Has anyone considered trying to date again?

General Discussion
#1

I’m about 10 years into this PFS issue (depressing when it dawns on me)

I’m not recovered but I am far far better than where i was for the first 4 years or so. Some days I feel better. I’ve kept a spreadsheet of symptoms for the last year. I’ve had a few days in the year where my mind was 100% better and i felt like living life again. I’ve had several stretches where I was doing very well. The low times are getting better too. It’s definitely not as bad day to day anymore even if on most days i’m still missing that full access to my mind and emotions and my libido. But I am getting to the point where fear and anxiety and embarrassment are starting to become a bigger discouragement than the complete inability to hold any kind of relationship.

I’m just wondering if anyone has started to consider it at all? I’d love to discuss this with people who actually understand what we’re dealing with.

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#2

I hope to get there. In my situation I don’t see a reason to date since its not going to lead anywhere. It’s frustrating. But maybe I will recover to some degree over the time as well so it might be possible again at some point.
I’m glad to hear that you are doing better. Keeps my hopes up.

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#3

Thanks for the response! Well, I’m also just trying to decide when is “ready?”

When you say the relationship won’t lead anywhere, what do you mean? Like emotionally, you wouldn’t be able to connect most of the time? all of the time? Or is it all a physical / sexual thing? Hope these aren’t too personal, but it’s difficult to be able to discuss and engage with anyone that can understand any of this

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#4

how are you sexually after 10 years?

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#5

Honestly it depends on the day or week. There are days where masturbation comes pretty easy. There are even rare days throughout the year where I feel extremely horny and can get aroused thinking of sex. I had a few days where I felt an attraction / crush for a coworker, and that’s a big breakthrough as I hadn’t felt that in a really long time, though it did fade in a day. I’d say the majority of the year, I probably could have sex even if my body isn’t totally demanding it. Though my erection is never as hard as I’d like by a mile, and there is a still some mind / body connection issues or maybe just plain arousal issues. Like my dick doesn’t have a mind of its own on most days like before pfs

I can compare it to the first 4 years or so of pfs and it is much much better. In those years even looking at a girl would make me feel sick in a way. I’d get a sinking feeling in my stomach. My whole body was numb at times but also feel very burdened at other times. And when i’d masturbate it gave me very little pleasure and a lot of times what came out was like a clear liquid, not viscous at all. I can at least say now masturbation gives me pleasure and I don’t have a lot of those really bad days anymore.

Oh and there are days where I just can’t maintain any kind of erection at all and it’s really difficult to ejaculate. Overall, I think if I had drugs like viagra or cialis, most of the days in a year would be days i could perform to some degree.

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#6

You mention a 4 year point a couple of times, after those 4 years did your improvements stop or was there a marked improvement at that time? I’m interested in hearing why that’s a significant point for you.

As for dating, I think you should consider it. It sounds like you want a relationship and will be capable of having a good time.

You could limit your fears by getting hold of some drugs to help you out while you build some confidence, but you could also consider some other things.

You could say up front - as early as possible that you want to take things slowly. You don’t need to say why. That will take some pressure off and just put that stuff to one side for a while.

You could also consider how you’d react if a partner said they couldn’t have sex sometimes. If you cared about them, you could put up with that. So maybe think does your partner care about you? If you’re not sure, then hold on.

Don’t give this a chance to become a mental problem.

Try to not create negative situations, either alone or with people. A few bad situations can become an expectation. Wait until you feel confident and able to have a good time. That way if the magic doesn’t happen one time, you’ll remember that it was OK the previous time.

In short try create the best chance to be successful so you know you can be before you take chances. Make sure the relationship is solid so if it does go wrong you’ll be able to deal with it together rather than trying to tough it out alone. If you’re getting on well, explain what happened to you, perhaps.

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#7

What percentage of days of the year do you consider that you are normal?
Also, have you taken any SSRI or psychiatric medication all this time?

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#8

Thanks for the advice, Greek! This is the kind of relationship advice I was looking for. How to start. I think having some meds would be great, but I’m somewhat embarrassed about asking for them. One doctor i asked years ago thought all this was in my head and tried to discourage me from trying meds as he thought they’d make me dependent on the meds. I pushed and got some once and man, the pharmacist just made it so awkward. Like asking if i knew the side effects and i just said i did and then she awkwardly was like “Oh…so you do know the side effects…Oh so you’ve…um…had this before…” it was terrible.

Lingering questions are similar to a mass email i just got from propeciahelp. How do we know to what degree we can possibly have healthy children? I know that’s so far down the line in a relationship, but at my age (almost 40) women are thinking about that. I have no idea what the answer is to that question and it’s scary to even think about.

