Does Chastity Cause Erectile Dysfunction?

This question has been sent more than a few times, it seems to be a concern that many guys have when making the decision to add chastity to their sex lives. The average age of readers on this site is in the 55-64 yr old range which seems to be pretty close to the average onset age for ED. I would say that many couples are discovering chastity around the same time as the bodies are starting to go through some changes.

I wouldn’t think that locking your big guy up would cause any sort of long term damage but let’s do some research together and find out!

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Physical Causes

According to Mayo Clinic, these are the most common medical causes for a man to experience erectile dysfunction.

• Heart disease
• Clogged blood vessels (atherosclerosis)
• High cholesterol
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Metabolic syndrome — a condition involving increased blood pressure, high insulin levels, body fat around the waist and high cholesterol
• Parkinson’s disease
• Multiple sclerosis
• Certain prescription medications
• Tobacco use
• Peyronie’s disease — development of scar tissue inside the penis
• Alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse
• Sleep disorders
• Treatments for prostate cancer or enlarged prostate
• Surgeries or injuries that affect the pelvic area or spinal cord
• Low testosterone

If you are experiencing erectile dysfunction, I would highly recommend that you speak with your doctor to see if there is an underlying condition that may be causing it.

Psychological Causes

According to WebMD, here are the psychological causes of ED.

• Stress : Stress can be job-related, money-related, or the result of marital problems, among other factors.
• Anxiety : Once a man experiences ED, he may become overly worried that the problem will happen again. This can lead to “performance anxiety,” or a fear of sexual failure, and consistently lead to ED.
• Guilt: A man may feel guilty that he is not satisfying his partner.
• Depression : A common cause of ED, depression affects a person physically and psychologically. Depression can cause ED even when a man is completely comfortable in sexual situations. Drugs used to treat depression may also cause ED.
• Low self-esteem: This can be due to prior episodes of ED (thus a feeling of inadequacy) or can be the result of other issues unrelated to sexual performance.
• Indifference: This may come as a result of age and a subsequent loss of interest in sex, be the result of medications or stemming from problems in a couple’s relationship.

Chastity and ED

Having read through the physical reasons for ED, the only one that comes to mind is Peyronie’s Disease. There is no research around chastity cages and Peyronie’s disease but the leading theory of causes is physical damage to a semi-erect penis. Dr Pavlovich, M.D. assistant professor of urology and director of urologic oncology at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore said “It would not be unreasonable to assume that repeated erections that are kept ‘down’ by an ‘unyielding steel tube’ might lead to the sorts of insults to the penis that could predispose one to Peyronie’s,”. This quote is from Dan Savage’s lovecast in 2005 and there doesn’t appear to have been any outcry about chastity related Peyronie’s in the 15 years since this quote so I’m going to call this cautionary conjecture. Dr Pavlovich was likely just trying to error on the side of safety.

That brings us to the psychological reasons which I find to be a far more likely culprit. I’ll go through each of them individually.

Stress

Stress happens to all of us, this can be caused by problems at home, in your relationship or problems at work. We all go through stress. For me, stress is directly linked to my sexual desire and it would make sense that it would be related to the male sexual function as well.

Anxiety

We all get anxious, but this one is tied directly to performance anxiety. Let’s use this email that I received from Rayna as a basis for our discussion.

My husband and I have been using a chastity device for the past few years and find it to be an enormous boost for our sex life. I desire sex about once per month and my husband desires sexual attention much more frequently. Daily if I would have it. We lock him up for a monthly unlock day and he looks forward to that day through the month as one might imagine. Each month he seems to put more and more pressure on himself to perform. This results in a distracted partner for me. He is so distracted about performing that he can’t perform. For the last two months, he has gone back to his cage without the opportunity to enjoy a monthly orgasm.

Thanks for the email, Rayna and this does make sense. He is looking forward to satisfying you during his monthly release and unable to perform and satisfy himself. He may be thinking about the punishment of being locked for a month if he can’t perform. What do you think about allowing him to be unlocked during his monthly release until you are able to successfully couple? This might take undue pressure off his performance and would simply mean that your scheduled monthly sex might be delayed or a day or two.

Guilt

Sexual performance is core to a man’s self confidence and pleasing you through sex is probably has very high emotional importance to him. When he has ED problems, it is more than not being able to get it up. He gives it a much deeper and darker meaning of failing as a man. Reassure as you might, it really will just come across as pity and give him deeper feelings

Indifference

I’ve not had much experience with men who are indifferent about sex although one thing that I hear from time to time are women who give off an aura of indifference. For most men, sex is an assertion and subsequent validation of their value as a man. We don’t necessarily see sex in the same way but sex is core to the manliness of most men.

Low Self Esteem

As we’ve established, men’s sexual performance is core to their self esteem. If you have a guy who can’t perform in the bedroom, you likely have a guy who will have difficulty performing in his day to day life. On the flip side, if he is having trouble performing in his day to day life or feeling overwhelmed with work, bills and responsibilities it may bleed over into the bedroom.

Solutions

So let’s talk solutions or at least some ideas to playfully work through it together. After all, it really is about closeness and mutual playfulness and enjoyment. For these ideas, let’s assume that the problem isn’t medical and he has gotten checked out. ED isn’t the end of the world, and it can be fun.

Teasing

You can also use some light humiliation to distract his mind and flip a different arousal switch. Rather than reinforce the feelings of guilt, you can push it back at him in a humiliating way by making comments about things not working. It may seem like this could be self compounding but the vast majority of men enjoy teasing and it takes them to a fantasy part of their brain. The fact that you are having fun with it and rolling with the punches will be a turn on to most. If you notice that he isn’t responding to the teasing or is getting defensive, stop and go a different direction.

