What an interesting topic. I don’t even know where to start!

First - I’m just a couple of months shy of 60, my wife is 63. We’ve been together…38 years. No kids (on purpose). Diagnosed last year with stage 3 PCa, prostate removed in January (nerve-sparing).

I, as expected, have the usual side effects - ED and incontinence. I’m working through the incontinence, and for the ED, just using a low-dose nightly Viagra and the ol’ penis pump therapeutically for now. Until the incontinence is dealt with, we both agree that any intimacy involving my leaky fella is a no-go.

We’re both very practical and very open, just because it’s always been just the two of us. When we met with the oncologist to go over treatment plans and he explained that there would be ED, regardless of the path we chose, we both pretty much simultaneously said the same thing: “That’s not the priority right now, killing the cancer is.” - we’ve been on the same page with that since Day One.

We laugh, we joke, we hug, we kiss, she still smacks my butt when she’s walking by, I still wiggle my eyebrows at her when she’s looking good…the traditional P-in-V sex is missed, certainly, but it’s just one part of a good partnership.

Granted, it’s early days, but we’ve been down this road before. She has a chronic autoimmune disorder that knocked her out of commission for close to a year about 15 years ago. A few years after that, she had a stroke that damn near killed her. She fought back from that, then had a heart attack a few years later, and then a couple of years of surgeries to fix that. No sex for an extended period? Been there, done that, got through it.

Now it’s my turn to be the “broken” one, but we feel lucky we’re both alive and together and still making each other laugh and making each other blush! We just keep our priorities straight, and Job One is Stay Alive. The rest, we’ll sort out together.

Onto this “manhood” stuff. Whoo-boy! I’ve personally never bought into the whole “alpha male” thing - it just makes no sense to me. I can’t even articulate why, since it’s so fundamentally foreign a concept to me.

I don’t hunt, I don’t fish, I don’t like sports, I don’t care about cars, I don’t care about DIY crap around the house, don’t know the first thing about finances, I’m not competitive, I don’t think I have one stereotypical role to fill and my wife another.

I just see us as two people who met, liked what we saw, got to know each other, grew to love one another, and here we are.

I absolutely do not feel like less of “a man” because my pecker won’t peck. If I even have a definition of what “a real man” is, it’s someone who’s reliable, who helps others, who’s kind, who loves their family and friends and supports them…I’d say that’d be my definition of what “a real woman” is as well.

Assuming my incontinence rights itself in the coming months, I’m sure we’ll try using a pill or the pump for penetrative sex, and if it works, great, but if it doesn’t, we’ll get by somehow. We’ve been down this road before. This time, it just may be a longer road (and it may not have an end).

I feel heartbroken for the folks posting in this topic who’ve lost so much of their relationship to this thing.