My husband was diagnosed in October with stage 4 prostate cancer with bone Mets. He had started the anti androgen meds the first of this month. His interest in me has gone to absolute 0. We had sex 5 nights a week before this and honestly I'm having a hard time coping. I know it's not his fault, and I don't tell him because I don't want to seem selfish, but I am only 46, just turned, and he is 53. I will take any advice from wives or husband that I can get to handle this better. It's even to the point where I ask myself what's the use of even keeping myself up if he doesn't want me, and it's so early in the game I just cannot fall into this.
Having trouble: My husband was... - Advanced Prostate...
Having trouble
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Mrs_Fite
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Same happened with my wife and I. The price of staying alive. We had a long conversation about this and agreed that she would become the instigator, when she is in the mood she drops a hint with sexy lingerie and boom we are off to the races. In my opinion you really need to talk this out
Maybe this is all so new we haven't figured it out yet. He tells me he is struggling, but offers no insight. And doesn't want to talk about it. So we are currently a couple devided and I'm scared...
He is facing his mortality 40+ years sooner than he expected. He is worried about his family while facing this diagnosis. Depending on the treatment the meds will certainly depress his libido.
Really, two months in, most of the thoughts rolling around in his mind are extremely negative. Literally as soon as you open your eyes in the morning during this shock period it goes like this:
“I still have it.”
“This is not a dream.”
He will adapt
All of his reality has suddenly changed and it is a very tough situation to be in. Its chocking and hard to wrap ones head around. The anti androgen meds changes so much.
You need to talk. Intimacy is still possible although perhaps different from before. Prostate cancer centers often have a sex therapist available, since libido is so affected by the different treatments. If so, perhaps book a meeting - they understand the situation and could be of help to you and your husband.
"Men who feel closest to their partners during sexual activity may withdraw from them when their sex drive is diminished by ADT." A sentence from Androgen Depravation Therapy by Wassersug, Walker, and Robinson.
While this book won't make your problem go away, it might help you understand it, and it might enable better communications.
So sorry to hear about your husband. I'm 52 and have been on ADT for 15 mths. I have not had sex with my wife in all this time. This has been a combination of having ED from a prostatectomy, being tired from various treatments (chemo and radio) and of course from ADT. The loss of our fantastic sex life and closeness just makes me feel sad. My wife says she doesn't mind because I have been through so much but maybe in another 6 mths or a year of this it will become a bigger issue. I think it is also hard to explain that even though I look fine and am back doing some sports, the desire switch has just been turned off. It can even be mildly repulsive to think about sex or even kissing. As someone said above it is the price we pay for saying alive and it is a high price.
In the New Year I'll start back in the gym and my wife and I will get a personal trainer. There may be practical things like that that help. I'll also do my best to get some sort of sex life back on the road but it's not going to be anything like it was. I think for your husband it is still very early days and you will both need time to figure out a way forward.
hello Mrs Fite,
My name is not really “Joe Guy”, my last name is Fite. I suspect your husband and I are related.
My wife and I lost the ability to have sex 7 years ago when I had RP surgery at the age of 53. The surgery left me impotent, and the hormonal drugs took away all desire for sex. Unfortunately it is just part of the messed up, stage 4 prostate cancer reality.
We both knew shortly after my surgery that sex was most likely not going to be part of our relationship any longer. But we soon discovered that not having sex really didn’t change our relationship all that much. We still love each other very much, enjoy our time together, and are thankful for the time we have left. Sex was just a part of our relationship, it does not define the relationship.
Your husband still loves you, and perhaps appreciates you more than ever in your life to this point. He’s learning to deal with life - death while experiencing the strongest ….most life changing medications a person can receive, along with a death sentence no one expected. ADT meds can cause his genitals to shrink - shrivel to near nonexistent as well. This making sex extremely difficult for him ( and you ) . He should start to “ get a handle on things “ pretty soon, and get back to trying to be a lover for you. It will be difficult and , for us shriveled guys, require adult devices / sex aids . The point being that sex will probably never be the same as it once was. He is so young, it’s a tragedy. It’s a little different for us guys 20+ years older than he is.
All this just my own IMHO , but it’s from personal experience as well. Hang in there , he definitely loves you and will love you stronger as this sad experience advances. When he’s gotten used to “ things “ ( and most of us do / adapt ) , I suspect “ things “ will get, back to some semblance of returning to normal. Although there are zillions of an adult sex shops, Spartacus is a good place to start to shop vibrators and other necessary sex play objects. If his genitals shrivel and disappear, you’ll probably need a couple - few adult devices to replace them with.
Don’t “ fall into anything “ …. as soon as the shock wears off and No matter how he is acting right now, you’ll find that his love and appreciation for you will be the strongest of ever in your marriage. You’ll both be closer and experience your closest emotional love.
