What is the cure for sexual impotence, and what are its causes?
Question: What is the cure for sexual impotence, and what are its causes? My wife has begun thinking of divorce because I am frigid and impotent.
The answer: There are many causes behind sexual impotence:
1. neurotic fatigue
2. addiction to alcohol, drugs, and smoking
3. practicing masturbation during the period before marriage
4. absent-mindedness
5. a defect in the testicles
6. practicing excessive businesses and interests like trade, reading, watching films, and offering excessive individual worships
7. misunderstanding the woman’s sexual need or being indifferent to her need
8. the wife’s weak sexual culture or her lack of beauty or exciting body
9. certain kind of foods
As for the cure, each cause has its own particular cure. Before all, one who is sexually impotent must discern the cause of his case, and then he should try to cure it. Neurotic fatigue, for example, can be cured by strengthening one’s faith in Allah. It is not right to utilize tranquillizers because most of the time they leave dangerous effects on man’s health.
The following foods have great effects in strengthening the nerves: honey with ginger, pepper, saffron, the cooked head of a cow or sheep, beets cooked in milk, mulberries, bananas, eggs with onion, mutton, carrots, pears, grapes, liver, sweet pomegranates, and endives.
As for the cure for addiction, abstaining from its causes can cure it. There are certain methods to assist in this, the key of which is first and foremost the will and determination of the addict himself.
As for masturbation, if a person practices it excessively during his youth, it will be difficult for him to restore his sexual power quickly, unless if he begins practicing morning sports, climbing mountains, and taking cold baths.
Some doctors think that those persons who have practiced masturbation deprive themselves of sexual pleasure in the marital relationship.
As for the rest of the causes, we say that a person should care for himself and cure his state before his problems grow and their complications destroy him.
The wife has to help her husband cure himself because the train of the marital life will not arrive at the stations of happiness and bliss without participation, cooperation, and mutual understanding.
As for thinking about divorce, it is a sign of selfishness and lack of morals, and this does not befit a Muslim woman except when the motives of divorce are legal, like when the husband neglects to cure himself while he is able to do it. Then, divorce is excusable and it is a just recompense for this husband.