I'm in my 60s and my husband and I have been exploring kink for a few years now. He's started having some erectile issues and it's affecting our play. How do other couples adapt?

The assumption that BDSM is primarily about sex, and therefore that sexual performance issues limit BDSM, is one that many older kinksters describe working through and leaving behind. Power exchange, sensation, restraint, service, humiliation, and connection all exist independently of erection and penetration.

Many couples describe erectile difficulties as, unexpectedly, a catalyst for a more genuinely interesting kink life because it removed the implicit goal-orientation that had structured their scenes. When penetrative sex is not in the picture as a likely endpoint, scenes tend to expand into their own content: longer rope sessions, more elaborate restraint, more attention to sensation and psychological dynamics, more extended aftercare.

Practically, the conversation between you and your husband about what he is comfortable with, what he wants scenes to look like, and what concerns him about the change in his body is the starting point. Many men experience shame and frustration around erectile changes, and that emotional experience is the first thing to attend to rather than jumping to practical adaptations.

Adapting the definition of play to not include or expect his erection, and to frame what happens as complete in itself rather than as a modified version of what came before, is the practical move. Scenes can be designed around his experience as a Dominant or submissive without reference to his genital function.

This is something many couples in their 60s and beyond navigate, and most describe the adaptation as expanding rather than diminishing their kink life.