Dear selfcontained87:

When you are engaged sexually with your current partner, the sexual arousal energy builds up in you, climbing up toward the goal of discharge in orgasm. As the energy builds up, the fear ATTACHED to it also builds up. As the fear climbs up, you get overwhelmed and dissociate so to protect yourself from the overwhelm. You block your sexual arousal in effort to block the fear attached to it/ coupled with it. Once you block- your erection is made impossible.

The solution, looking it rationally (meaning… easy to say, difficult to do)- is to remove the fear from the sexual arousal. so when you get aroused, you don’t get overwhelmed. I think that further talking with your partner might help, and do let him know you need such talks to be limited (the concern you wrote about)- and in future sexual activities, you may want to experiment with not having erection as a goal and experiment with arousal without the pressure of erection and …. build from there.

anita