by PAUL BYERLY | Jul 24, 2025 | Sex Problems
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4f0hCa1
Every man has times he does not get erect as fast or as fully as he wants. When not getting hard enough for intercourse becomes the norm, that’s a problem.
The good news is there are ways to make any penis erect. The bad news is what’s causing the problem could be life-threatening. So go tell your doctor about the issue, and get checked. No, really, do it. Dead men have no sex. Your doctor can also help with solutions.
Drugs are a common choice for dealing with ED. Be aware Viagra® and other such drugs don’t make you erect, they simply allow you to get erect normally. So you will need to do what ever you did before.
Both Viagra® and Cialis® are now available in generic versions that cost far less, and Amazon Pharmacy has great prices. Note that Viagra® requires time to work, and only lasts a short time. Cialis® is good for up to 36 hours, so if you take one daily, you can have sex when you like.
A simple solution if you have weak erections, or get hard and then soften during sex, is a penis ring. A penis pump will give you an erection if you have a heart beat, with a ring being used to keep you hard. However, such an erection hinges where it meets the body. Some men find this annoying, some have no issue with it. With a bit of practice, you can have intercourse just fine with a pump created erection.
Beyond getting an erection, you can have mutually satisfying sex without one. Oral sex works well on a soft penis, as will manual with some practice. And a strong vibe will get any guy there.
No guy looks forward to ED, but it’s neither life ending nor sex life ending. Accept it as a medical condition, deal with it, and keep enjoying sex together.
~ This is Paul, sometimes Doing Sex Well requires a bit of help.
A view of our community garden in the morning. We have corn, beans, potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic for the people, plus sunflowers and amaranth for the animals.
The blue chair is Lori’s favourite place to be.
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Jul 23, 2025 | Sex Problems
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4eYAmGU
I was going to cover both premature ejaculation and erectile difficulty today. But it made for a massive post, so I will do it as two posts, and add a Saturday post this week.
Premature ejaculation, or PE, is generally defined as always climaxing within a minute of the start of intercourse. Only lasting a couple of minutes, or sometimes taking less than a minute, are not PE, and can be dealt with by learning more self-control. And/or by having sex more often as infrequent sex will make any guy faster.
PE is probably genetic. Men with PE show differences in the brain, especially areas involved in sexual response, emotion, and cognitive control. In other words, he can’t help it, and he can’t will it away.
The various treatments for PE add a couple of minutes to how long a man lasts. It may not be long enough for her to climax, but it allows the couple to enjoy a few minutes of intercourse. If he can stay hard after climax, that may be enough for her. Or, if they put a vibe between their bodies, that can help her climax after he does.
Off label prescriptions of SSRI’s are one option. Talk to your doctor. Dapoxetine is a common choice as it has a short half life and few side effects. A numbing cream can add about the same duration. I’ve heard good things about Promescent. Several studies have shown similar time gains when men do pelvic floor exercises.
The real challenge with PE is how a couple deals with it. If you both accept this is what you have to work with, and look for ways to make sex great, you will do fine. Getting upset or blaming will hurt your sex life and your marriage.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that sex looks different for every couple.
This is why sunset is my favourite colour!
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Jul 22, 2025 | Sex Problems
Podcast: https://bit.ly/410F6Gi
Lack of desire and mismatches in sexual desire are probably the most common sexual complaints in marriages. One spouse has no interest, or has far less interest than the other. And so they argue. One is upset by the lack of sex, the other is tired of being pushed for sex.
I’ve avoided genders here because it’s far more common than most folks know for the “higher drive” spouse to be the wife. Experts suggest that may be the case in more than a quarter of marriages.
I’m going to suggest that a lack of desire isn’t really a problem. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.
Sexual desire is great. That longing to be intimate, that pull to be sexual, is wonderful. It’s also unnecessary for a great sex life.
Sex is an amazing thing that gives us physical, emotional, mental, and relational pleasure. Even better, we get to share all that with the person we love most.
A sex drive invites us to experience all that pleasure, but we don’t have to feel an urge for sex to have it and enjoy it. We can choose to engage in sex because we know we will enjoy it once we start. If our spouse knows how to arouse us, their desire for sex is enough. If you know how to arouse each other, you don’t need any desire. You could just decide to have sex because you know you will both enjoy it. What could be more romantic than deciding to enjoy each other?
I think most of the arguing about sex is actually about control. We’ve been told we need to say no unless we’re also hot for sex. We’ve been warned about being “used”. We’ve even been told we are allowing ourselves to be abused if we don’t push back against our spouse’s desire to enjoy sex regularly. I think these are lies of the enemy intended to keep us frustrated and to hurt our marriages. And I hate that so many people accept those lies as wisdom.
I realise this will be seen as a radical idea. Personally I find it simple, logical, and biblical.
Of course, this won’t work if one of you is always tired or stressed. But that’s a life and marriage problem that has nothing to do with sex. It won’t work if your marriage is a mess, but that’s something you should be working on. And it won’t work if your spouse doesn’t know how to turn you on. But you can teach them that.
~ This is Paul, and Doing Sex Well might require a change of perspective.