This is just my thoughts and opinion on things …. but it’s built upon my own experience and the experiences of several close friends that croaked from aPCa. This how things went for them, in some form or other….this will probably be what happens for both of you as well.
Your love is the most powerful tool that will help him and both of you the most. Stick with it, stick with him. Clearly you both need each other a lot.
❤️❤️❤️
I don't think it is good to sugar coat this since you are asking for advice. Sex as you knew it is 100% over. Anti androgen therapy = castration. Even if your partner can achieve an erection (can sometimes be possible with medication and devices), mentally he will have no interest . Some men love their partners more deeply as they go through this together but others cannot handle it and resent their partners as a reminder of what they have lost. You may need to decide if you want to go on this journey or not. My wife could not handle it and I don't blame her. She was living with a cranky patient whose life was all about medical appointments. Your husband could live a decade or more in that state. I hope you get some help to deal with this. Best of luck to you.
I really feel for you.
My husband lost all interest/ability for sex immediately after his diagnosis 18 months ago and I have suffered terrible grief over this. This is going to sound harsh to all those men who say ‘I’m no longer interested in sex so it’s not going to happen anymore’, but as a woman who truly enjoyed her sex life with her husband for thirty years this feels like rejection.
I can’t even pretend to understand what he is going through with this whole shitshow but advice on relationships without erection should be prescribed at the point of diagnosis. It is not given the attention it deserves.
Personally, I am still aroused by lying next to my husband and don’t need penetrative intercourse to feel that sense of desire and relief, but for his own reasons he has chosen the path of not wanting to touch me sexually. I like to think that if things were the other way round I would endeavour to please him regardless of my lack of interest.
Maybe the men here can shed light on this so we can all understand it better. There must be a whole plethora of reasons why this occurs.
I don’t know how to advise you to deal with this as I haven’t as yet found out myself. It makes me feel incredibly guilty that I get upset by his lack of attention. This is a really complex matter, thank you for raising it and I wish you all the best.
I totally agree with you on the need for relationship and intimacy advice early on in treatment.
Please forgive me if I’m asking the obvious now, but have you told your husband about the feeling of rejection and that you are still aroused by him, as this might be something he really need to hear? APC treatments and it’s side effects can easily convince us men that we’re not very sexually attractive anymore.
I never lost interest in intimacy with my wife while on ADT so I can’t answer on that, but my body worked against me which I struggled with and I had a very hard time with the many side effects which made me feel less “manly”. But intimacy was still possible, enjoyable and meaningful. Sex without penetration is still great and to achieve erections there are many helpful options such as pumps, cilais and viagra - and bimix/trimix shots which works great for many men with even severe erectile dysfunction.
But, I believe that to be able to talk about it and be open and vulnerable with your partner is most important. This is perhaps hard for some men to do, as the different cancer treatments leaves you very vulnerable and insecure where maybe it feels easier to simply ignore the problem?
As man I can say you feel overwhelmed. It’s not that you lose the physical ability (not yet at least in my case) but you are so…submerged by what is going on, about what your future will be like, about what you once considered existentialistic nonsenses (I don’t know if I can communicate this concept properly), that sex is not even in the equation. It’s about what you thought your future would be like and the reality that your future could be much shorter than it was in your worst nightmare, and you feel you must decide what to do with the time you have left. You are never gonna be the same. If they found a cure tomorrow, this experience would still have changed me (also for the best in some aspects). I wish I could live grasping each moment, as it seems I am going around in circles. But I suppose that every man reacts in a different way and it’s maybe just a matter of time before your husband gets back to you as lover.
Mrs Fite,You're husband was informed he has incurable prostate cancer and is now on medications that completely block an essential hormone. And your focus is on whether your husband will ever be intimate with you again?
I could write more but I'll stop here. SMH.
It's not just that as you assume. The whole intamcy has just gone away. The hand holding, the snuggling, everything. I initiate everything that he once said made him feel special. He told me one night that when he looks at me, I am a reminder of what he cannot do anymore. Me, the "love of his life"! For all you gentleman are going through I am more sorry than you will ever know. But to know that looking at me just makes things worse, how am I supposed to feel? I have feelings too. This is my future too! We got married 2 weeks before his diagnoses came because we knew it would be bad. I knew he needed me, but damn it I need him too. Yall are not the only ones who get robbed in this situation, and you'd do well to remember that for all the women who could've just walked away but didn't.
From a personal perspective (and we got married in November by the way! 😊😊) the intimacy part you are talking about, holding hands, snuggling (let’s call it the sweet part) will probably get back. Right now he is probably angry, not with you but with the whole situation.
Angry is just the top of the iceberg....this gent was diagnosed the same age as I was, 53. The last thing I was thinking about was sex, of any type. It'll take many months for the enormity to settle in...once the new normal is accepted, things will get better.
So 2 months is sufficient in your opinion to be told you have incurable cancer, put on hormone treatments, presumably doing chemo, and get back to hand holding.....you may need to give your husband more time and focus on the care taker aspect of marriage...." ...in sickness and in heath, in good times and bad..."
