Let the 'I' giveway to 'we'

She was asking him to get professional help? Him? The brilliant management executive? Who did she think she was? She may be a doctor, a gynaec but she had no business dictating what he had to do with his erectile dysfunction.

He would rather get into a tub full of sharks than admit that his wife’s reputation as a renowned gynecologist intimidated him to such an extent that it affected his erection while having sex.

What’s with the ego? Is this an established male pattern or a human pattern? It was Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychiatrist, who first made a mention of the ego in his psychoanalytic theory, albeit with a deeper relevance. Ego is what steers you, according to Freud; it gives you a balanced perspective as to what you have to do.  But ego is now being used in a connotation that would border on negativity.  We refer to ego as an equation of one-upmanship and something that makes us believe we are superior to others.

In a relationship, ego should never be given the importance it unfortunately commands at times. Often in a heated argument, partners relentlessly pursue their end of the battle and feel victorious if they had the last say. What they really fail to look at is that they are getting nowhere close to overcoming the issues plaguing them this way. An egoist may have won an argument but loses the relationship.

• Whenever there is an issue it is not the ‘I’ but the ‘We’ that must take precedence.
• Safeguard and nourish the relationship by approaching and addressing an issue together.
• Remember sex is not what a man does to or with a woman but what they do together.

So hush the ego and save the relationship.

The writer is a sexologist. Mail him at dr.narayana @deccanmail. com