Apart from the terrifying image of calling your doctor at 3 a.m. to report that your erection won’t go away (which is really exceedingly rare, and if it happens, a bucket of ice works great), the obvious downside is whether your partner wants to get intimate as often as you probably will. The drugs have led to changing how aging men and women view their roles as partners and the necessity of sex to ensure continued affection toward each other.
Because it (usually) takes two to have sex, a new kind of casualty post-ED drugs is now known as the Viagra Wife. While not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary, this is an increasingly common malady showing up at neighborhood canasta games and in divorce courts—aging wives accustomed and satisfied, thank you, with their naturally ebbing desire, now confronted with husbands raring to hop in the sack after Jeopardy every night. And if not with their wives, then with the woman who lives around the corner. No wonder wives (and the neighbor lady) are sore.
The Viagra Wife is far from a media invention, but very real and often very angry these days, says Lonnie Barbach, a San Francisco therapist and author of Going the Distance: Finding and Keeping Lifelong Love. “Some women in their fifties stopped having sex a while ago. They may have lost their sexual urge because of menopause, because of aging, because of a host of reasons. And now a guy says out of the blue, ‘I want to have sex!”’
“Excuse me?” is often her bewildered response, says Barbach.
The issues here are complex, but Barbach says that for many men a diminution of sex leading to infrequent or nonexistent lovemaking, often translates to a lack of touching between partners. “The guy might say, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t excite me,’ so as a women you pull back.” This becomes a pattern until the man comes home with a pack of Viagra tabs, pops one, gets an erection, and says, “Let’s go!”
It may or may not come as a surprise that the three ED pharmaceuticals have become the recreational drugs of choice among hard-partying college dudes, who might cop the drugs from their fathers’ medicine cabinet. But physicians say men in their 20s and 30s don’t need an assist in the first place. Like youth, these drugs are wasted on the young.
But who can blame guys out there seeking something to help them in the sack? The strange alliance of the Women’s Movement, the Cosmo girl, Sex in the City, Desperate Housewives, and Paris Hilton may share responsibility in prompting the New Woman to have demanded a higher level of sexual performance from her partner. Some women have come to expect a sexual athlete in bed. So what’s a mildly neurotic guy to do other than pop a pill to get an invitation back?
Barbach and Morgantaler say they have heard loads of tales from their patients of this new breed of Female Sexual Predator. So have I. One of my wife’s friends is Jennifer, a 34-year-old attorney, who makes no effort to hide her weekend bar crawls in search of “boy toys,” as she calls them. Jenn is not shy about discussing size, duration, and stamina. “Some women, especially younger women, are looking at the performance issue rather than creating a relationship,” says Barbach. “They want to try different things, they want to experiment.”
This is a problem?
???
Before you rush off to your physician for a free sample package, slick back your hair, and go trolling for Female Sexual Predators, you should know there are several things that these drugs won’t do.
The drugs won’t initiate an erection on its own. They will do absolutely nothing for a normal, healthy young man. No way will they make an erection larger or longer than it’s been in the past. Your penis is your penis, usually till death do you part. Learn to accept it, care for it, pay attention to it.
That’s Long Island therapist Joel D. Block’s advice. “When you’re young, it might not be a good idea to listen to your penis. But as you get older, the penis has a lot of wisdom. The penis talks to you. If you do take a pill, take it temporarily—until you work out the situation that is causing you to take it in the first place. From a biological point, Viagra works—but it works best if you really need it. The pharmaceutical companies don’t like to say this. They want every man to think the drug will make him into a stud—or that every man needs it. You very well might get a little boost with the drug. Will the sex be necessarily better? It might. It might not.”
For now, there’s Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis to choose from, but others assists may be on their way. In Europe, you can buy Uprima, manufactured by TAP Pharmaceuticals, designed to be taken under the tongue for very fast action (15 minutes or less). Uprima functions differently from the trio of ED drugs in that it doesn’t work on the hydraulics of an erection. Instead, it sends signals to the brain, which in turn, transmit impulses to your penis to begin to process of building an erection. The drug gets mixed reviews from American urologists and the FDA, and it’s unlikely to be available in the U.S., but can be purchased over the Internet.
Then there’s always the old standby, the herb yohimbe, made from bark of a West African tree, but you have to take it three times a day for at least a month (talk about spontaneity), and even then, only 15 percent of users say it works. One of the side effects is sweaty palms. No wonder. You’re so uptight after not having sex for so long that you start sweating whenever a woman looks your way.
???
