Dear Peach and Flora,

My name is Emilia. I have been dating my man for the past 3 months and he has been promising me the ultimate sexual experience. We recently had sex for the first  time 2 weeks ago and it was terrible, he just couldn’t stay hard. I didn’t want him to feel bad so I just decided not to talk about it again. We’ve tried again several times and the same thing keeps happening. He is a very kind and loving man, but he just can’t stay hard. What should I do?

Dear Emilia,

I know how disappointed you must feel after being promised the time of your life by someone you love and not getting it. It’s very unfortunate that you didn’t get what you expected. Sometimes these things happen and they are out of our control.

Erectile Dysfunction (ED), the inability to stay hard, can be caused by a lot of things. Some of the causes may be psychological, physical or emotional but there’s a way around it. It’s not unheard of for men to struggle once in a while. There are underlying health conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease and STIs that can affect a man’s ability to sustain an erection. Seeing your family doctor and a gynaecologist would be the initial step to rule out all possibility of any of the above illnesses.

Things like alcohol and substance abuse can also make it hard to sustain an erection. Talk to your partner about it in case you have noticed any weird behavior. There are myths that practices like excessive masturbation can cause erectile dysfunction but this is not true. The best thing would be to gather your courage to talk to your man so that your sex lives can improve.

Did you know that being nervous can cause ED too? The fact that he over promised could have caused him anxiety or excitement which made his ability to sustain his erection hard (pun intended). You can try talking to him and keeping him calm and see if that helps. Remind him that you care about him and he has nothing to worry about.

If you love him and you feel you can be patient with him, then stay and give it a try. Sex is a very important aspect of a relationship and, if you feel that are unable to stick around to see if it gets better, you can walk away as it’s still early in the relationship. You can also look into exploring other options like sex toys to incorporate into your sex lives. Talk to your man. He already knows what’s wrong and you could try encouraging him to get help. I hope it all works out for you in the end.