Some ideas:

• Face away from him, wiggle your butt around and say things like doesn’t this ass make you want to get hard and fuck me?
• I wish you wanted me bad enough to get hard for me.
• I bet [name here] would get hard for me. I’d love to feel him inside me.
• Climb on top and ride him, tell him that you want him to get hard because it feels like you are bumping clits.
• Lay on your back facing him, play with yourself and talk to him about how badly you want to feel him inside you.

These may sound like cheesy porn lines but they will certainly invoke a reaction with him. Be careful to make your teasing about wanting him and not criticisms of him. That will almost certainly compound the issue.

Masturbation

Does he masturbate regularly? Does he look at porn while he masturbates? If so, he may have conditioned himself to masturbate to unrealistic stimuli. You can be the sexiest woman in the world but there is no way you would be able to a compete with a midget orgy on a yacht in the middle of the Caribbean. I made a pretty bold assumption about what he is into but you get the idea. Cut out the masturbation OR redirect the masturbation to be of photos of you exclusively. This should help redirect his sexual attention to the person that you need it redirected to.

If he is locked, this isn’t likely the problem but quite a few men do still look at porn despite being locked. We call these men gluttons for punishment.

Medication

Little blue pills work! If he has gone to the doctor and checked out the medical side of things, the doc should be able to prescribe some little blue pills.

Hormones

Another very common cause of ED is hormone imbalance. He can work on hormones through diet and exercise or dietary supplements. If the doctor checks hormone levels, prescription hormones can help fix things up.

Other Options

Just because the willy doesn’t get hard doesn’t mean that you aren’t able to be intimate together. Sure, a hard willy is fun and all but there are many types of sex.

• Pegging
  Pegging is a wonderful type of role reversal that puts him in the receiving end of sex. Your pegging apparatus will never get soft and it is easy to redirect sex from PIV sex to pegging if the plumbing isn’t working. It is an easy transition by saying something like “Looks like yours isn’t cooperating, lets see if mine will.”
• Strapon (on him)
  Have you ever considered that he might be able to wear the strap-on? As with performing oral sex on the toy, make sure it is washed thoroughly if also used for pegging. Better yet, use a condom just to prevent any back door contaminants from getting into your front door. You might actually enjoy this one more than if he got erect naturally. He still gets to feel like he is as strong and virile as ever but doesn’t get any of the accompanying pleasure. If he feels things harden up, he can disconnect the harness and switch things up.
• Different Positions
  Try some different positions that allow him to make contact with your clit but may not allow for full penetration. This will still allow closeness from genital contact.
• Oral Sex (on him)
  I actually enjoy performing oral sex on a soft cock. It fits in my mouth much easier and he seems to still enjoy it. I imagine that it isn’t possible to cum while flaccid so you will need to stop when you are done.
• Oral Sex (on her)
  This one is obvious and more often than not, his penis will regain its composure after he has the opportunity to see you squirming from your tongue.
• Explore Newness
  I hesitated to add this one because it isn’t for everyone but I think it could be effective for some. The energy that comes along with a new partner for you or for him might be enough to kick things into high gear. Exploring newness might involve bringing a third into the bedroom. Perhaps a man that he could watch satisfy you. Perhaps a new and novel woman that he could watch you enjoy or enjoy with you. You may even want to see if playing with another woman on the side could be the self confidence boost that he needed. Only do what you are comfortable with
• Lock Him Up
  Chastity never hurts, at least in my opinion. Try locking him up for a day or three to see if it changes things up. Most guys are ready to go shortly after being unlocked. This might be the kick start he needs to get him rock hard again.
• Timing
  Testosterone levels are much higher in the morning. Try having morning sex instead of sex at the end of along day when he might be more fatigued.
• Spontaneity
  Make sex spontaneous. Rather than allow him to beat himself up and build it up to be a bigger deal in his head, have unplanned sex.
• Foreplay
  When you think of foreplay, you think about women. Women sometimes need up to five times as long as men when warming up for sex. Even if you are ready for action, he may need some additional time to get into the right head space. Cuddle and play with each other until things pop up. If they don’t pop up, switch to another option like pegging or oral.
• Teasing
  Men want to feel desired and like they are fulfilling a need for us. If you feel comfortable, try verbalizing desire for him. Additionally many of the chastity teasing techniques will work wonders in this situation. None of the teasing needs to acknowledge the ED concern. If things don’t get hard, you can deal with it when it happens. If everything gets nice and hand, great!
  

Don’t Make This About You

It can be easy to want to make this about you. Easy to want to make this about how the extra 10 lbs you gained makes you unattractive. This isn’t about you. The fact that he is even remotely frustrated about not being able to get it up should shows that he is very interested in being intimate with you.

There is very little that you can control in this scenario since it all comes down to his wiring. Just make sure that you aren’t giving off the aura of indifference. If he doesn’t feel like you want him or if he feels like you are only having sex because you feel obligated to do so then he may be much less aroused. If you are present and act like you enthusiastically desire him then he won’t second guess your intentions. Even if you aren’t overly enthused, give it a little boost of energy and enthusiasm and you will both have a better time. It feels great to be desired, right? That’s a two way street.

Summary

There is no evidence that male chastity can cause or contribute to erectile dysfunction. Nevertheless, erectile dysfunction is common among older men. Seek medical advice if ED is impacting your sexual performance.

Remember that our bodies go through changes as we get older. Things such as sex which seemed natural when we were in our twenties or thirties may become different or require us to adapt. Rather than look at this as a failure, I encourage the two of you to explore your partnership and see it as an opportunity to explore other types of sexual stimulation. Remember that it is about the journey and not about racing to an orgasm.

If in doubt, try something new. I guarantee you haven’t tried everything yet.