Free The Guide to Getting It On by Paul Joannides

aware that hard-ons have been known to fly south for varying periods of time, from a single day to who knows how long.
    The most unhelpful thing a woman can do when a guy can’t get it up is to become defensive. Women often assume that erection failures mean the man doesn’t find them attractive or that he might be gay. These are possibilities. But there are a billion other reasons for not being able to get an erection, from fearing you won’t be good in bed to what just happened on Wall Street. Physical problems like diabetes can also be a factor.
    Given the stress of living in the modern world, it’s a wonder we men are able to get it up as often as we do. And given the lack of tenderness or excitement in some relationships, an unerect penis might be a signal that the man and woman need to get closer emotionally.
    While most of us have been raised to think of a limp penis as a sign of failure, perhaps it might be more productive to view it as an opportunity to bring a man and woman together. (For a more complete discussion of male hydraulic failure, see Chapter 56: When Your System Crashes .)
    Betty on Dick
    The following passage is from Betty Dodson’s classic Sex for One from Harmony Books. In addressing the issue of misbehaving penises, Ms. Dodson speaks with welcome concern:
“Although I ran only a dozen men’s groups, the experience helped me to let go of my old conviction that men got a better deal when it came to sex.... I thought they could always have easy orgasms even with casual sex, and I envied their never having to worry about the biological realities of periods or pregnancies. But the truth is that not all men are able to be assertive studs who make out all the time.... The most consistent sex problem for many men in the workshops was owning a penis that seemed to have a will of its own. An unpredictable sex organ that got hard when no one was around and then refused to become erect when a man was holding the woman of his dreams in his arms....”
    If this situation sounds familiar, tell your man that there probably isn’t a woman alive who wouldn’t be happy to receive a long, lingering back rub and oral sex in the place of intercourse. Or what about a go at an extended orgasm from Chapter 15: The Zen of Finger Fucking? In other words, if his woody won’t work, let him know in no uncertain terms that there are plenty of other ways to please you sexually.
This Guide’s philosophy:
    Never, ever let a recalcitrant penis ruin sex for either of you!
    When Young Men Use Boner Drugs Recreationally
    Ordinarily, a discussion of using erection drugs should be in the chapter on erection problems. But there is an increasing number of younger men who don’t have erection problems but take erection drugs for recreational purposes. This might be due to unreal expectations that their penis needs to be like that of porn stars, who are probably taking erection drugs themselves.
    The problem is that once young men who don’t need erection drugs start taking them, they become less confident in their own erections. They expect erections that are harder than normal and quicker on the rebound. So they give themselves a false expectation of what an erection is supposed to be, and they start to lose confidence in themselves to get it up without taking boner drugs.
    One of the disappointments older men with erection problems can have with erection drugs is they aren’t able to recreate the rock-hard erections men had when they were young. But for 20 year olds without erection problems, drugs like Viagra and Cialis don’t have the difficult job of raising the dead. So the drug is more able to create a porn-like erection.
    Nature didn’t create erections to be like baseball bats. Normal is not porn perfect. And no matter what your age, if you don’t need erection pills, don’t take them. The latest research is showing that when men who don’t need erection drugs start using them, they can end up giving