How Xander went from avoiding sex to building the app that offers the solution

The beginning

I was late to having sex. I went to an all-boys school and never had sex before university.

I was excited to get started so I threw myself into Orientation week. In that first week, I met a girl who I thought was way more experienced than me. I was nervous about pleasing her. I was really drunk, and in the early hours after a night out, we tried to have sex. But I couldn't get hard.

“It was the first time I'd ever had a sexual experience, and it planted a seed of doubt that stuck around for the next 10 years: what if this happens again?”

I tried not to let this one night stop me in the beginning. But it was a doubt that followed me into every situation. It showed up in relationship after relationship. Without really admitting the issue to myself or the people I was with, I started picking partners who I felt were lower-stakes. People who were less interested in sex, because that felt safer.

Over time, what knocked my confidence was never naming what was going on. I was young. Healthy. I never saw myself in the ads I saw about erectile dysfunction. They seemed to target someone else. Someone older. Someone with a medical problem. Not me. I started believing that something was innately wrong with me, and maybe I was bad at sex too.

"I realized condoms were part of the problem. Even if things were going well initially, I'd lose my erection every time I put one on, and that just fed the doubt even more. It turned into a loop of fear: fear of it happening, fear of the next time."

I eventually bought into the ads and tried erection tablets. It worked if I was already relaxed and comfortable, but the fear about going soft never fully went away.

Finding out about sex therapy

One day, I was driving somewhere with my cousin. We admitted to each other that we had trouble getting hard. I have no idea what started the conversation, but talking it through with someone who wasn't judging me was freeing. So many men carry this doubt about getting hard, thinking they're the only one. Boy, were we wrong.

What made a difference from that point was therapy. After having one open conversation with my cousin, I started seeing a therapist. I gave it my all. My therapist helped me look at my relationship with intimacy, why I was avoiding it, and what I could do differently.

I stopped relying on external solutions. I started being more mindful. I found out that things like meditation, mindfulness, and simple things like paying attention to what I was feeling helped me be present in my body instead of overthinking. Slowly but surely, I started to doubt myself less. I stopped thinking, “what if this happens again?” and started focusing on my partner.

“It stopped being this shameful thing I tried to hide. It became something worth building a fix for.”

Feeling better about myself started to snowball in the greatest way possible. I learned how to talk about what's going on instead of performing my way through it. I started communicating like I never had before. And before I knew it, my girlfriend at the time became my wife.

Where things are now

My life was completely different after therapy, and I wanted to share what I'd learned. My cousin and I started reaching out to sex therapists, asking them what men needed to know about erection issues, and built Mojo to help men across the world.

“The doubt that started with one drunk night doesn't run the show anymore.”

My sex life is healthier than ever. With marriage came 3 kids. And the doubt that started with one drunk night doesn't pop into my head every time I go into the bedroom now. These days I'm the guy people awkwardly bring their sex problems to at dinner parties. It’s not what I expected from my career, but it feels good to be doing good.

Broader reflections

What I say to anyone who will listen is that the problem is rarely your body itself. It's your first experiences of sex, how you feel about yourself, and how your brain responds to sex and intimacy.

For me, one night of doubt became 10 years of avoiding sex. It's never too late to work on psychological erection issues. That's why I’m proud of what we’ve built with Mojo. We built the thing I wish someone had handed me back then.