In your post#23 you brought up the bi-polar thing. I took that to mean you were concerned about it. Wrongly, I guess. I don’t know your wife. All I have to go on is your posts. I get y’all have background that was ‘different’. But, seriously, go off the pills. Do whatever you have to do to prevent a unwanted pregnancy, find a new doctor. That’s the only answer.
And I specifically said in that post that “My wife isn’t bipolar”. It was simply a comparison in the way that people that are bipolar may feel high and not remember the lows while feeling that high to show how my wife feels what she feels so strongly that it’s all she can see in the moment. Again, she is not bipolar, and that literally was my post with which you had to go off of. I’m sorry that it led to you misunderstanding.
She will be discussing the pills with her doc. There’s nothing on fire here, it’s been a long time and she’s getting with her doctor (assuming they call her back tomorrow) and will work on getting her pills changed or considering another type of birth control. If needed she’ll get a new doctor. I think we’re pretty good on the steps to take at this point.
I appreciate everyone’s input. She can see now that what she’s been dealing with isn’t the norm. That was step one. Step two is talking with her doc about options. We will go from there. Thanks again!
The following claim doesn’t seem to have been addressed yet, and I found it quite surprising:
This is news to me. Guys, is it true (at least to the level of “probably”) that a man who is used to having unprotected sex “won’t be able to function sexually” while using a condom?
If so, does this “dysfunction” just require a little practice to get over it, or is it a permanent impairment?
If not, then WTF is SamuelA talking about?
Thanks for your input. (“That’s what she said!” Ah, shaddup.)
Are you a man or a woman? If you’re a man, have you…had sex often or are you under the age of 20? Because frankly this isn’t hard to understand.
There certainly are a lot of condoms being sold. I don’t think they are sold as balloons. Someone is performing with them. Just saying.
There are also a lot of pills being sold. Clearly they don’t work for everyone. That attitude is pretty shitty, just saying.
What Samuel said makes sense and doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult to understand.
Trust me, it is. Admittedly, I have no personal experience with what it’s like on the concave side of the condom, but I’m surprised to learn that having sex in one particular way over a long period of time would permanently unfit a man for having sex in a different way. Can’t you re-train?
Believe what you want. I give up. You clearly don’t want the birth control to be your problem to the point of your wife suffering debilitating side effects. And giving up, by your math, half of your yearly happiness. Have a nice life. I’m outta here.
I suppose everybody’s experience is different. I’m a man aged 56. I’m accustomed to having sex without a condom and I definitely prefer it that way. But I have no difficulty having sex with a condom if the occasion arises and I, too, was slightly surprised at the expectation that middle-aged men accustomed to condom-free sex would be unable to function with a condom.
But what’s usual in this regard doesn’t really matter here. If justanothermike has this problem or if, upon experimentation, he finds that he does, then obviously condoms are unlikely to be the optimal solution to the problem he and his wife are facing. Only justanothermike and his wife can make a decision about that, and even they won’t know until they’ve tried.
What the heck are you even talking about? So much of your own stuff being read into mine. You’ve made up a story and posted a few snide things about men. You have the issue, not me. Go project elsewhere, that’s fine.
Sure. I was just surprised that SamuelA seemed to take that scenario so much for granted that he was telling justanothermike “you probably won’t be able to function sexually with them” way back in post #5, before justanothermike had even mentioned the condom option AFAICT.
It seems a bit alarming if long-term barebacking is assumed to permanently disable a man for successful condom use. But, as you say, everybody’s experience is different.
I don’t even know speaking for myself about the whole retraining thing or what my own issues may be. I do know that many men struggle with condoms period, and it isn’t just some desire not to be part of the birth control spectrum as some women would say. It doesn’t take more than a quick Google search to see that many men struggle with condoms period. Lack of sensation, performance anxiety, one that is too tight or too loose causes different problems, etc. Throw new rules into the game after so long and it might create a problem. I’m sure that it can be worked through. I don’t know that anyone said it would have to be a permanent issue, but it could certainly be an issue. Everyone has their individual sex lives, hangups, issues, etc. and that wasn’t the subject of the post or anything I intended to get into.
