as well. Between the months of September to January, I was lifting weights and walking on the treadmill three times a week each. But, I had a slight neck/back injury that set me back and I haven’t gotten back into my workout routine. I eat a healthy diet, and I only pig out on junk food once a week at most. I don’t drink soda (only water) and I rarely drink alcohol. In order to cope with some of the stress from work, I do, however, smoke weed. Technically, I don’t “smoke” weed, but instead I vaporize my weed using something called an Iolite. I usually vape once a day in the evenings before bed to help me relax and fall asleep.

I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but I’m in my late-twenties and I have never had a physical done by a physician. I have an appointment set for tomorrow (more of an intro/meet-n-greet) and another appointment next week for an actual physical.

Here is what I plan to do:

1. I’m cutting out porn completely. I think that over the years, it has psychologically affected me to the point that a woman’s real touch is not enough to give me an erection (which is quite sad).
2. I’m quitting weed. I’ve quit before for over an 18-month period, so I know I will have no problems doing so. Although it helps me relax and I’m smoking it in the most “healthy” way possible, I realize that using drugs to alter my mood can only be masking my true problems.

3. Next week, I’m going to start to work out again. I plan on doing body-weight exercises 3 times a week (pushups, squats, lunges, planks, pull-ups) as well as some cardio on the treadmill 3 times a week. I know that exercises that focus on the leg muscles aid in the production of testosterone, and help to increase circulation. Also, it will help me to relieve some of my stress.

4. I plan on taking a few supplements. I’m going start off by taking a multi-vitamin, 2-3 grams of L-Arginine or AAKG, and some zinc. Down the road I may add in some Gingko Biloba and/or some ginseng, but I’ll stick to the first three for now.

Here are my questions/concerns:

1. Will doing all these changes at once be more harmful than good?
2. What sort of questions should I ask my doctor?
3. Are there any tests that I can ask him to do (i.e., testosterone levels, etc.)
4. Should I ask him to refer me to a urologist?

Any feedback, comments, personal experiences or general advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi back Quik4. Your Doctor should know which exams are needed, anyway I think it is a good idea to do normal blood exams, check your blood pressure, and measure your testosterone levels.

Doing all these changes shouldn’t do any harm; on the physical activity, anyway, I do suggest you just get it easy. I haven’t seen abs work, add that.

It could be also a good idea to try if you get an erection taking viagra/cialis.

About weed, I am an occasional user, and it always seems to give me hard-ons; neither I have head habitual users which I personally know reporting lower EQ using it; of course we all are different.

How much porn do you watch or have you watched in the past?

Hey Quick4life, we had a pretty good conversation about this in the following thread:

Porn and how long to detox

I was one of the first to post on there, with a list of what I do in your situation, so check that out.

I used to watch anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour of porn a day. But in the past few months I watch about 3 hours a week. The majority if the time I would get stoned and then an hour later, I would masturbate before going to bed.

Thanks for your input marinera. I appreciate it.

scienceguy106: Thanks for the link. I gotta re-read that thread.

I was in the same boat as you, and once I got rid of the porn (for good) I saw a dramatic increase in EQ. Albeit it took a few months, but I didn’t make any other changes.

What was your masturbation/sex frequency after you stopped watching porn?

Do you feel comfortable with her? If I know a girl wants to take it slow, I won’t feel … “free”. When I feel like I’m free to do what I please, the erection comes easily. If I know she has boundaries, I can tend to overthink what I’m doing with her, if I’m going too fast for her, & the erection suffers.

Additionally, every guy I’ve spoken to has said that if they just make out for 20 + minutes, they’ll kind of … lose the passion, & lose the erection. Things need to progress if you’re to keep the erection.

