A Phoenix5 First-Person Story

What women won't say

by "Marion"

[Webmaster note: In March 2000, "Marion" made a remark on one of the PCa mailing lists about the problem women face with the issues of PCa and sex. I told her I was looking at building a Web site and asked her if she would expound more on her remark. This is her reply.]

Hi Robert,

I received your message today and I wanted to ponder on it a bit. I think your site is a terrific idea.

One of the things I have noticed about the mailing lists is primarily the women who are talking to each other with occasional input from the men. I think there are a couple of reasons for this besides all of the ones that you mentioned.

First of all most of the men with prostate cancer are well over 60. This is prior to the sexual revolution of the 60's. Men looked at women differently then, virginity was highly prized, nice girls did not talk about sex, etc.

So those are the women they are still married to. The women seem to talk about it or elude to it better than the men, but it appears that most of the women who are talking about it are wives and girlfriends whose mates are in their 50's or early 60's. Even most of these women will say oh I miss sex, or we are dealing with difficult issues etc. What they will not say is I just want to be fucked and fucked hard, I want to see that look of lust in my man's eyes again. The men just are not willing to discuss sex publicly.

Robert I remember you well. My husband was diagnosed in November, 1999. So we both joined the PHML [mailing list] and etc. at about the same time. I can remember responding to you at a point in time when you were your very lowest. You wrote back and thanked me and said you would file my note for future reference.

For a couple of a days I stayed out of the fracas on the impotency issue until someone posted about the Sybian machine. [Editor: The Sybian is basically a machine with an electric dildo that a woman sits astride.] Now I am sure you must be asking yourself how I knew about this. Well I will be very honest with you.

The diagnosis of my husband's cancer was as devastating to me as it was to him. Maybe more. Primarily because I was 18 and he was 19 when we got married. We have been married 37 years. When we got married we were in "lust," the love and respect came later. His testosterone is 650 in scale where normal is 200-800. The very thing that made this man not only my husband but my sex machine was had the potential for killing him.

I am and have always liked, loved and wanted more sex. I am probably not the typical wife. We have tried just about everything but have not been into s&m [sadomasochism]. I enjoy "normal" sex. I enjoy anal sex. I enjoy every position, I enjoy talking dirty and having sex for the sake of just wanting to fuck. I also like making love to my husband and we both recognize these types of sex as being two different things.

Well when he was diagnosed, pure fear gripped me for many reasons; number one I love him; number two we have been together for ever; and number three I did not feel like I could express to him at that time my thoughts and feelings about what would I do if he could not have sex or God forbid just flat lost interest in it.

We talked about his feelings, we talked about my sadness for him that if he should become impotent and especially if he had to take hormones that most importantly he would lose his desire. I believe the impotency issue can be dealt with in one way or another (knowing that sex would never be the same) but the loss of desire was my biggest fear.

You expressed to me at one time those feelings. My heart wept for both you and your girlfriend.

Now take what I am about to say with a grain of salt, I am not criticizing. However, I believe most men most of their lives have sex when they damn well need it. Women have sex when their men want it, regardless of whether they are really wanting to or not. We do not have the excuse that we can not get hard. So that is where the whole issue of men need to have sex to feel loved and women need to feel loved to have sex comes from.

My fear was if my husband not only became impotent but if he even lost the desire, how could I deal with this? In an ideal world, while the man is going under hormone treatment he would be caring and love us enough to still want to participate in some sexual encounter regardless of whether he could accomplish it or not. He could still give oral sex or participate with the women with say the Sybian.

But we both know that all of us, regardless of whether we are men or women, have sex for self gratification. So it would take a tremendous man (or woman if for some reason she could not have sex) to love their mate enough to have sex when there was absolutely no desire.

My fear was what would I do if he could not love me that much. But my thoughts were that I could not talk to him about this when he was dealing with a life threatening illness.

So I went out on the Internet one night in search of an answer. I remember at some point in time reading about a sex machine so that is what I typed in and found the information on the Sybian. I liked this particular machine because the man can sit on it and hold the women or whatever. It seemed just a little more joined than strictly a dildo.

Now I want you to understand, I am no dummy. I have my sex toys, etc. but they are not nearly as enjoyable as when we use them together. I am not shy, I will walk into some of the local sex toy shops that are not the dives where men go to see live peep shows or whatever. Anyway, I had gone in there. But I had not found things other than the norm.

So anyway that is the story about my knowing about the dildo. I joined the lists at first because I was curious, I also really wanted to know what types of procedures men were having that was causing the impotency. Then when the e-mail got to be too much, I signed off for quite a while. But the other day, I did sign on again. Before long I may sign off again.

I almost feel like a fraud because so far I am one of the lucky ones who does not have to deal with the impotency issue. However, he will be seeded soon and as we both know there is a chance he could be one of the 20-30% who becomes impotent. I pray that he is not. Will he and I deal with it if he should become impotent. Yes. Will we like it---no.

I keep telling myself that he has a very good chance of not becoming impotent because he has never had prostatitis, he has never had a TURP, and impotency has not been an issue for us.

But the fear is there, both that he might become impotent and also is mono seeding the right choice. I do not want this cancer to come back. However, I do know there are some things that are just not in our hands.

The one thing I do know is that what I suggested would be great. Because women could express their real feelings or read the feelings of other without having to identify themselves to their mates or anyone in the rest of the world who might be looking in. I believe men would feel the same way. If they could express their feelings without anyone knowing who they are they could be more open. But if the men and women could look in the archives and see how both men or women are feeling there might be a better understanding about each others feelings.

I hope that I have not offended you but my very frank openness and suggestion. I am 56 and my husband is 57. I know if I would say the same things to a man who is 70 or 75 he probably would be very shocked. However, I have the feeling that you are more of our generation than theirs.

Good luck, say hi to that good woman of yours

"Marion"

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