Searching for Viagra

My name is Veronica and I am a 50 year-old man. When I look in the mirror, I see a 29 year-old girl, with dark hair, dark eyes, olive colored skin, and round thighs. When I picture myself these days, I see a man, 50, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and the inability to perform and yes, I do mean in bed.
For a man, his ability to get it up and hard in order to penetrate his woman is pretty much what defines his masculinity. He might make a lot of money, dead lift 250lbs, be tall, dark, handsome and even smart, but if he can’t get it up, he goes into this small box that no one has named, but contains all the “pseudo-men” who no one really considers a man anyway.
It’s sad really, that we would allow someone’s image to be defined by what is, most of the time, an involuntary muscle movement. But what is boils down to one simple caveat: IF I can’t get it up, THEN I am not a man. Well I’m not a man, and I feel like I am “not a man”.
For the past year, practically since I have been with my husband, I have had some sort of recurring vaginal issue that makes it seem like I have a fungal infection. It is an itchy, burning, swollen sensation that at times impedes me from even walking; not to mention having sex.
At first we treated for fungal infection, then bacteria, STD, fungal infection again, bacteria again, vaginitis, fungus, fungus….. I have been on more pills, douches, creams, ovules, suppositories, anti-fungals, gels, antibiotics and even holistic treatments than I would even like to admit. The problem is, that I don’t have a little blue pill that will solve my problem.
My mother has always said that the connection that a couple has, always boils down to sex. If the couple has a good sexual connection, then they can work everything else out. But what happens when, regardless of the connection, you simply can’t do it?
I started to have sex at a very early age. I became pregnant the first time I had sex, and, of course, that snowballed into a long-time of sexual panic. For years, I took pregnancy tests whenever my period as late, even when I hadn’t had sex, and since my period comes at about every 5 ½ weeks, I took a lot of pregnancy tests.
Whenever I would try to have sex, I would become so tense, that it was like virginity all over again. I couldn’t bring myself to have intimacy and really explore all the fantasies I had or even have a normal sexual relationship with any of my partners. Sex at times was so painful so often, that I even had a gynecologist recommend a hymenectomy. According to him, when I lost my virginity, it wasn’t done quite right (is there a “right” way?) and there were pieces of my hymen left over and those nerves ending at the end of the “shreds of skin” were what caused my pain.
Well, thank God for Cuban grandmothers and the fact that mine said that there was no way in hell I was getting one of those without a second and third opinion. I went to another doctor who told me that the first guy was a quack and that there was physically nothing wrong with me.
I thought that maybe there was something else, that I was in some other way broken. It became a bit of a personal challenge to me to have sex without pain. I had lots of sex. Not necessarily the good kind, I really didn’t go very deep in my sexual relationship with anyone. It was more like an exercise in trying on shoes than it was an actual development of sexual intimacy and skill with anyone in particular.
I thought that maybe, it was all in my head (it was) and that I simply couldn’t forgive myself for any of what had happened so many years ago. My mother told me, at one point during this period that I was simply not a very sexual person. Of course, that lead me to want to prove her wrong, so I just had sex with more people.
I can honestly say, I didn’t really achieve sexual intimacy with anyone until I was 25. I also, first fell in love, when I was 25.
It’s not like I had a life of non-sexual enjoyment until the age of 25. I enjoyed myself plenty. I enjoyed lots of facets of what I was doing and the things that I did, the people that I was with, but it was always the actual intercourse part that would make me freeze up on the inside and not be able to enjoy the rest of whatever went on.
When I was 25, I met the first person I ever fell in love with. Our relationship was crap. It was hard, and difficult, and he was a mess, and consequently, brought out all the dark and twisty parts inside of me, I didn’t even know were there. But for all his faults throughout the relationship, he was very patient with me while I became accustomed to him. It was like I was HIS personal challenge, and he won it, and I won as a consequence.
I no longer thought that I was broken or that I was simply incapable of having sex. It was the first time that I was able to be open about things sexually. Because of a series of other issues that dealt with problems outside the sheets, I grew to have very low self esteem, and because the sex was so good, I thought that the only person I could ever have a good sexual relationship with was him, this mere theory kept me around for a lot longer than was healthy.
After that episode, I grew the confidence I hadn’t had in myself before and was able to enjoy sex, all of sex.
Which puts me at today.
I am currently in a relationship with someone who has a lot of experience. Though I have slept with more people, he has had long and intimate relationships which I have not. So I already feel like I am at a disadvantage in the “something to offer” front.
I decided that I could probably overcome this fact. I decided that I wanted him to be the one that I was with, that I blossomed with, that I would be able to explore all the things I had ever been too afraid to explore: marriage, the world, my fears, bed…
But no matter how much I want a complete relationship, I have a big sign in front of me that says: DO NOT ENTER.
I have no idea what it is that is wrong with me. I feel like I am broken again, and warped and mutilated, that I will not be able to perform and make him happy, that he will eventually walk away and want to be with someone who has no problems, issues or difficulties.
He is sweet. He tells me he loves me and doesn’t care. That he will wait, that we will go and see specialists, that this problem hasn’t been around my whole life and that it won’t be around forever. I believe him, I also believe that people are human and that we all want to minimize the amount of problems we have in our lives and that if, given the choice we could trade out our complications in life for easier things, that we in fact would.
I am living in a house where people are starting to have romances; crazy, fun love affairs where they have sex on the dinner table and spend the day in bed; where 10 people from all walks of life sit around the living room having long conversations about sex and their exploits. Luckily, I was on a hike for this last one. When I came back, I wondered if my partner wished that he could be with someone who could actually bring to fruition any number of the things that had been said that night. I haven’t been able to have relations with my husband for a month, and before that, six weeks, and at one point, almost two months.
You figure that when you get married, all the sexual frustration and all the problems go away. You imagine that you can actually go in depth with your relationship and that you can slowly develop something very special. But the longer I have this problem the more desperate I get.
Today I broke. I walked in on two friends as they were having crazy and wild sex. And I had to run to my room where I proceeded to have an anxiety attack. I now fear that any act of sex will bring on another episode. Whatever is really and physiologically wrong with me is simply being worsened by my growing feelings of impotence.
I am 29 years old, and there is nothing I want more than to have sex with my husband on the dinner table. But I can’t. I can’t because it hurts. I can’t because I’m scared, I can’t because I don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t know how to fix it and I’m afraid that I might never be able to.
I have had ideas of praying to virgins and saints, of going to see a shaman of putting myself through a study. I wish there was just a little blue pill, one pill that I could take that would make me feel like I could hold up my part of my relationship.
Most of all, I wake up every day and look in the mirror, hoping to see a young, dark haired, round-thighed woman who has been married for less than a year and is still in her “honeymoon period”. Instead, I see a man, going through a mid-life crisis, who doesn’t even have the money to make up for it with a Porche.