Concerning the question about 4 years, that’s just when i remember it starting to get better rapidly. I think i have a post about it on here somewhere. I think I remember it was 2015 or so and I had dealt with this starting around 2011-2012 sometime. And I’d had temporary recoveries before that lasted maybe 4 or 5 days but I just recall a period in 2015 where I was starting to feel a ton of anxiety about this all. That was actually a “good” sign as my brain was starting to return as I’ve dealt with anxiety since college and i needed meds for it. Once pfs started, i felt so blank mentally I no longer needed meds. I just couldn’t feel anything. I recall my testicles just starting to feel different again and things were just getting clearer as well. My vision was becoming more focused and life started having like a more HD quality to it. I then remember taking some nyquil to sleep and waking up and I had a temporary recovery and my mind was so clear. It faded eventually but I never went back to as bad as it was prior to that point. Like just a complete mental and physical numbness that was all encompassing. At that time the only thing i’d been doing was extreme dietary restrictions and probiotics and taking cold showers and trying to do sprints when I exercised. I remember several days where I thought any moment now this would all be over. I gradually backed off the diet and probiotics (at least to some degree with the probiotics) because it was so difficult to maintain a social life when i was treating everything that was not explicitly on the paleo list as if it was poison. It was just really tough. Anyway, that’s just why i specifically remember the point about 4 yrs in.

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#9

Finaduta

I actually kept a spreadsheet about it which I recommend everyone do. “Normal” as in my mind or body is 100% or extremely extremely close to it? Maybe 1% of the days. Like out of a year maybe 4 days or so. Spontaneously through the years I’ve had full on temporary recoveries, many over the last decade especially in that first 4 years but they happened with no predictability.
Now if you mean what percentage of the days do i feel pretty good? Like higher than a normal baseline for me for pfs? about 10% more through the year. Like the equivalent of 5-6 weeks.

The other like 80% of the time, I’m just at what I feel is a normal baseline. Nothing particularly good or bad exactly. Still masturbating maybe once a day or once every other day.

Then I’d say about 10% of the year I don’t feel very good. Like my penis feels likes it’s receded into my body, I can’t maintain any kind of erection even just watching porn and trying to masturbate, my mind and brain just feels like there’s something very much missing there, like a deficiency in the ability to feel anything, and I just feel either really fat and bloated and can’t exercise very well, or I have terrible acid reflux and have trouble sleeping very deeply at all. That percentage used to be way higher and the feeling during this time was far worse in the past.

The spreadsheet really helps bring at least some degree of predictability to the occurrences. I can see like one day I remember really feeling horny for one of my coworkers, when was that and how long did it last for? And then the days that I was feeling terrible, how long did it last? I’m noticing the bad days are passing a lot quicker than I in my mind am thinking they do

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#10

Wow thank you for your answer.

What about SSRI and antidepressants? You have been taking them?

#11

Oh forgot to answer that. I had prior to pfs. After pfs I just stopped. A few years ago i was going through a heavy amount of stress and was just bogged down with obsessions. Actually i think it might have been maybe twice in the last 4 years or so. I strongly considered going back on them. I believe I posted here about it and a lot of the guys kind of told me that they wouldn’t do it. I didn’t feel like I could hold on without something but luckily the obsessions decreased as time went on and I was able to avoid them. So long story short, no i don’t take them anymore but there have been at least two times in the last several years where i was extremely close.

#12

Sorry to hear that.

I can understand the embarrassment factor, definitely, I wonder if you could hand over a note with your prescription. “I understand what this product is, the side effects and doses. This is embarrassing for me.” Would that be better or worse? I’m not sure. But people will collect medication all day long they are uncomfortable with. Maybe that pharmacist keeps thinking back to how they got that interaction wrong. I am confident that is not the typical experience.

We do know that people here have fathered children who are healthy. It’s been asked and answered a few times over the years. I can’t say categorically, but I wouldn’t spend any time worrying about it.

As for how to start, I think you could say on a dating profile that you want to take things slow and that would be enough. You could give any reason you like for this, be it emotional, spiritual, practical, etc, etc. It’s 100% your decision, if you flip it around and said that someone you dated had to be intimate with you after X amount of time, you’d be rightly shot down by everyone everywhere. So, don’t feel like you need to do anything or need to feel apologetic.

I’d spend some time googling to see what there is out there for people not looking for a hook up and see what comes up*. It might mean that it takes a while longer, but you can create a profile or two and forget about it/ them and have them hopefully working on your behalf in the background while you go about your normal life.

*I did Google this and there are a lot of articles, so it’s not like you’re the only person who might be considering this.

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#13

Hey man

I am also a ten year sufferer at 36 years old and with the way things currently stand for me I can say that I’m literally at the same level you are. I could date if I wanted to go into it knowing that I’ll need to try real hard and be constantly worrying about it. That I’ll be flipping a coin as far as hoping I’m having “one of those good few days” erection wise when I need it and even then I’ll feel as if I’ll perform average at best erection wise which would be on a good day. And even then on one of these good days erection wise the poor ejaculation quality and quantity will have me feeling shitty with the result. So it just really kills the whole thing and makes it so going back to dating is more of a stressful worrisome event rather then being something that I enjoy . But if I wanted to put up with that I could go back to dating with maybe some success right at the beginning anyway especially with cialis. But I don’t see the success being sustainable for long. This is my best answer to your question and I probably should do it even if I’m going into it knowing that it will ultimately fail. In other words just go for that one time successful hookup and knowing that best case scenario this is what it will be. This would be healthier then no dating/relationship/ sex period.

