How Angus turned a temporary setback into lasting confidence during sex

The beginning

I’d never had an erection issue in my life, not until I was 27. It seemingly came out of nowhere. This was around 2018, while I was working in shipbroking in London: a high-pressure, long-hours city job.

I did a long-distance cycling race, the Mallorca 312. In training for that, I found my penis would go tingly and numb from sitting on the saddle for so long. I thought nothing of it. Standing out of the saddle for a minute or two would get rid of the tingling.

After I completed the race, I was out one night and went home with someone I knew from university. I couldn’t get it up. I remember thinking it was embarrassing, but it was 4AM and we’d been out drinking all day.

The next morning,  we tried again sober and it still didn’t work. The realization something was wrong hit me like a train. I was so scared I could barely talk.

When she left the house, I remember going to see if I could get hard on my own. Kind of. Like a 50% erection.

“I turned to Google and Reddit, and a 9-month exploration of any stupid blog, health article, or sub-reddit I could find began.”

For those 9 months, I generally avoided sex. Probably once a month, I’d dare to give it another go. It was never as bad and lifeless as that first time, but I didn’t feel like myself, and I wasn’t able to get fully hard.

After about two months I felt like I could get hard normally on my own again. In hindsight, I know that’s because the blood vessels I’d crushed cycling would have healed themselves in about 6-8 weeks, just from leaving them alone.

What I struggled with beyond that was performance anxiety. Constantly watching and worrying it wouldn’t work meant I was always totally in my head, and never in my body or enjoying sex like before.

Through all my reading I started doing Kegels, which helped heal my blood vessels. I took a lot of supplements for the building blocks of testosterone, in case that was an issue. I used Viagra, which after a few — once my blood vessels were fine — worked. At least most of the time. Sometimes I could still panic my way out of it working.

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Finding out about sex therapy

I didn’t discover sex therapy the way a Mojo member would. My cousin Xander and I built Mojo ourselves after opening up to each other about our sexual health struggles on a long car journey in 2018.

My mom’s a sex therapist, so I already had a direct line into the field. That’s part of why sex therapy, rather than medication, became the obvious answer once Xander and I compared notes and realized that something like a third of men our age had been through something similar.

Learning to calm myself down with mindfulness and meditation was crucial. I made it a pre-sex ritual.

Understanding spectatoring was my lightbulb moment. In sex therapy, it means when you step outside yourself during sex to observe and judge your body or performance.

“Realizing I was sabotaging myself by not being in the moment, not enjoying myself, was really freeing. It’s almost like: stop trying so hard.”

Exercises like soft penis pleasuring really helped. It makes you feel fine with not being hard at the beginning of sex, and confident that you will get hard.

“As soon as I started focusing on my psychology, I saw a difference within a couple of weeks. It was probably 3 months before I knew I’d cracked it, and I was 'fixed.'”

Where things are now

I feel more confident now, and I’m almost grateful I had to go through this and do the work. If it hadn’t been the cycling, it would have been something else.

I’m sure there’ll be moments in my life where things get really stressful and I struggle again. Knowing what I know now, and what’s in the Mojo program, means I won’t panic. I’ll cut myself some slack, and it’ll all be fine.”

I feel way more able to talk to my sexual partners about what they want, what I want. And mainly, if I’m not in the mood, I don’t feel like I need to prove anything.

I’m way more comfortable in my own skin now.

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Broader reflections

I want to share Mojo with any guy who doesn’t feel confident in his body and his erections, or who overly analyzes his performance in bed and finds it affects his mood for days after. I’d tell them that The Erection Reset will free them of a performance mindset in bed, which ironically will help them perform better, through getting way more enjoyment out of sex.

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The Erection Reset is a systematic training program for better erections and more satisfying sex. Built by Clinical Psychologist Dr. Shannon Chavez. Sign up here.

This is one member's personal experience. Individual results vary, and this story is not medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional about persistent concerns.