Andropause: the male menopause

My first encounter with sex (in the broadest sense) took place in an apartment block on the left bank of Lake Zurich. One of my classmates had got his hands on some smutty video cassettes belonging to his dad. That Wednesday afternoon, he played them for me and two other classmates, thus raising his social status considerably. This was back in the late eighties when we didn’t have the internet or smartphones. We genuinely had to procure our porn. We’d find it tucked away in our parents’ wardrobes, on VHS or in well-thumbed magazines.

I was hooked. Loud, naked women in provocative poses! Never in my wildest fantasies could I have pictured such glorious scenes – and I wanted nothing more than to put them into action. Alas, reality was standing in the way: I was a spotty teenager and women, if they took notice of me at all, thought I was cute at best. While everyone around me was making out, I stood by, drinking Martini Bianco.

One day, long after I’d got my driving licence, I fell in love with a woman who felt the same way about me. Though this initially sent me into a state of shock, I quickly recovered. Soon, my life would revolve around sex. I thought about sex constantly, talked about sex constantly. And if I remember rightly, I had an erection from dusk ’til dawn.

The limp life

At that time, I read that Rudy Giuliani, then mayor New York, had prostate cancer, and that the operation he needed to go would remove his ability to obtain an erection. Wondering why something like that had to be reported in the newspaper, I immediately resolved to kill myself if I ever met the same fate. A life without hard-ons? Unbearable. Unimaginable.

My sexual heyday was a joyous time. That said, it also formed the basis of a problem that wouldn’t become apparent until years later. The women I was intimate with experienced a man who was always up for sex – and was always able to perform. They’d later meet other young men who, like me, always wanted to have sex. Considering these experiences, you can’t blame them for thinking that men constantly want sex, and are always able to do it. No matter how old they are.

Once my late 30s arrived, I noticed that my intention to sleep with all the beautiful women in town was starting to lose some of its urgency. But this didn’t matter too much. There’d still be plenty of stress and disappointment. And my penis was happy about being spared the violent tugs of relief I’d previously subjected it to once or twice a day.

The first loss of libido

The first time I had absolutely no desire to have sex, I was 44. Which was awkward, particularly because the opportunity to do so had just presented itself. But it just didn’t interest me. I was more enthusiastic about making music with my synthesiser. But I didn’t say any of that, of course. I said: «I don’t want to right now. I’m tired. Sorry.»

The woman who had to hear this had been living with the belief that such a thing was totally impossible. A man with no desire for sex? A man who says he’s too tired to do it – and in the afternoon, no less? Must be code for «I don’t love you any more» or «I don’t find you attractive any more». She was suitably hurt and insecure. I tried to explain myself, but failed – not least because I myself was irritated. I didn’t recognise myself.

With my next partner, I found it easier to describe the problem. Right at the beginning, I said: listen, I’m not twenty any more, I don’t feel like having sex every day any more. We established a traffic light system: red means «no desire for sex», yellow means «I could be persuaded» and green means «get your kit off». Though there’s a slight imbalance, nobody’s offended. My lack of desire isn’t put down to the state of the relationship or some secret evaluation of my partner’s attractiveness.

I still think sex is brilliant. In fact, for various reasons, I think it’s even more brilliant than it used to be. I still feel like doing it pretty often, too. Okay, now that I’m reading the phrase «pretty often», it sounds like more than it is. The best way to compare my libido is with a campfire that hasn’t been fed any fresh wood for a while, yet shouldn’t be left unattended.

If, however, a storm broke out over the campsite, extinguishing the fire forever, I wouldn’t be too broken up about it. What am I going on about?

There’s a name for all this

I’m now 48 years old and going through andropause. It’s the male version of menopause – a word we only associate with women. Men, however, are also affected by a hormonal change, and the differences between it and the female variety aren’t actually that significant (tiredness, mood swings, disrupted sleep, etc.). While it’s common knowledge that women eventually stop menstruating and thus lose their fertility, the term andropause is still largely unheard of. Whether or not the andropause even exists is still contested.

Not only that, but the term isn’t quite accurate. The menopause describes a woman’s last menstrual period, and therefore, a definitive time point in the menopausal phase. A similar kind of punctuation mark between stages is lacking in men. Their desire just visibly decreases (while the desire to rail against a so-called green, left-wing dictatorship seems to increase by the same measure).

It’s not surprising that men don’t talk to each other about the andropause. After all, it’s not just the women we’re close to who’ve long been under the impression that we’re tireless love machines – it’s us too. Why else do we feel compelled to assure the world of our ability to sow our wild oats at every opportunity? If someone asks us how many children we have, we roar: «Two! That I know of! Hahaha!» If we need to give a sperm sample at the doctor’s office, we point at the little cup and shout: «But that’s way too small for me, hahaha!» And if we create a Tinder profile, we set our search preferences to women who’re 15 to 20 years younger – as if they’d been waiting just for us.

It’s not a crisis

People used to chalk this problem up to a midlife crisis, which was explained by stress. He isn’t a young man any more, they said. He’s tired, he’s lost his way, he’s wondering what’s still to come in life and where he’ll be able to find fulfilment in the future. Why extremely young girlfriends, motorbikes and binge drinking with other members of the grey-haired brigade are accepted as clever answers to those last two questions remains a mystery in itself. What we do know is that it’s not a philosophical crisis or a consequence of being overworked – it’s a physical change. Hormone production decreases. It’s a slighter, more gradual decrease than the one that occurs in women, but it’s surprising and disturbing nonetheless.

In particularly intimate moments, we talk about it anyway. About how the claim that we have sex twice a week hasn’t held true for a long time. How it’s actually closer to every two weeks. And how every four weeks would be totally fine as well. How some of us have turned to pharmaceutical support in the process. How we ask our dinner companions what they’re ordering, not out of interest, but because we’re no longer able to read the menu. How we used to be able to pee our names into the snow, while these days, we barely dribble out enough urine for the first letter.

You could lament the loss of vision and virility, and the onset of old age. It does get sad sometimes. But you can just as easily laugh about it, too. Even more so when it affects old friends.

However, bidding your youth farewell – as bitter as it may occasionally be – is a privilege. Many of us won’t ever see age 40. Some won’t even see 20. Getting to live 50 years or more is a gift. I think the penis, that once celebrated striker ending up on the subs bench and eventually in the dressing room, is a fair price to pay in return.