How To Not Lose Your Erection When Putting On a Condom

Do you start to lose your erection every time you go to put on a condom? If this has happened to you, you’re not alone and there are some things that you can do to maintain that strong, hard, firm erection when you’re putting the condom on.

Hey, I’m Phoenix Blake, sex coach and educator, and like you, I used to lose my erection every time I tried to put a condom on. It was really awkward, it was really difficult, but just a few different techniques were absolute game changers for me, and now I am so much more confident to put on a condom, I rarely lose my erections when doing it and I want the same for you.

First, let’s talk about why are we actually losing our erections when we put a condom on in the first place.

Well, if we think about the sexual experience, maybe we have a nice date with our partner, we escalate to kissing and touching and some foreplay and then all of a sudden it’s time for intercourse and it’s like bam, drop down, stop everything. We need to find this condom, we need to put it on, it tends to be very rushed, it tends to be quite stressful.

If you’ve lost an erection putting a condom on in the past before, you’re probably very stressed as well because you’re like, “Quick, I need to get this done before I lose my erection,” and all of this rushing, all of this stress and anxiety actually activates our sympathetic nervous system or our fight or flight response.

Now this actually constricts our blood vessels and causes blood to leave our erection, which is exactly what we don’t want. So we actually want to stay calm during the condom process to keep our parasympathetic nervous system activated, or our rest and digest nervous system.

Also, often when we’re putting on a condom, our entire focus shifts from our body and the feelings that we’re having, our partner and the connection that we’ve got with them and how attracted we are to them, to the condom and the packet, and we’re so focused on opening it, making sure it’s going the right way around. We lose focus on everything around us and we lose our arousal in the process.

We’re also likely not getting as much stimulation as we were. Often women will just stop and they won’t touch you while you’re getting a condom and putting it on, and that lack of stimulation can also cause you to lose your erection.

Also, putting a condom on isn’t the most pleasurable experience either. Condoms don’t feel as good as sex without condoms, so there’s a lot of different things going on that combined make it very common for guys to lose erections when putting condoms on.

But the good news is there’s things that you can do to maintain your erection while you’re getting the condom ready and putting it on, as well as maintain your erection while having sex with a condom.

1. Keep Condoms Close By

If you’ve got to stop the action to run into a different room to grab a condom, there’s a lot of time between when you stop the action and when you’re actually going to put the condom on that you’re likely going to lose your erection in the process.

So have condoms nearby where you’re getting hot and heavy, have condoms in your pocket, and if you can, have condoms in multiple locations in your house, so if you start getting hot and heavy on the couch, then you can easily grab a condom from out there.

2. Get The Right Sized Condom

This is a big mistake that a lot of guys make. They’ve got the wrong size condom that doesn’t really fit them.

This is a mistake that I made for years, where I had condoms that were actually too small for me and I didn’t realize. I thought condoms were meant to be super, super tight, but this was making them more difficult to get on and was causing me to lose my erection easier.

This may take some trial and error, but on condom packages generally they list the circumference of the condom in millimeters, so try different widths to see which works for you.

You want it to be big enough that it slides on easily but not so big that there’s lots of empty space in the condom, and if you’re struggling to find the right size for you in store, then go online, because there’s lots of different brands online that can offer smaller or larger condom sizes than you might find at the local supermarket.

3. Practice Putting On Condoms By Yourself

You want to be proficient at unpacking your condom. You want to be good at finding which way is the right way around, and you want to be good at sliding that on your member as well.

The more confidently you can do this and the more practice you have means that when you get into the moment with a partner, you can do it without thinking. You can do it subconsciously, and that way you can stay focused on your partner, you can stay focused on the intimacy and the pleasure that you’re receiving.

You’re going to spend some money, you’re going to waste some condoms, but overall it’s completely worth it, and in fact practicing masturbating with a condom on, getting used to that sensation, can help you to be more comfortable in the moment and help you to maintain your erection more easily when you’re having sex with a condom.

4. Take Your Time

Now, when it comes to the actual moment, the big mistake a lot of guys make is they try and rush and get the condom on really quickly, which, as we’ve talked about, activates the wrong part of our nervous system, which constricts our blood vessels.

