The Sphinx And Male Menopause

I swear, sometimes I have to pry information out of my husband with a crowbar. It's like living with the sphinx! If he's obviously troubled or feeling pain I have to work on him for a week to get him to tell me what the problem is. It isn't like he is afraid to complain: if he doesn't care for what we're having for supper he isn't shy about telling me. If he thinks that a movie we're watching together has turned absolutely sappy he'll form his index fingers into a cross and say "chick flick, chick flick!"

You'd figure that a guy like that would have absolutely no hesitation about revealing an ache or a pain, but my husband tends toward the stoic side when it comes to his health. It took me two weeks to get him to admit that there was a problem.

We hadn't had sex in a couple of weeks, and when we went to bed he had a bit of difficulty first achieving, and then maintaining his erection. He'd been putting up with a lot of stress at work and had been weary lately, so I told him that we should wait until another evening when he wasn't so tired. He was frustrated and apologetic, the dear man, and I told him to just relax.

But the next night he wanted to try again, and it almost seemed like he was trying to prove something to himself. He was acting nervous (like when we first got together) and we encountered the same problem as before. This time he couldn't deny the frustration because it was quite evident that he was angry. Then he went all quiet and didn't want to talk about it. He was moody for a few days after that, and I avoided mentioning what had happened.

A little more than a week passed by; we were having breakfast one morning and out of the blue he says "I think I might need to go see the doctor."

He told me that he had been feeling pretty down, and not just about the bedroom situation but about himself in general. He said that he had realized recently that he had been losing his temper a lot, and that he was feeling exhausted much of the time. He said that the problem in the bedroom was the last straw; he knew he needed to do something.

Well, he went to see the doctor the other day and the doctor explained to him about male menopause, which I admit I hadn't ever heard about before. The doctor told him that his testosterone level had naturally decreased over the years, very gradually, and now some of the effects were becoming evident. He told my husband that they'll arrange a series of shots for him that will return his testosterone to a more comfortable level, and that he could help matters by exercising a bit more and drinking a bit less beer.

When he told me I thought to myself "more exercise, less beer, I can help him on this!" So now we take a stroll together after dinner each evening and I've always got a pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade to offer him instead of his usual second beer each evening. We're working on this together. He still isn't the chattiest person when it comes to his health, but he spoke up when he needed to. What a guy!

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