Question for husbands with diabetes. If your diabetes has impacted your libido, do you still get the urge to go solo?

The simple answer is yes, but I feel like there's a lot to unpack with this kind of question.

This thread is marked NSFW, so I'm not going to sugarcoat or censor myself in my response.

Guys jerk off for entirely different reasons than they have sex with their wives.

It is one of the reasons why the 'porn = cheating' argument gets such eye rolls from guys. It's apples and oranges.

Sometimes guys jerk off just because they're bored. It's similar to eating junk food. Sometimes you just want to feel the sensation or comfort. There are no strings attached, no other person to consider. It's just a dude and his favorite toy enjoying a couple quick minutes together and relieving some stress. Not worth reading into it anymore than that.

There's also no performance anxiety. The succes

Intimacy with another person is 100% different from masturbating. As a woman I am obviously not the audience you're asking, but I can tell you with 100% certainty, no those are not the same thing. So yes, having his libido affected he may still masturbate.

Now, that being said, it sounds more like depression as an overall cause for him not maintaining his diabetes or visiting a doctor, which can also affect his libido.

I also feel it's worth mentioning 1-2 times a week is still quite a bit of intimacy compared to many married couples. Depending on age you may just have different levels of libido overall unrelated to health issues. Has he expressed a desire for more intimacy? If not, he may just be trying to spare your feelings from thinking it's about you when you're just not in the same

Diabetes can lower testosterone and cause/contribute to ED which can then cause a person to have a lower desire to put themselves in potentially embarrassing situations. It is not fun to try to be intimate with someone and not be able to perform which can increase stress and inability to perform the next time.

Def not a bullshit excuse.

Masturbating is undeniably easier than sexual intercourse.

He may be doing a disservice to you by masturbating regularly but the libido buy in for masturbation will almost always be lower than it is for sex.

That said if he claims for whatever reason that he wants to have sex with you more often and keeps up his masturbation habit it's probably going to be harder to perform partner stuff.

Getting really vulgar it's pretty easy to ejaculate with a penis that's floppy for 70% of a masturbation session.

A floppy penis for 70% of a penetrative partner session is like a failing grade lol. And it comes with all the downsides of "why isnt your dick hard?"  At that point ive personally just defaulted to toys.

Since everyone else answered the question, I'll address the other one.

Yes, better diabetes control could help him. And so can the ED drugs.

Diabetes itself may cause issues but uncontrolled or poorly controlled diabetes almost certainly will.

A steady blood glucose level, or as close to it as possible, has huge benefits in every facet of a diabetics life.

Saying that, I'd say he doesn't appear to have performance issues, as you say, so he should be quite able to perform adequately.

No and yes. For me libido is high during the mornings.

There is treatment available at a men's clinic that can help

Can some diabetic medication cause loss of sex drive?

Guys (husbands), often do solo just because it's easier and quicker when things are not quite right.

T1 here. Putting your tone and language aside for a moment - it comes across as accusatory. Have you spoken to a medical professional about this? Nothing preventing you from calling the local diabetic clinic and asking these questions rather than turning to Reddit. Get some real medical opinions. Diabetes can severely impact "libido". Women often act like there's a switch that goes on and off for a man to have sex. We only wish it was that simple. ED is not a trivial problem for diabetic suffers.

Many men have blood flow issues as they age. Diabetic men have this sometimes 1000x worse than men without the disease. Is he having a hard time staying hard during intercourse? Does he struggle to stay hard to finish vaginally? If you are thinking "yes" to these questions then he needs to go spe

As already mentioned don’t think it’s an issue with his diabetes directly. Depending on age he might be having issues with overall sex drive or erection but that doesn’t sounds like the issue here. It’s likely a mental issue. I know in my case it wasn’t that I didn’t want to, just felt like I wasn’t desired so why waste the time. A conversation with my wife mostly sorted my issue out. Not saying that is the case but there are a lot of mental issues that could cause this out there. Best bet is a therapist, either solo or a couples therapist.

I would give my left arm to have 1-2 times a week. Heck, I'd be thrilled with once every other week at this point. Sounds like your husband hit the jackpot and doesn't know it.

Diabetes, especially when out of control, affects libido. If he's masturbating instead of having sex, there's something wrong. Yes they're different, but I would never in a million years choose masturbation instead of intimacy.

It's possible the issue is medical or psychological though.

My tattoo has not impacted my libido at all, I do things by myself and with my wife exactly as much as I did before my diabetes diagnosis that could also be the fact that I took myself from 9.4 A1C down to 5.4 in 4 months and have hovered between 5.0 and 5.4 for the past 4 years I've never been outside of the normal non-diabetic range in that time

haven't been under appr 230mg/13mmol since 2021. haven't gone solo since 2021. 52yo male.

I can’t speak for others but I started working out 2 weeks after my diagnosis, I’m down 80lbs and the wife and I go at it like we are 20 years old at least 3/4 times a week. We are mid 30’s. I haven’t had any ED issues (knock on wood).