Soul searching - light bulb moment

🍆 Erection issues
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Hi all I’ve been using mojo because of ED and PE issues that had been affecting my relationship … I joined days before my partner decided to dump me. This was around a month ago.

Since then my use of the app has been infrequent partly because of how busy I’ve been but I’ve also been doing a lot of soul searching.

Emotional soul searching …

I feel my partner left me because she gets overwhelmed with her feelings and stress and feels like she has to escape. This is the third time we’ve split up and each time I’ve had an overwhelming feeling we should be together and wanting her back which I’ve never experienced.
She suffered from anxiety around my ED and PE and I buried my head around it because I didn’t want to lose her by being open about it being maybe an anxiety or something in my head.

I guess because she’s left me before I was worried she would leave me again and didn’t feel comfortable and safe.

At no point have I put boundaries in place or said how her leaving has made me feel.

Anyways I think on some level we both avoid emotional discussions for different reasons - but ultimately linked to protecting ourselves.

She would shut down and not communicate how she feels or what she’s going through and I think this could cause uncertainty or anxiety by not communicating her needs of independence but also me burying my own emotions and needs I have just been going along with things in an effort to people please instead of sort my own needs out.

Somehow I have ended up speaking to a female colleague who has expressed her interest - she has straight away been open and honest about some of her demons and past issues.
Something that was refreshing to hear …

Tonight we were talking and she was very vulnerable and honest about how she gets overwhelmed in a relationship and how she needs her independence - she ultimately expressed her needs … and she was clear with what she required and explained why she might push a potential partner away

All I could think about was my ex partner and how if she was this open and honest with her feelings all would be good in the world.

The female work colleague is a beautiful girl and person but I still feel I’m in love with my ex

Anyways when my work colleague was talking openly about her emotions and needs

I suddenly got the biggest erection I’ve had for quite a while and sustained it for the majority of the conversation …

Is this telling me I need an emotionally available woman and one that isn’t is the root of my issues or is this more about me rather than the both of them ??
It shocked me just how intense the erection was

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Your experience really resonated with me. I’ve experienced ED and PE for years and buried my head in the sand and didn’t communicate with my wife about it, it ended up effecting our marriage so much to the point where we wouldn’t really ever talk about anything real. I’d shut down, she’d shut down in response. We went to couples therapy, not to address the ED and PE and sexual intimacy issues, but to address the communication. Now we talk about everything, our relationship is better than ever, and the knock on effect is our sex is now great.

Bottom line is what was missing was communication. Now that we’re improving that the sexual intimacy is improving alongside it, as well as my erections and anxiety related to me PE.

I think you’re right that you need an emotionally available woman. But what you also need is to be emotionally available to her. Talk, communicate about everything, be completely open, listen to her with a goal of really hearing and understanding, and talk to her with a goal of her really understanding you. The rest will fall into place.

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Any tips from your therapy how best to start this communication when you’ve been stuck for a few years? What goes through your mind to help make the first step?

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Thanks for sharing this. I think communication is a missing link for many of us on here.

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The first step for me was just telling her that I wanted to talk and acknowledging that I had not been communicating with her. I had incredible anxiety at the thought of taking that first step, but once I’d done it it felt like a big hurdle that I’d gotten over.

The therapy was invaluable. We used a communication approach called ‘couples dialogue’, which taught us to talk and listen with the goal of truly hearing and understanding. The person talking has the floor and the person listening just listens and mirrors back what they’ve heard and understood, to check that they have understood accurately. The person listening doesn’t respond with their opinions or thoughts or ideas or anything, they just continue to listen and mirror back until they have completely understood the person talking. It’s incredibly powerful and really opened up our communication.

For me, I learnt I had pretty bad anxiety related to communication, and my go-to response to my anxiety was avoidance, essentially avoiding communicating. So I had to learn to push past this anxiety, communicate, and learn that communication is actually safe and positive, and over time my anxiety around communicating has reduced. A big part of that was my wife being on board with what I found difficult and allowing me time and space to learn and grow and practise communicating.

I’m not sure if that answers your question, I hope it does. Have a look at couples dialogue on line, it’s a good place to start. And if you think communication in your relationship needs some work I highly recommend seeking some couples therapy, it worked wonders!!

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Thanks for this , much appreciated. I will look into that. You did answer my question.