So I'm going to keep this brief as I can. I am really looking for any specific resources for men who are navigating feelings of emasculation in polyamory. Or helpful things that other men have done in working through these feelings.

So my partner (AG & AFAB, 35) and myself (M34) have always been poly and both of us practiced versions of nonmonogamy before we were together. We were having some general conflict at the beginning of the year and we've really worked through things and our relationship got a lot better through the process, all wonderful! I have a hard time going from conflict to sexy times, like plenty do. This time played out differently, the short version is that out of this situation I ended up very sexually and emotionally locked up and developed ED.

The ED long outlasted the conflict, about 8 months. I tried a lot of different things. We were in couple/sex therapy, I was doing mindful masturbation stuff, and I even started accepting that it was somewhat body-based and was trying to use cock rings, do kegels, etc. I say all that to say that I had tried a lot of things and nothing was working. It really felt like the psychological side was where I needed to focus because of the context and there were several misdirections that kept me thinking that too, but honestly I just ended up waiting too long to get a pill.

Over the course of those 8 months, I lost most of my sex drive because I felt like I was so unsexy. I had been through a lot of positive growth in years before by coming to accept my masculinity, grow in it, and better define it. A part of this had also been me becoming much more sexually expressive and engaged with myself(exploring kink as well as my sexuality opening to men and to people of more expansive identities when I'd historically identified as hetero). So when my body stopped responding to being aroused and that mixed with the feedback loop of decreasing overall affection between us, I just deflated. Felt undesirable, all that jazz.

My partner is also a very sexually engaged person, and they've got a need for penetrative sex. I say it that way on purpose, because we are kinky as hell and kept having other kinds of sex throughout. But penetrative sex was missing and both of us were completely starved for it. I eventually ended up having sex with a friend, ED issues occurred but differently. Which just kept me paying attention to the psychology of it all mistakenly. My partner eventually did the same and tried to find someone to meet that need.

They found someone and were able to get that need met. They were completely open/honest about everything they were doing, totally open about wanting to find someone even just solely to hookup for the sake of having penetrative sex. This is a part of our relationship, I did pretty much the same thing two months earlier, but I crumbled at that point. The narratives that play so stereotypically all started going. "I'm not enough of a man." "Someone else HAD to fuck them for you" "You're pathetic" All the insecurities flooded in about how I had just not fixed my dick, couldn't accept my dick needed fixing, then couldn't handle my partner getting dick that worked when mine wasn't.

I want to be SOOO clear in my ask, that there is no blame with my partner. My partner in no way, shape or form emasculated me. They were completely open, completely within the structure of our relationship, and communicated in ways that were all in line with our agreements.

This insecurity isn't about possessiveness, my partner's independence drew me to them in the first place. It's more about the feeling of inadequacy and the shame of having made the situation for myself by not getting on a medication sooner. The struggle is about feeling like I'm not enough. I never experienced insecurity at them having sex with someone else prior to this so it absolutely feels like I brought this on myself.

I'm looking for resources on helping men work through their emotional experience of feeling emasculated, not good enough, or less than. And it is that much more difficult because of how much I thought I had already worked on my view of my masculinity and was past the point where something like that could trigger such a fragile reaction in myself. Resources that essentially say "That's toxic masculinity which has no place in polyamory" are abundant just not very helpful in wanting to grow through the pain of it I guess. I got Cialis, it's helping and our sexual connection is getting restored. I just don't want taking care of that problem to then just allow me to avoid dealing with the insecurities, emasculation, and whatnot...

Any resources or even just personal tips are greatly appreciated!