I’m with you brother. After 32 years of marriage my divorce was finalized in mid-March 2025. I was looking forward to an active post-op, post-divorce sex life…”not.” I had the DaVinci Robotic-assisted RP one month later in mid-April 2025. I was a virile, completely capable 70-year old. I haven’t had an erection since that April surgical date, even with the surgical sparing of my neurovascular bundles to enable erections. I am so depressed that I haven’t even attempted to meet anyone: “I know we’re really attracted to each other and see this going for the long term, but oh by the way…I can’t have penetrating sex…I have post-RP erectile death.”

I am (humbly) a very younger, good looking 70 years old. I routinely engage in/with very interested 40-60 year old women who seem not to care when I tell them I am not the “50-55” years old that they think I am. But…it doesn’t matter…I don’t even feel like a man. I now appreciate how women feel when they’ve had a mastectomy. That is sadly even worse because of what is horrific scarring prior to any reconstructive surgery, if they have it.

Just out of college I used to have a friend that would say: “Life sucks, then you die.” I kind of feel like that’s true. We are all only in the present moment, and the older we get and lived, the more painful all of the good memories are, because they are over…never to be relived or recreated. I think insurance companies should be required to automatically pay for 7 sessions (more?) of post-RP counseling/therapy so we can find a way to handle the grief of never again being who you were, and what you have to accept as the new you going forward.