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“What is the best way for a wife to support a husband with ED (Erectile Dysfunction)? Obviously she doesn’t want to emasculate him, but she doesn’t want her needs to not be met.”
CASSIE
Welcome to My Counselor Online. I’m Cassie and today one of our awesome counselors is going to answer your question. So let’s go find out what MyCounselor Says.
JOSH
Welcome to my counselor online. I’m Josh Spurlock and today we’re answering a question for Suzy. Suzy wants to know what is the best way for a wife to support a husband who’s struggling with the erectile dysfunction.
So the struggle with erectile dysfunction definitely something that affects both husband and wife in the relationship. And it can be easy to contribute to the Erectile Dysfunction getting worse by responding in a way that is emasculating or is critical in response to the struggle or difficulty that that husband is having, even in the face of the avoidance that sometimes takes place where men tend to avoid those areas of their life where they feel like a failure or they feel like they’re struggling.
Avoiding can just exacerbate the disconnect within the relationship. So I appreciate the question and wanting to know, “How can I be helpful to a spouse with ED? How can I help the situation and not be hurtful in the situation?”
So the first thing I would suggest is that you guys get in and connect with a sex therapist that can help walk you guys through this. Erectile Dysfunction usually is very treatable, and we can figure out what’s going on and troubleshoot how to get things back on track. So you guys can have a mutually enjoyable sex life.
But there can be a lot of different factors that influence the situation and it can be helpful to have somebody who’s experienced in the ED arena, be able to troubleshoot that with you.
Consider trying this first
Here’s some self-help stuff that you can do to get started.
You’ll want to reference an article by Melissa Abello on our website called when “When Men Avoid Sex.”
In that book or in the articles reference the book, “Coping with Erectile Dysfunction” by Barry McCarthy and Michael Mets, you can get that on Amazon.
And that’s a great place to start terms of understanding what’s going on.
They’ll give you some things that you can try to see if you can make progress on your own.
ED is complex, so if that doesn’t work…
And if you’re unsuccessful, you’re not able to reach your goals, then you can definitely connect with a sex therapist that would be able to walk you through towards achieving the things that you’re wanting to see happen.
CASSIE
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