If you aren't having sex with your husband and yet your medication list at the pharmacy (or on your health insurance records) indicates that your spouse is taking erectile dysfunction pills such as Viagra, chances are he may be cheating.
Conversely, if you can't keep up in the bedroom since your husband started taking Viagra, you are also at risk. Many fifty- and sixty-something couples are finding that this "sex enhancing" drug has made them sexually incompatible.
Is Viagra causing a divorce boom?
In a USA Today article from March 2001, Karen S. Peterson shed light on how Viagra causes marital discord: "As the prescription drug energizes tens of thousands of couples, it also destabilizes others," she wrote. She goes on to quote a divorce lawyer, Dominic Barbara, who said that Viagra was causing a new type of infidelity. "[There are] cases of men taking Viagra, but their wives were no longer interested in sex. And now, a lot of middle-aged women are having affairs with older men who were impotent before there was Viagra," Barbara explained.
And in 2004, the BBC reported on an unnamed British woman in her mid fifties who divorced her husband over Viagra, claiming that he became sexually aggressive and overly sexualized, which led to the deterioration of their marriage.
Nobody is claiming that Viagra is the sole cause of affairs or divorce. But increasingly, it is a factor in both, said Barbara. In the USA Today story, he says that in about one of every 15 to 20 new divorce cases, someone mentions Viagra.
Experts from Harvard University agree that Viagra can lead to divorce. In a report entitled "Sexuality at Midlife and Beyond," they suggest that problems are especially likely to occur when a man takes the drug without informing his partner. The subsequent rise in love-making ability, accompanied by high self-esteem, may take his lover by surprise. And if sex was infrequent before, the dynamic of the relationship will shift and the woman may be uncomfortable with this change. A breakup or divorce may result.
The moral of the story?
One of the side effects listed after "may cause an erection that can last for up to 48 hours" should be "increased risk of divorce". Unfortunately, the FDA isn't obligated to list emotional side effects in its warnings to consumers.