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Prostate cancer has brought new perspectives for me on the partnership between my mind and body, particularly in the most intimate parts affected by the cancer and its treatment. About a year after my radical prostatectomy, natural erections began returning on a rare, fleeting, and unpredictable basis. This is largely controlled by the slow and tenuous recovery of nerves damaged during surgery, but my biggest erogenous zone (between my ears) is also deeply involved.
It has been a sobering experience living with erectile dysfunction for more than a year now. There's nothing like going without something important for that long to make a person appreciate it! It's got me reflecting on the impact of my cis male body, state of mind, emotions, energy, and relationships over 64 years.
The Legacy of a Particular Kind of Eagerness
As my erections return in fits and starts, I am reminded that for well over 50 years, I have lived with the epitome of eagerness between my legs. I mean, it was always keen and usually ready to go, even if I tried to hide it. Until my radical prostatectomy, it would bob up, eagerly proclaiming its readiness for action, many times a day. When I was younger, it would be many times per hour! And I have been desperately missing it for the last year.
The essence of this experience isn’t limited to people born with male genitalia. But I am realising that the brazenness of the way my body expressed itself – that tent in my trousers – is a powerful legacy for me. I am guessing I am not alone.
Growing Up With Male Energy
When I was still a boy, I was often embarrassed by that eager bobbing up of the extraordinary male organ I was born with. Looking back, I want to reassure that little boy that it’s okay. It’s a natural bodily function.
When I was a young man, my partners sometimes felt overwhelmed by the sexual hunger that came with my body's eagerness – and how obviously it manifested. I want to tell that young man his energy is nothing to be ashamed of, but it comes with a lot of responsibility. As we become men, boys need to learn how to be with that rip-roaring energy and channel it appropriately not to harm.
Looking back to my early 50s, I see how my mid-life crises were exacerbated as I sensed a cooling of the ardour that had been driving me like an internal combustion engine for (by then) 40 years. And I recognise what a shock it is for middle-aged men to lose some of the testosterone fuel that our bodies had always created for free.
Prostate cancer and aging have opened me up to new awareness and possibilities, particularly as my body no longer manifests its sexual energy in the same ways.
Eagerness Is Everywhere
I'm a backyard gardener, and I come from a long line of gardeners. Years of caring for plants is helping me make sense of the will to live that we share with all beings. The eagerness with which a germinating seed bursts out of its hard shell is astounding. Its first delicate, vulnerable, and life-giving roots bravely penetrating the soil are a soft wonder. I am inspired by the sheer exuberance with which its first leaves unfurl and bask in the sun, and begin making food for more growth.
I now realize that eagerness is everywhere, and it is a gift. It’s an expression of the universal life force. I believe that every living thing feels those eager urges in its way.
Having grown up as a cis male, I’m reminded that eagerness doesn’t have to manifest the way my male body did for all those years. It doesn’t have to be as urgent or as genitally focused as my youthful male energy. It can be slow, kind, and tender. Eagerness can also be subtle. It might be infrequent. It can revel in unseen complexity, like those tendrils of roots humbly networking underground, invisibly enabling life.
Redefining Eagerness
The gift of both cancer and aging has widened my understanding of eagerness. And it has awakened my gratitude for this fundamentally generative energy in all of its forms. I’ve developed much more respect for my love of life. I still call this “libido,” but it goes well beyond sexual energy. It’s time for me to open up to other forms of eagerness and love of life. They are expressed differently from my old ways. This is where I want to build on my legacy of eagerness. And I don’t mean to exclude the bedroom.
Over the last year, I have joked a lot about my daily gardening and exercise routines as “erection replacement therapy.” It goes beyond that. Gardening is about celebrating the gift of life by husbanding the earth, creating conditions for life to flourish. And caring about my diet and fitness is about husbanding my new body, helping it flourish in its new form with emptiness at the centre where a prostate used to be.
Learning About My Blind Spots in the Bedroom
There is also a more directly sexual dimension to what I am learning. I own up to the fact that I have tended to measure sexual eagerness by direct physical manifestation. But for at least half of humanity, those manifestations are far more subtle than my cis male ways. “Forgive me,” I want to tell my partners from younger days, “my body taught me that sexual arousal is something very obvious.”
I am shocked to admit how poorly I recognised how much my life partner had shared my bodily eagerness for the last 39 years. I often unconsciously assumed she wasn’t as “into it” as I was if she didn’t show it my way. As if the horny male way of expressing interest is the only way. I acknowledge my blindness to her differently, and I realise this is a lifelong learning path.
It’s a bit easier to see, now that my new body sometimes prefers to love softly than in a thrusting way. That helps me open to receiving all-over loving touch and focus less on genitalia and orgasms. And my occasional returning erections remind me to explore all options. There is no single right way.
Letting That Life Force Manifest in New Ways
Eagerness is a precious gift. What is crucial to my recovery from prostate cancer as a man is to free my eagerness from a single track. It needs to flourish in my body and the wider world in all possible ways.
And to make space for all that is alive to flourish in even more myriad ways.
This post also appears on recoveringman.net with personal and medical backstory.