So what we want to do when putting on a condom is we want to take our time, we want to stay relaxed, there is no rush to getting this thing on straight away. Rushing is absolutely going to kill your boner, and as the man you want to create the flow and the energy of things in the bedroom.

A mistake that I used to personally make is that I would go down on my partners, I would get them really revved up and get them really excited for intercourse, where they were at the point of, “Get in me now,” but I’d been busy pleasuring them and so I didn’t have an erection at the time, and I would try and quickly put a condom on, but I wasn’t really aroused.

So, changing the flow of the foreplay and the situation so we weren’t getting to that point, or if she did get to that point, I’d communicate with her that, “Hey, slow it down, let’s touch each other, you can touch me now.”

Often we’re putting this pressure on ourselves that we need to get hard in order to please her, but often we can just flow the situation into something else, doesn’t have to be intercourse right away, she’s going to be completely happy with that, you can stay calm, you can get aroused, and then when you’re at your peak arousal, then you can put the condom on and move towards intercourse.

You need to drive the action so that putting the condom on happens when you’re most aroused and you’re at your hardest, and this can take some time and some practice, but it’s well worth it.

5. Make It A Relaxing And Sexy Experience

Don’t be awkward about this because this is so normal. So many guys will be like, “Oh, sorry, I’ve got to put a condom on, just don’t worry,” and just go over here and do it while she’s over there waiting.

No, be confident in this. Involve your partner in this. This is a really exciting time. You can’t wait to have sex with her, you can’t wait to get intimate, and this is the lead-up to that moment.

Don’t stop the action just because you’re putting on a condom. Get her to engage with you, continue to kiss her and touch her, maybe as you unwrap it.

In fact, you can even give it to her and get her to open the condom while you stare at her sexy body. You can even masturbate while she’s opening the condom to help you stay hard, fantasizing about her and the sex you’re about to have.

You can even get her to put it on for you, and if you’re in a dominant frame, this can be a really sexy thing to do. She might fumble, she might feel a bit nervous, but if you’re relaxed and strong and dominant, then it can actually feel really good as she tries to put it on, and when she gets about halfway and she’s struggling, then you can finish it off, kiss her and then lead into the next moment.

But do you see how now we’ve turned it from, “Oh my God, it’s this awkward thing I need to rush to,” to, “No, this is part of the foreplay, this is part of the experience and there’s no rush here”? And if you’re going to open it yourself, get her to pleasure you while you’re opening it. So get her to go down on you, get her to kiss you, get her to touch you.

Again, this is where the practice comes in handy, where we can do it subconsciously, and that way we can keep our mind focused on the experience. We’re not honing in and focusing on the condom, we’re focused on our partner who we’re with, and we’re just opening it in the background while we’re enjoying what’s happening to us and enjoying her pleasuring us.

If overall you’re finding it harder to get erections, or you’re getting erections fine but you’re just losing them really quickly, then there’s a variety of different things that you can do to boost your erections overall. Go to passionately.com/ed where I share with you some of the best things that you can do to get firmer, harder, stronger erections.

I used to struggle with erectile dysfunction a lot. I was losing erections with partners, I wasn’t even waking up with morning wood anymore, but after doing these things my erections are so much harder, I’ve regained my morning wood and I’m not worried about losing erections with partners anymore.

6. If You Lose Your Erection, Don’t Stress

A big mistake that I used to make, and a lot of guys make, is that I’d go to put the condom on and I’d start to lose my boner, it’d be semi-hard, and I’d just quickly try and get the condom on when it’s semi-hard.

Sure, you can get it on, but this stress causes you to lose the boner even more. Then you feel like you’ve got this expectation from her that now the condom’s on, we need to have sex right away, but I’ve lost my erection. This causes the stress to get bigger, and then I just completely end up losing my erection.

Instead, realize if you lose your erection in the process of getting the condom out, that’s completely normal. It happens to a lot of guys, it’s very common, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. So this happens to us, don’t be ashamed of it, just be relaxed.