There are plenty of options here. Condoms, a vasectomy, trying another form of pill since few have been tried, some sort of IUD or something, we’ll talk about them all and weigh our options. Of course I’ve been accused of not wanting it to be my problem despite being the one to come here to address the problem and admitting how it already was a problem for me, but that person is clearly speaking of what they do not know and literally jumped to it being my problem alone to tackle from her first post. So her issues with a man were clear from the jump. I wasn’t trying to get into that until she made wild and baseless accusations.
I came here to talk openly about the issues surrounding this form of birth control and trying to be understanding of my wife and to get more perspective for the both of us. I get that you’re trying to understand a thing here and asking questions Kimstu. Often men are just expected to perform and women want understanding. Understanding cuts both ways. I’m actually really surprised that women wouldn’t understand what Samuel mentioned, but that’s why we ask questions and I hope you maybe understand a bit more now. The whole subject can be fraught with peril and I just wanted to see if what we were going through was normal. We both now understand that it is not and will work toward a resolution that works for both of us.
Yup, and am not trying to tell you and your wife what to do, was just a bit startled by that offhand assumption, and trying to figure out to what extent “Barebacking-Induced Condom Dysfunction” really is a thing for men in general. Not something I could really ask the guys at work about. Anyway, best of luck to you and the missus, and spring is on the way!
Lol, not really the average water cooler talk is it? I don’t know how many many are impacted but it just stands to reason that if condoms themselves can be an issue, then going from a lifetime of no condoms to condoms may be an issue. My guess would be that it wouldn’t likely be a permanent issue for many, but we’re all individuals and you never know. There has to be outliers.
Come on Spring! And I don’t even say that simply for the reasons spoken of here, the gray skies and darkness of the winter are rough on us both anyway. I do believe someone mentioned SAD, and that is an impact regardless of the situation with the pills. I know that better times will be coming no matter what. We’ve battled through everything else in life and we’ll battle through this and get right with it too.
When I went off BC pills due to similar issues as the OPs wife, my husband eventually got a vascetomy. But there were a few months of condoms with no performance problems at all while we waited.
OP, my suggestion is get her off the pills. There is obviously a hormonal component her lack of wellbeing - and she has been on them for a very long time. It is NOT normal, and it is not good for her mental health to have these sort of patterns get etched into her brain - the “stupid” thoughts could take hold and not leave - not without therapy and medication. Hormonal mental health issues are the pits (my grandmother died of postpartum depression).
I believe birth control pills negatively affected my wife’s mood and emotions back when she used them. IMHO, her feeling better most of the time was far more important than a minor upgrade in sensation during sex.
Anecdote =/= data, but I was sexually active with two other partners before I met the woman who became my wife. In the first two relationships, we didn’t use condoms, as the women were already using other forms of birth control.
When my now-wife and I started sleeping together, I had minimal issues adapting to condom use, and the difference in sensitivity wasn’t substantial enough to cause any problems at all. The most noteworthy issue I ran into was trying to put the darned thing on the wrong way in a darkened room. 
(Hint: it only unrolls one way, and if you accidentally try to put it on the other way, throw that one out, as you just got seminal fluid on the side that needs to be pristine. 
)
So, YMMV. SamuelA apparently has some very strong opinions on the entire topic area.
Dan Savage talks about something more difficult to get used to for some guys: going from masturbating (especially with an iron grip of death) to vaginal sex. Some guys can’t get it to work at first.
According to him, and he’s the sex expert (although not with first hand knowledge of this particular problem, of course) it is simply a matter of retraining.
This times a million.
I refuse to take hormonal BC because of the effect BC and HRT have had on my closest female relatives. I’ve been physically assaulted several times yet I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared than watching my mother puke her guts out on her first day of HRT - as much, maybe; more, no.
There are other options: talk with your doctor.
Oh and The Idiot Boyfriend barebacked with what seems to have been half of Miami’s nightlife but had no problems using condoms with me. Well, other than wanting to not use condoms, that is
Yeah - between the heart disease in the family that hit men and women equally and a couple of cousins who had major strokes at a young age most of us women in my family were told it might be better for us to avoid hormonal birth control. The docs tend to downplay the risks, and society at large even more so, however…
This is over the top. Take a step back and take a deep breath, lady - that is NOT how I read the OP, or even most of the men in this thread. This is not the way to fight ignorance.
If anyone has that attitude here it’s SamuelA, not the OP. And even there, I’m not entirely sure it’s selfishness so much as misinformation.