Psychological ED Success Story: Coaching

Case study of a Psychological ED Coaching Client

Stephen T., 2023

Setting the Stage

I started working with Brian because I found myself in a difficult situation, one where I couldn’t see a way forward on my own. I’d been married to my beautiful wife, Veronica for about six months, and had an expectation that our “honeymoon” phase would be similar to a long-term (unmarried) relationship I had years prior. That relationship ended after ~8 years with a failed engagement. I always say that “she started [the breakup], and I ended it.” I never felt like I wanted to resurrect that relationship. That said, over the subsequent 5+ years of being single in my late twenties and early thirties, I missed our most compatible feature: frequent, regular, satisfying sex. My ex and I met in college and grew together sexually, such that we seemed to satisfy each other’s sexual wants in a supremely compatible way. Living in a small apartment together during the last 3 years of our relationship—in our mid-twenties—seemed like what a honeymoon phase is supposed to be: sex 6 days a week, oftentimes twice a day, never forced, always satisfying for both. As strapping athletes, we enjoyed the “sport” that sex became. Many things changed for me after our breakup. I dabbled in dating, enjoying first and second dates most of all. All novel, all fun, all discovery, all light and airy, no commitment. I tried online dating and then app-based dating. An infinite variety of local women created an environment with even less commitment, where I found myself chatting with 10+ women at any given time. There was no need for a single woman to satisfy all my interests when I could have one who loves poetry, one who is a CrossFit champion, one who likes things I like, one who doesn’t, one who is more conservative, one more liberal, eyes/hair/nails of green, brown, blue…

Turn Ons & Turn-Offs

It's worth noting, too, that what “turns me on” and “turns me off” is very visual and situational. I’m very attracted to athletic women, which dovetails with the fact that a woman’s overarching confidence is a primary trigger to get me excited. Maximally, a woman with supreme confidence and/or “superiority” really turns me on. But I’m also inclined to “white knight syndrome,” which leads me to women who are or have been broken and want a safe and steady person to lean on. I’ve only ever fallen in love with women who share this characteristic, as I’m floored by the reservoir of strength and depth of character that comes from growing through extremely challenging and/or traumatic experiences. But that brokenness often leaves a woman less confident and more submissive sexually, in my experience. So, it’s often the case that what turns me on most directly isn’t so often found in a woman that I fall in love with.

Marriage & Religion

Back to marriage. As an increasingly devout Catholic Christian, I met Veronica on a Christian dating app after years of dabbling. Frankly, I’d lost hope in the apps for the reasons already mentioned, and I’d taken a few months off. But it was COVID, so I figured I’d wither on the vine if I didn’t try again. I did, and Veronica and I dated first at a distance and then in person before we were engaged and married in under 2 years’ time. We both had sexual pasts and both believed in reclaiming our innocence, so we stayed as chaste as we could during our dating life together. We made out for hours on end like teenagers… Those were beautiful times.

The Struggle Begins

Having sex into marriage became a struggle for me. I started using Viagra from that first night together—out of fear and anxiety for being so long away from intercourse—though I found that I was taking too low a dose at the outset—out of fear of the medication itself—to make any significant difference. I had to masturbate in front of her to get enough of an erection to penetrate, something I never once had to do with my long-term ex. Over the next few weeks, sex quickly became an enervating, distasteful chore rather than a beautiful coming together. I started questioning everything: Is there something physically wrong with me? Veronica is so sexy… She has what I would’ve always considered a “fantasy” body. Why am I not turned on enough to get stiff at the sight of her? I ended up taking a higher dose of Viagra to “guarantee” an erection, which even then only guaranteed a headache before a mediocre sexual experience. ED medications do not increase arousal, which I learned after the fact, but having that “back up” helped at least set a foundation for the sexual experience, one that developed into a somewhat-successful routine. Still, I didn’t want to be dependent on medications for the rest of my life, so I figured I’d try some sort of sex therapy. I had a couple sessions with a couple virtual therapists, but I thought my mind was too complex to take the time/years to develop a relationship that would bear fruit. I figured there had to be a better, more efficient way.

Coaching

And there was, with Brian and Boston Hypnosis. He’s not a hypnotist, at least not in the way that I thought of archetypal hypnotists with the swinging watch. Instead, Brian uses a number of techniques to get at the “root” issue regarding whatever it is his client is dealing with. For me, Brian walked me through what I’ll call “exercises” and “meditations” to consider what it really was that was causing my less-than-reliable erections, and then consider how my expectations affect performance.

I realized over time that it wasn’t me or my wife that was the “problem,” but my expectations for 100%-all-the-time-perfect-and-pleasurable performance. I was comparing my brand-new marital relationship to that long-term relationship from my twenties, with all the stellar sex. And I heaped on doses of self-judgment when things didn’t go as expected. The reality was that I’d entered a different stage of life with a different woman with a wholly different set of histories, desires, wants, and expectations. And because we remained relatively chaste during our relatively brief dating life, my now-wife and I were just starting to discover what turned us on. Not being immediately 100%-absolutely-over-the-top- stimulated meant that I was 0% stimulated, like a zero-sum game. That’s the reality my mind—or as Brian help me discern, just one piece of my mind—spun for itself.

As Brian and I workshopped over the course of a few months, I came to realize that I was simply not turned on as often as I had been in my unmarried, sex-as-sport-with-the-ex twenties. He helped me realize that there are an inordinate number of reasons why this is, but the reasons don’t matter as much as the expectations behind being “turned on.” This realization really helped me start to honor the gift that I’d prepared for years and given to my wife in marriage, as sex has evolved into a selfless act rather than one that only gives me validation (i.e. I’m a powerful man, check out my giant penis ready to go all the time no matter what) or self- pleasure. Instead, as my wife and I continue to grow in our marital sex lives, we find selfless rhythms that work for both of us, and we end up receiving so much more than we give.

Learning & Results

Working with Brian led me to the realization that at least part of what I found very difficult and a turn off at the beginning of our marriage is my wife’s sexual brokenness from years of trauma. As her sexual partner, I can very easily and inadvertently thwack! some of those emotionally tender places still sore from past events. When I do, I get turned off and my penis follows, as I don’t want to cause her pain. But as I am increasingly more tender there, she continues to heal. I am performing well consistently, and I continue to satisfy a place for her that no one else can or ever did. Talk about true validation and true self-pleasure (and a turn-on) through selflessness, and what’s become an increasingly beautiful sexual relationship. Thank God!

And thanks to Brian for helping me first delineate between and then bridge my deep, powerful, simpler, sexual brain with my overthinking, anxious, adrenaline-pumping brain. It’s the latter, left brain that keeps the former, right brain down and on the back bench. Brian helped me not treat the left brain as an enemy… It just wants to help, after all. But it’s a beautiful thing to let the right brain take the reins in the sexual space, as sex is a right-brained activity if ever there was one.

Recommendations

If you haven’t used ED medication before, I suggest starting with Brian before you do, as the feeling they provide (when you’re turned on) is tough to abandon down the line. If you use them now, it’s ok as long as you use them responsibly. But if you haven’t come to place where you understand exactly why you use them, then I strongly suggest you get Brian on the line to help you through this season in your life. Your future self will thank you for it, as will your spouse/partner. I can’t say that I’ll never struggle with sex again, as I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But I don’t think I’ll struggle in the same way, as I understand and “feel” so much more about what’s going on in my mind and in my body than I did before working with Brian and Boston Hypnosis. It was money and time well spent.