Q: I need some help in understanding if my concern about my partner is valid or not. I am dating a 43-year-old male whom I adore. We've been dating for two months and sex has been good and very arousing, but a couple of times he has not been able to achieve an orgasm. It takes him a long time to do and I am wondering if it's normal or if I should be concerned. This has never happened to me before so it's kind of an ego crasher.

A: A lot of women take erectile disorder as an insult and have stereotypes that men are walking erections and if he's not instantly aroused it's a reflection on her desirability. But erectile disorder usually has very little do with desire for the person that he's with, it's rather a factor in his overall health.

First of all, it would be natural from a physiological perspective, for a guy in his 40s to start having erectile impairment. That's frequently when it begins. The other side of it is that an erection is really an indicator of overall health, so if he's a guy in his 40s who's also stressed out, not exercising as much as he should be, is not as conscious about his diet as he should be, is possibly smoking, and possibly drinking, any one of these factors, either individually or in combination, could lead to erectile disorder.

When a guy is suffering from ED, the thing that's lowest down on this list is usually a woman's desirability. If he seems to be engaged and interested in being with you and in being intimate with you, then I would not at all look at it as an indication of desirability.

The only time where I've seen this in my experiences as a sex therapist is long-term relationships where couples have really lost interest in each other, not just in the bedroom, but out of the bedroom as well, and erectile impairment is sort of a function of overall loss of interest in the entire relationship.