I promise you that it is most likely porn. I’ve gone through similar things and I’m in my EARLY 20s. I’ll tell you that in my own personal experience, porn creates anxiety when it comes time for an erection. You think to yourself “Damn, I’m horny. Time to get hard.” I know in my case that typically lead to either porn, an internet clip, or me masturbating with a semi for about 2-3 minutes until I got near the point of cumming and then had to slowly ease into my erection. The internet becomes a crutch, it becomes what your mind gets turned on by. I haven’t looked at porn or any clips for the past 5-6 days and the anxiety over getting an erection (by myself at least) has subsided and I can achieve an erection much easier. Hell, today I was able to get a full blown erection in under a minute from barely touching myself. I’ve gotten plenty of semis and even 70-80% erections like this over the past year or two, but I’ve always, I mean ALWAYS, had to resort to the near cumming technique to get a full blown one.

Bottom line: Cut out the porn. Rewire your brain for stimulation outside of porn. Relax. And watch anxiety melt away. I feel like a completely different person after doing this for just a week.

My opinion is that it is less likely porn than it is performance anxiety. If your erections are more or less good for a while while watching porn, then I don’t think porn is the problem. I guess it’s possible the women in porn are so incredibly hot compared to your real woman that you don’t get turned on by her, but I am guessing that is not the case :) .

I have only had your issue a few times luckily, but it was always with a new woman. Once you do it a few times with her and get it right, I think you will find your problem going away. Unfortunately one bad experience does cause the next one to be more stressful, possibly causing a vicious negative feedback loop. So go a few days without ejaculating before hand, supplement with whatever, hit it rather quickjly when you have that firm boner, and hope for the best! Good luck.

I’m in my early twenties and have a similar problem as you. During multiple occasions with different girls, I was not able to get an erection.

I tried going the supplements way- I started taking multivitamins, fish oil, ginkgo, ginseng, and horny goat weed. All this did was give me a bigger flaccid, and didn’t really help with getting erections.
I tried doing some low-pressure pumping, but I didn’t stick to it for along enough. I haven’t done any exercise in about 1.5 years due to an ongoing injury, but once I get that fixed, I’ll start exercising which will help you and I without a doubt since we don’t do anything physical. This of course helps both physically and mentally.

Basically everything that I tried didn’t really help much, which was so because I was stressed out about it and spending large amounts of my days researching about it instead of just living life. My problem was not solved until I 1) learned to relax and figure out that it’s not a big deal, and 2) got an understanding girlfriend that helped me solve the problem, and this is huge. In my experience, we tried to have sex for probably 2-3 weeks before I could get a lasting and strong enough erection. Even then the sex wasn’t great, but it only get better and better with time, until I was just about normal at maybe 6-8 months into the relationship. Yes this is a long time, but it was well worth it. Sit down with your girlfriend and explain your situation to her (you don’t necessarily need to tell her about the porn). Tell her that you have some anxiety and that this has happened before, and that it might be a couple weeks before things start to happen, and most importantly that it’s not her fault and that you are attracted to her. When you don’t pressure yourself and don’t need to prove yourself to your girlfriend, you will start to get better.

Also, definitely cut out the porn. I recently did that too and am already noticing the benefits. I am not too proud of the things I have been watching and I know for a fact that it has a
lot to do with my problems.

Just another note, I went to my urologist when I had my problems and he gave me some samples of cialis. I was against this because I wanted my experience to be “natural”, but he explained to me that it could raise my confidence and get my body used to having sex. I think it took me until the 3rd try until it worked, but it sure was a good experience haha. Definitely go this route if you have the chance. What I did was start out with 1 pill, and I gradually cut down on the amount over the months (get a pill cutter) until I didn’t need it anymore.

Feel free to message me if you want to talk, take it easy.

I tried to hold out on masturbating, but eventually couldn’t do it because holding out was pushing me toward relapse. I eventually settled on once a week masturbating and sex about three times per week.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their contributions and advice.

I saw the doctor the other day. He said that my issue was probably stress/performance anxiety related. I plan to get some blood work and a physical done sometime next week. My libido is gone and I’m starting to wonder if I have low testosterone levels.

In the meantime, he gave me a prescription for Cialis. I really didn’t want to take this route, especially at such an early age, but I may use it here and there as a crutch. I just don’t want to become dependent on it.