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Sexual Frustration: The Elephant in the Bedroom
Tackling the unspoken truth about sexual frustration with wisdom and grace.
It started in my late teens, though I didn’t have the words for it then. This gnawing frustration that lingered at the edges of my thoughts, making me irritable for no reason I could articulate. On good days, I’d forget about it entirely — like when life distracted me with a fun gig or an existential crisis. But on bad ones? Everything seemed just a little harder, a little bleaker. For years, I chalked it up to stress, loneliness, or maybe just the Weltschmerz of being a goth and allergic to happiness. It took time — and a lot of soul-searching — to admit to myself that what I was feeling had a name: sexual frustration.
It’s not something men talk about much. Sure, we joke about “blue balls” — but deep down, we all know it’s not the kind of thing you bring up in polite company. Most of us wouldn’t dare. It’s easier to laugh it off than to admit the truth: the constant undercurrent of want, the way it messes with your mood, or how it magnifies every rejection until we’re convinced the universe is conspiring against us. And it doesn’t go away. A couple years ago I accidentally came across a book on managing sexual frustration on my dad’s Kindle. He’s 63.