FYI- I am embarrassed to admit that I haven’t had sex, of any kind, with my wife (nor anyone else) since this saga began for me more than 11 years ago at age 54 for me and 47 for my wife. Fortunately, I married a saint and she accepts the situation without complaint. Everyone is an individual- we all respond differently to treatment and we all deal with situations like this one differently too. Hopefully, the 2 of you can figure something out.
Dear Mrs Fite; wife to wife- my heart goes out to you both . This disease does robs us of such precious things. All the shock, fear of the unknown, new terminology, weigh so heavily. We have to give ourselves the permission and time to grieve and feel our feelings. Grief takes time and it is not a straight line. And we each express it differently . I have to remind myself that feelings aren’t facts. They are just normal human responses. Some of them are even too painful to admit sometimes to friends or family. We feel like we are selfish or uncaring when we get frustrated.
My husband and I have been able to enjoy non penetration sex since his surgery. He can still have orgasms. Communication is key. I feel very fortunate that we talked about it before surgery as we knew he would not be able to have erections and we committed out loud to figuring it out and to finding ways to be intimate. Now due to rising PSA he has to start ADT next week and radiation next month. This may very well be another sad letting go, if his desire is gone too. We dread that. He is my best friend and I want more time. I am 66, husband is 68, so can only imagine how difficult this is for you at such young ages. My humble advice is to not be afraid to have the difficult conversations, cry, scream into a pillow, just feel it all. Pray to whatever your higher power is for wisdom, strength and patience. See him as the scared grieving human he is right now. Take care of yourself, get a massage, get your nails done, get out in nature and walk. Maybe find a good counselor. You aren’t alone.
To Mrs_Fite or did you mean Fight or White?
Inasmuch as "the fun" of your dear Husbands Pca has just begun and undoubtedly he will endure more in the future, here is my suggested solution to your issue:
No kids involved? Then see an amicable divorce attorney and separate/divorce amicably. Hopefully you live in a state which declares that all assets are divided equally (barring any Pre-nuptial agreement(s)). NFA in more ways than one.
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Thursday 12/28/2023 7:57 PM EST
when it comes marital issues that can’t be worked out between you it is time for professional counseling.
That might be a great avenue. I just hope that in time he will talk to me more. I cannot really talk to him about this issue right now as it just makes him feel more defeated, and that is not something I will do to him. Thank you so much
I'm a wife and my first thought, upon hearing my husband has incurable cancer and his life/ our sexual relationship will change forever, was: will my husband still live, and for how long? I didn't marry a penis and a pair of testicles, I married a person. A human being who is fallable and facing a death sentence; a person who lived decades of his life as a man and will, chemically, lose his manhood. At least, in his eyes.
He is not rejecting you because he no longer loves you. He is withdrawing because he is scared s-h*tless. He is facing something unexpected and something he cannot change, no matter how hard he tries, physically and mentally. He is shellshocked., traumatized.
For the first two months after my husband learned about ADT and its effects, he did practically nothing but read about chemical castration. He said the words "I'm going to be a eunuch" aloud, over and over again. He read about surgery to put in (silicone) testicle implants. I told him, go for it, whatever makes you happy, get the biggest ones you can handle. He wanted his nipples zapped so he wouldn't grow man boobs. I said, do it. We went on Amazon and ordered a couple of penis pumps (that simulate oral sex), to keep him practicing while undergoing radiation therapy, so he would maintain circulation and his 'unit' wouldn't shrink. He used one of the pumps, that he really liked, a few times...and then it went in the drawer, because he lost interest in keeping his penis size.
My husband's thoughts were on survival. He had fallen into a deep, dark hole and he wasn't thinking about sex, he was thinking about a kindly soul reaching down and helping him climb out of the blackness around him.
My husband was crushed when he learned what his future sex life would be. One day he asked me to sit me down in the chair across from him in his office, and said: "You are too young to deserve this. If you want to take a lover, a man who will make you feel like a complete woman, I will understand - all I ask is that you not tell me about what goes on between you two. And if you want a divorce, I will understand that, too."
I told him I have my pink vibrator that feels just fabulous, thank you very much. Also, we have two cats that like to snuggle. I had a doctor friend who gave a speech, he told his patients coming out of broken relationships, "don't just jump into another relationship, don't use a person to feel good. If you feel lonely and want companionship, get a pet."
My husband no longer gives me hugs, or squeezes my shoulders, or physically shows me that he cares about me. But that doesn't mean he doesn't. How can he not? Didn't he love me when we married? Why should that change now?
Like others here have said before, it's time to talk with a therapist. Maybe not the two of you, together; maybe separately. But you need to start for yourself. If you have any kind of insurance it should cover mental health, and without a copay. You can go in-person or via Zoom. I suggest you start now.
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