The fact is that Americans today expect drugs to cure everything, so why not a remedy for a drooping dong? Pharmaceuticals have become part of our culture, whether it be Ritalin for our kids, Lipitor or Zocar for our hearts, Prozac for our depression, Ambien for our sleeplessness, Flonase for our sinuses, Ativan for our nerves, Prevacid for our heartburn. This, of course, is what drug companies want: that we buy and buy often. With ED drugs, it’s certainly easy enough.
Viagra samples come in six-packs (just like beer and abs—two other models of American machismo). Even the names of the drug trio are not-so-subtle reminders of pleasures to come. Viagra sounds like Niagara—a never-ending, powerful release of liquid. Levitra sounds like levitate (as in, to rise); le is the masculine pronoun and vie means life in French. Levitra reminds me of a Parisian bar where you walk in and within 10 minutes you’re having sex on the bathroom floor with a French chick who doesn’t shave under her arms, but is drop-dead gorgeous. I haven’t figured out Cialis yet, except that it’s pronounced “See Alice,” although I’m afraid to ask who Alice is or what she wants, even though I know she doesn’t live here any longer.
So do you pop one or not? It’s not a safety issue for most men out there; physicians agree the pills pose little health risk. What’s a guy to do? Do you buy into Mike Ditka’s macho challenge or that fetching brunette with the great eyes urging you to “stay in the game”?
Joel D. Bloch, the author of Sex Over 50 and Secrets of Better Sex, takes the middle road. “I don’t have an issue with experimenting with Viagra or the other ED drugs. I’m not against using them on occasion. I’m against relying on them or demeaning yourself by believing you absolutely need them to function. Again, some men do, but fewer than the medical community would have you believe.”
But Tony, can you keep down the racket? Do you have to wake up the whole neighborhood every night?
A version of this story first appeared in the Sunday Chicago Tribune.
—Photos Kaptain Kobold/Flickr, The Gifted Photographer/Flickr, Guy Verville/Flickr
Dawn, where do you get the impression that anyone said it was greedy or unfair for men to want to have great sex into old age? The truth is our bodies change as we get older. Often, in men and women, the simple physical feeling of desire is lessened with age. There seems to be a struggle beween the actual physical desire and the wanting of the actual physical desire. When I’m hungry I eat. When I am tired. I sleep. But when it comes to sex, it seems that we have so many products peddled to us to make… Read more »
I am utterly mystified by the attitude that it’s greedy or unfair for men to want to have great sex well into old age (and even disability, as you mention with drugs that inhibit erections).
“In exceedingly rare cases, men who take Viagra have reported that for a while they see the world with a bluish tint. (Great. My fantasy: making love to a blue-eyed woman with blue nipples.)” – author Avatar fans rejoice! 🙂 Henry, I took something different from the article then you did. I didn’t get the impression that the author was saying that ED drugs should never be used. I think he was just pointing out just how often they are unreasonably peddled. And how many men relay on ED drugs when they might not really even need it because they… Read more »
Bloom’s piece has to be the stupidest thing I’ve read in months. It’s an example of what we might call the “quick, fake expose involving no research,” and is probably a reason that Schools of Journalism shouldn’t be part of higher education. I’m a 65 year old university professor in great physical shape. I take a good amount of blood pressure medication, and you better believe I use Viagra. I’d rather take Cialis, but it’s not on my insurance’s formulary. I can get hard without it (sometimes) but it’s good insurance that things will go well. My wife is 61… Read more »
I was also bothered by the ablist implication that getting sick should mean goodbye erections, and you should like it too. Unhealthy people can’t just accept what their bodies can naturally do.
No question that intimacy is the most important of sex and a relationship. But when you don’t have intimacy, the best thing to do is love the one you’re with, as the song goes. By the way, Viagra gives me and my older brother chest pains, so those drugs aren’t for everyone. I still have a bottle I won’t use.
“Your penis is your penis, usually till death do you part. Learn to accept it, care for it, pay attention to it.” Great line from a great story. I find this whole ED thing more than mildly disturbing, like the stories of guys doing X and ED drugs together and going on some never ended sexual romp. Seems to me that sex is actually about a physical connection between two people that is certainly erotic but also emotional. Getting off, or even getting hard, is merely a side show for something more important. I am pretty sick of being bombarded… Read more »
So, you’re saying that having an erection is irrelevant to your sex life? That doesn’t really make sense to me.
Great article. Lots to keep in mind as I get older. I’m in my mid thirties and am happy to hear that these drugs won’t do anything for me. One less thing to think about. I don’t want to be that 60-year-old who wants to have sex out of the blue either. I think I’ll ask first.