The other thing that I don’t like will be that in order to make it work even one pretty good time I’ll likely have to do it with no protection and no protection is what resulted in me getting a prostate infection many years ago that led to me taking Dut. Saw P after that is what gave me PFS but that’s not the point. The point is that I would never want to be in a situation again where I have to choose between complete urinary retention and taking Dut. Imagine after all this….

For all of these reasons is why I stopped dating. Pretty sad and pathetic actually now that you have me talking about it in this much detail haha

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#14

Thanks, Greek, great advice

I actually didn’t know people here have fathered healthy children! That’s great to hear. In a way that lowers a lot of my anxiety about this.

And if you have any particular articles you found on this subject that you thought are insightful, feel free to share. I really do appreciate your honest and supportive advice

#15

Hey 5-alpha-victim

I’m sorry to hear about all that. It sounds like we’re in a similar place physically like you said. Hopefully, you’ll find the desire soon to get out there and at least try, even with all the negative stuff you mentioned. I think it’s easy for us to focus on all the negative stuff we predict will happen, and maybe Greek is right and we need to just be upfront about taking it slow and try to find the right situation for each of us to be happy. I think there probably is the right lady out there for each of us that isn’t perfect but is willing to work through some of our issues. Finding that person may or may not happen and putting up with the obstacles until we find them will be challenging, but it might be worth it. I’m not sure if i’m trying to convince you or myself on that.

In the future, if you ever were offered the choice to take a 5ar again, you can always reject doing it. Hopefully, you’ll never be in that situation again

As far as being pathetic, well, we’re all there on a lot of days. Glad we at least have each other to discuss this with. Literally no one else understands any of this

#16

Yea

Unfortunately last time I was in a relationship and sexually active my prostate became so enlarged that I could not urinate for three days. That’s so painful that your options are limited so unless antibiotics are fixing it then you would have to take it unless you wanted surgery. And when it comes to surgery that reduces the size of your prostate the almost guaranteed perm side effect from the surgery is all the PFS like ejaculation type stuff. So options would be limited. No way am I keeping erection if I wear protection. Obviously I most likely won’t get insane prostate enlargement again but I can’t help but worry about being in that position . I would much rather just get everything working properly or close to properly again. But if I could accomplish this we wouldn’t even be having this conversation….

Shitty situation

#17

Wow that is an absolutely awful situation. I hope something changes for you

#18

I was just thinking about it all and there are several parts of successfully dating that are giving me anxiety, for fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, but one gives me more anxiety than the others:

Having a talk with a date about “So tell me about your last relationship…”

Those talks are usually about relationships in the last year possibly even two. It’s just unusual for someone to sit out dating for this long and even thinking about it now, my heart starts to race. At that point, it’s probably less embarrassing to just make something up and say I’ve never dated anyone because I’m waiting til marriage (not true at all) but it’s less difficult to explain that than it is all this mess. Or maybe I just say it was awhile ago and I don’t really want to talk about it?

#19

Well my prostate has been fine for the last 14 years and when it very quickly became severely enlarged at age 22 I was having sex twice per day and the second time it would last upwards to 30 min each day and it was always unprotected. Also I’m pretty sure the girl had some type of STD that falls in the bacterial infection category of STD’s. Because bacterial infections get the prostate gland and it’s hard for antibiotics to get to the infection it can be difficult for antibiotics to get it. And this is a very acute prostate infection I experienced. Acute meaning comes on very quickly and is severe but goes away once you can finally kill the infection and is not a cronic long term issue. So in reality all I likely needed was multiple rounds of antibiotics and not dut for a 22 year old lol…Dut is for cronic long term prostate growing problem . The urologist was stupid . The cocktail of antibiotics reduced the swelling of the prostate gland and I could urinate again . The Dut likely did nothing other then temporarily lower my DHT probable not even for a long enough time period of time to shrink my prostate.

So I’m not expecting these problems again and if I ever did I would attack the hell out of it with antibiotics and choose death before I took Dut to treat it

There is this 20 something year old girl at my gym who I’m getting friendly with and I know she wants it. She’s pretty much telling me. I’m tempted to say F it double up on cialis, use the bath mate prior and I know it would probably work out. I would regain some of the lost confidence which is the main reason why I want to do it. But In reality it wouldn’t change anything or get me recovered which is what I truly want

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#20

You could say you were concentrating on something else, that you are really picky and were waiting for someone to drop into your lap and it never happened, or that your last relationship put you off for a long time, or pretty much any reason.

I wouldn’t personally expect to be asked about that right away. Might be different where you live.

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