Hello SDFence: I'm an older person now... 68 years young! I was diagnosed with prostate cancer at around age 50 or so... (memory fails me...) Anyway, I had "the surgery" & I've been impotent ever since. That along with the antidepressants I've taken, plus a few other things I won't go into & the sum total is sexuality died for me many years ago now.

I know something of what you wrote about being upright, so you must be cured. I've struggled with mental health difficulties pretty-much my whole life. But I managed to hold things together until the surgery I mentioned before. Since then, things have just slowly unraveled for me. It's a long story & I won't go into a lot of detail.

But what I wanted to share was that my spouse doesn't understand mental illness. She doesn't know what to do with it, & she really doesn't want anything to do with it. She just wants to assume that everything is okay. So that's what I give her. (She's really wonderful to me in so many ways!) I can't blame her. She didn't sign up for this. But what it means for me is that I have no one to talk to. (I don't see a therapist.) I just keep it all to myself. Sometimes it feels like a tornado swirling around my insides. So I have reached a point in my life where I simply strive to accept things the way they are... with as much lovingkindness & compassion as I can muster. I wish you well...