Not hard enough

[PancanBoy]

My girlfriend and I have been fooling around, doing hand and oral stuff, and recently we decided to have sex. There was a problem, though. I couldn't get hard enough to penetrate. No matter what, it just wasn't working. A few days later we tried again. Finally I made it in and we had sex. Upon changing positions, however, I lost my hardness and couldn't make it back in. It seemed like I needed almost constant stimulation to keep it up. Is it possible that masturbation (which I did a lot of before dating her) could have caused this? How do I fix it?

[Karyn]

Unless you seriously injured yourself somehow through masturbation, it's not at all likely that that's the issue here. What's much more likely - and this is not at all unusual - is that you maybe had a bit of nervousness going on, and that can really have an impact on physical arousal. It can take a few (or more!) times to get comfortable with any new sexual activity, and as you and your partner gain experience with each other and figure out what works for your two unique bodies together, you'll probably find that this doesn't happen as often.

It's worth keeping in mind though that bodies not responding the way we'd like them to happens pretty regularly for everyone, regardless of how much sexual experience you have, and it's not something to get stressed about. Our bodies aren't always going to do exactly what we want, when we want: they aren't machines after all! If you haven't already read it, there's a piece on the main site that might help you out in reframing your thinking about this: Disability Dharma: What Including & Learning From Disability Can Teach (Everyone) About Sex