Fear is Ruining my Sex Life
Growing up in the 80s, fear of AIDS was huge, and definitely impacted my relationship with sex. I was never ever to truly enjoy it wholeheartedly, as I always had an ember of fear in the back of my brain. Still, I managed to perform well all the way through into my 30s...however, I felt something significantly change as I turned 40. I've become even MORE fearful..I have performance anxiety, fear of herpes and disease, and just a generalized malaise. I went to a urologist and he said I just had anxiety. I know it's not physical because I can get an erection when I masturbate...but now when I'm with a women, I'm constantly thinking about staying hard, which of course has the opposite effect. My last relationship ended because we stopped having sex... I just felt repelled by her sexually, I found it a horrible thought...and she was a very pretty girl! After that relationship, I feel less inclined to enter into another, it's just been miserable... WHat can I do to make the worrying stop?
This sounds more like an anxiety problem than a sexual problem. Fears of contracting disease can be a part of generalized anxiety disorder (tending to worry about everything), hypochrondiasis (worrying you have diseases you don't have) or obsessive compulsive disorder (fears you will get a disease and doing special things to try to prevent them). You should really see a psyhciatrist to both sort this out and see about treatment. Treatment really helps and can often be done with cognitive behavioral therapy alone, but if need be medication. Anxiety makes it difficult to maintain an erection, so you need to deal with the anxiety first and the rest will follow.
That you were "repelled" by someone you were in a relationship to the point that you stopped having sex (rather than feel more comfortable with them because the trust and familiarity grew) makes me think that some talk therapy around the issues of sex is warranted here. Yes, first see a psychiatrist about the anxiety for sure. If you don't feel significantly better, therapy with a sex therapist (maybe one with a psychoanalytic background) may be the answer. Good luck! Please write back and let us know how you are doing.