My story is a distressing and, I believe, outrageous one.

I am an old man now and married at the age of 25. Neither my wife or I had had any prior sexual experience. I very quickly discovered that sex was a matter that would occupy a very small part in our marriage because my wife seemed to feel that it was only something to be indulged in once in a blue moon. I got very frustrated, and fought aginst this for years, but to no avail. At the same time my always intermittent inability to achieve satisfactory erections gradually turned into total failure. About the same time (8 years after our marriage) I had a horrifically traumatic employment crisis, and sex came to an abrupt end. Five years later, amazingly, it was my wife who suggested that I seek treatment. Accordingly, I visited a doctor in london whose clinic was fairly widely advertised. Amazingly, the consultations were free, but when, after a number of visits, during which the doctor recommended the masters/johnson "sensory focus" method, I was virtually told to try to live with the problem. Needless to say, the situation was not halped by the fact that whereas the doctor recommended more frequent sexual encounters my wife came away from one session, and said: I think I would prefer not to have sex for the next couple of months. At this point I gave up trying to solve the problem, and as a result sexual activity rapidly declined between us until penile/vaginal sex became completely impossible. This was in my late forties. Since then the only sexual activity has been very occasional cunnilingus, but fellatio is a an absolutely taboo subject with my wife.

While my wife's early disinterest may have been a factor in the problem, I was outraged that my own gp treated the problem with even greater disinterest. I have thus lived my life more less as a monk, but am utterly disgusted that nowhere have I found the basic cause of my problem, as to whether it was physical or psychological. I feel that I have completely missed out on a fundamental pleasure of life.

Have many other men had similar experiences?