Take the open condom that you’ve got, work out which is the right way around, just put it next to you on the bedside, on the pillow, whatever. Re-engage with your partner again, get them to start touching you, get them to start kissing you or going down on you, and don’t be in a big rush.

Another big mistake that I made, and a lot of guys make, is that once I did get harder, I’d be like, “Okay, quick, grab the condom, need to put it on straight away,” but I wasn’t fully relaxed and fully aroused.

So rather than trying to put it on just as you get hard, get hard, relax into it, take your time, make sure that you’re completely aroused and completely erect for a while before you try to put it on. So get to that point where you’re really turned on, and then, as we talked about, make it a sexy experience, slide it on calmly and then proceed to intercourse.

7. Get Her To Put It On With Her Mouth

This can be a really fun thing for her to do, and it can feel really good for you as well. She can give you head, which can help you to get hard, and then once you’re hard, she can take the condom with her mouth and she can slide it on using her mouth and her hands.

Now, it may take some practice to get this right, but this can turn putting the condom on from something that’s awkward into a really fun sexual experience that you have together.

8. Masturbate Together

You can also masturbate together and then put the condom on. So maybe lie next to each other kissing, and you’re masturbating yourself while she’s touching herself.

Maybe you enjoy going down on her. You can go down on her and masturbate and then get hard yourself, put the condom on while you’re hard and while you’re down there, and then have intercourse with her.

Honestly, there’s just lots of different ways that you can make this sexy. Find what works for you and try to put it on when you’re most aroused.

9. Put Lube Into The Tip

If you’re finding that your issue is you’re losing your erection when you’re having sex because of the lack of stimulation from wearing a condom, then this is an absolute game changer. What you should do is take the condom and put a bit of lube into the tip of the condom before you put the condom on your penis.

This is an absolute game changer in terms of sensation and feeling, and rather than the condom kind of harshly rubbing against your penis, it feels much more like having sex without a condom. I highly recommend it, and once you try this, you won’t go back.

Lastly, I’ve got a couple of pro tips to reward those of you who made it all the way to the end.

10. Have Multiple Condoms Available

At home, if it’s by your bedside, that’s fine, you should have enough condoms, but if you’re going out, take multiple condoms with you, two, three, even four condoms.

The reason is not that you expect to use all of them, but if you take just one condom, then it adds stress because when you’re using that one condom, it has to be the one and only, you have to get it right that time.

However, if you have multiple condoms, maybe you put the condom on, you have a bit of intercourse, you lose your erection, the condom comes off, you know you’ve got another chance with your second or your third condom, that you don’t need to stress about the first condom being the one and only.

11. Talk To Your Partner About This Issue

The next pro tip, which was absolutely massive for me, is to actually go ahead and talk to your partner about this issue.

If you’re having sex with someone regularly, then it’s worthwhile sitting down with them outside of a sexual situation and just let them know, “Hey, sometimes when we’re getting hot and heavy, when it comes time to put the condom on, I find I can lose my erection.”

Most girls have experienced guys losing their erection at some point, so it’s not going to be this big shock to her. It’s not going to be a reduction in your manhood or anything. She’s going to appreciate that you’ve shared this with her.

And then once you’ve shared it with her, look at ways that you two can work together in order to make the condom putting on experience so much better.

I had issues with one of my partners. I spoke to her about it and we worked out ways that she could help me not lose my erection when we’re putting on the condom. So rather than it just being something about me, something that I have to do myself, this is something that we were doing and experiencing together.

And actually, because of communicating with her, I was now less afraid of losing my erection, because if I did lose it, I knew she’d understand, and then because I didn’t have anxiety about losing my erection, I was way more likely to keep my erection anyway.

This is something where you have the discussion with your partner once and you reap the rewards for many, many times to come. It’s one-time effort and multiple-times benefit.

And if after all this you’re still struggling to keep it up, then maybe you need to improve your diet, do some exercise or potentially take some supplements to help with your erectile dysfunction. Go to passionately.com/ed to see the supplements that I personally take that have massively helped with my erections, or go ahead and check out this video on the best foods that you can eat to help with erections.