BTW, if you are a higher drive wife, I highly recommend J Parker’s book The Higher Desire Wife: Understanding and Help for Christian Women Navigating Mismatched Sex Drives
Our (adopted) granddaughter joined Lori in the garden the other day.
She is all about the garden, and is learning to spread mulch.
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Jul 21, 2025 | Sex Problems
Podcast: https://bit.ly/3TLPVrX
I’m going to talk about sexual problems all this week. Some of you think that’s great, and some of you are thinking of skipping the week. I’ve had folks complain I make everything about sex. In fact, I’m doing that much less with this blog than with my past blogs.
Still, sex is a part of marriage, and a healthy happy marriage requires a healthy, happy sex life. Sexual issues are a major factor in marriage dissatisfaction, and they play a part in many divorces. So it’s something we need to discuss if we want to Do Marriage Well.
Part of the difficulty is our society is weird about sex. We both exaggerate and downplay sex. We are obsessed, and fearful, often at the same time.
The church is even worse. It’s getting better, but we still have an unbiblical relationship with sex.
Because of this, Christians don’t always get help when sex isn’t working right. Lori and I have dealt with couples who suffered for years when a very simple change was all they needed. This always makes me sad, and I feel an obligation to do what I can to prevent others from similar struggles.
So this week we will talk about ED and PE. We will discuss desire issues and the inability to orgasm when you want to. We will talk about how age and menopause change sex, and how porn and erotica can derail sex.
If you don’t have any of these issues, great. I suggest you still read along so you have a head start if any of them crop up down the road.
~ This is Paul, and Doing Sex Well is not always as easy as we’d like.
Saturday was tree day at our place. In addition to four small dead trees, we took out three living ones that threatened homes. The one in this image that is about to hit the ground was looming over my house.
It’s hard work, but with three guys, two chain saws, and a tractor, it’s not too bad.
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Jul 18, 2025 | It's You
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4lDG6sn
When it comes to sex, “It’s about you” is a huge issue.
We each come into marriage with sexual expectations. Perhaps there is some sinful premarital experience behind that. Or it might be full of wrong ideas we got from porn or romance novels. Friends and popular media also fill us with ideas. And some of it is our imaginations.
If those sexpectations are not too many, and we hold them loosely, there’s a chance to build a good sex life with our spouse, who brings his or her own sexpectations. But all too often, a couple has a clash of sexpectations that causes frustration, fighting, or worse.
The problem is when we decide our expectations are the right way to do sex. If our spouse has done the same with their different expectations, we are at an impasse. He feels cheated if there is no oral sex, and she feels disrespected if there is. She expects soft lighting, and he wants enough light to clearly see every inch of her body. She wants loving words, while he desires passionate slang. He thought sex would be driven and hard, while she has always envisioned soft, slow sex.
None of those things are wrong. Some of it won’t work for some folks, but honestly, more of that is about expectations than most of us want to admit.
If you both had come into marriage with a list of things you wanted to try in bed, you could have found the common ones and done well. Then you could have played with things just outside that common ground, and grown. But if either of you came in with a list of must-haves, you had problems. If you both had must have lists that didn’t overlap well, there were probably fireworks of the wrong kind.
If you’ve been married for years, you may wonder how any of this matters today. But it does. Are you still upset that something you expected never happened, or only happens on rare occasions? Have you found common ground, or are you living a compromise that makes neither of you happy?
If you want to address this, sit down together and lay all your cards on the table. Not just what you want, but why you want it. Confess any sin behind that preference being created. That could be seeing it in porn, reading it in a romance novel, or doing it with your high school crush.
Also discuss why you don’t want to do things your spouse wants, and again any sin behind why. That could be a previous sex partner who did it and hurt or offended you, or asked for it all the time till you hated even the idea of it.
If you can be honest and see each other’s reality, there’s a chance for change.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Sex Well looks different for every couple.
It was a hard day.
But it was a good day!
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Jul 17, 2025 | It's You
This post may seem the opposite of what I’ve been saying this week, but stick with me.
While we are 100% responsible for the choices we make, the reality is others can cause us to do or not do things. Matthew 18:6 says we can cause others to sin. 1 Kings 14:16 and other passages talk about how the sins a king caused Israel to sin.
If your spouse hurts you or sins, it’s not all about you. But odds are you played a part.
This is not blaming the victim. It’s asking each spouse to look at what they may have contributed to a situation gone wrong. Be honest, if you wanted to anger your spouse, couldn’t you do so easily? They should ignore what you would say or do, but none of us do that perfectly.
When a man or woman cheats on their spouse, at some point in the healing, we must ask the wronged husband or wife to consider what they may have done to contribute to the sinful choice. This does not change what their spouse did, or what they need to do to fix things. But if the wronged spouse contributed to the problem, they must deal with their part.
When the cheated spouse refuses to even consider they might have some part in a problem, the marriage is probably over. On the other hand, when both spouses are willing to be honest and make needed changes, the marriage can end up better than it was.
The same dynamics are true for smaller, less destructive difficulties.
~ This is Paul, and Doing Marriage Well means accepting your part in any difficulty.
It’s bird musical chairs time!
The new chickens are outgrowing the brooder. So we have moved the quail to new cages, and will clean up their cage for the chickens. Then we move the turkeys outside, making even more room for the chickens.
And on it goes.
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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