M
metabolizm
Guest
I'm still a young man (32), but I find sex to be exhausting, painful and generally health-deranging. It is of course also pleasurable, but more often than not I'm finding that the pain outweighs the pleasure, and I seem to be more inclined towards a near-celibate life. Am I completely alone here?
I have been in a sexual relationship with the same woman, whom I love, for the last ten years, but my disinclination to have sex is putting a strain on our relationship. It's not that I don't have any sex drive, or that I don't find her attractive; it's that the physical act of sex seems to rob me of vitality for several days, seems to cause prostate inflammation, gives me tired eyes, causes pelvic floor pain, and makes me generally feel terrible for a while, and so of course I just don't want to subject myself to that. As if that litany of ailments wasn't bad enough, I'm now getting horrible foreskin inflammation, and the only way to avoid this is to wear a condom. Usually about four days after sex, I start to feel better. Again, I ask: am I alone in this experience?
I'm baffled to think that there are some men, possibly many men, with very active sex lives, who are having sex multiple times a week with no ill-effects, with no effect on energy. Or at least, that's what I've been led to believe. If that is so, then I must be very, very sick.
One of the few people who seems to have talked about this was the American health writer Bernarr Macfadden, who was writing in the first half of the 20th century. He recognised back then that too frequent sexual excitement and stimulation over time would inevitably "destroy a man's virility". He also wrote presciently about the harms of masturbation, and about varicocele, and about prostatitis, and he seemed to understand the relationship of all these conditions better than anyone since. Here are some of his articles.
Along with B. Macfadden, I don't think it is wise to avoid sex or even masturbation if you are uncontrollably horny. That's counterproductive, and could drive you mad. Sometimes we need the release, and if the only way to get that is to masturbate once in a while, then so be it. (The problem with porn, of course, is that provides young men with an unnatural and unreasonable amount of stimulation/arousal, and the physical toll of frequent ejaculation, not to mention the warped expectations around the sexual act, becomes apparent over time).
Anyway, this has become a bit of a ramble, but TLDR: probably as a result of discovering porn at an early age, and masturbating an ungodly amount for many years, sex has now become a physical burden and even a source of suffering, inclining me towards a life of not-quite-but-almost celibacy, even at my young age of 32. This puts an enormous strain on my relationship, and is something we're still trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to negotiate. Am I alone?
I have been in a sexual relationship with the same woman, whom I love, for the last ten years, but my disinclination to have sex is putting a strain on our relationship. It's not that I don't have any sex drive, or that I don't find her attractive; it's that the physical act of sex seems to rob me of vitality for several days, seems to cause prostate inflammation, gives me tired eyes, causes pelvic floor pain, and makes me generally feel terrible for a while, and so of course I just don't want to subject myself to that. As if that litany of ailments wasn't bad enough, I'm now getting horrible foreskin inflammation, and the only way to avoid this is to wear a condom. Usually about four days after sex, I start to feel better. Again, I ask: am I alone in this experience?
I'm baffled to think that there are some men, possibly many men, with very active sex lives, who are having sex multiple times a week with no ill-effects, with no effect on energy. Or at least, that's what I've been led to believe. If that is so, then I must be very, very sick.
One of the few people who seems to have talked about this was the American health writer Bernarr Macfadden, who was writing in the first half of the 20th century. He recognised back then that too frequent sexual excitement and stimulation over time would inevitably "destroy a man's virility". He also wrote presciently about the harms of masturbation, and about varicocele, and about prostatitis, and he seemed to understand the relationship of all these conditions better than anyone since. Here are some of his articles.
Along with B. Macfadden, I don't think it is wise to avoid sex or even masturbation if you are uncontrollably horny. That's counterproductive, and could drive you mad. Sometimes we need the release, and if the only way to get that is to masturbate once in a while, then so be it. (The problem with porn, of course, is that provides young men with an unnatural and unreasonable amount of stimulation/arousal, and the physical toll of frequent ejaculation, not to mention the warped expectations around the sexual act, becomes apparent over time).
Anyway, this has become a bit of a ramble, but TLDR: probably as a result of discovering porn at an early age, and masturbating an ungodly amount for many years, sex has now become a physical burden and even a source of suffering, inclining me towards a life of not-quite-but-almost celibacy, even at my young age of 32. This puts an enormous strain on my relationship, and is something we're still trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to negotiate. Am I alone?
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