Jealousy is a feeling that can seemingly strike at any minute: One moment, a friend at work will be telling you about his recent raise, the next, you’re secretly hoping he gets fired so that you can get a raise yourself. Jealousy isn’t always an indication of your actual feelings; after all, everyone has bouts of the extreme self-interest that comes with jealousy, but this doesn’t mean you always only think about yourself. But jealousy can spring from very real feelings, and these feelings can begin to affect you in other ways. Namely, jealousy related to your partner can translate to issues in the bedroom.
Whether your partner has begun to spend more time with a person you don’t trust, or if your partner is suddenly making more at work, jealousy occasionally crops up in a relationship. If left unaddressed, jealousy can snowball into feelings of betrayal, distrust, and resentment, and could ultimately lead to the end of the relationship. It can also lead to erectile dysfunction issues.
This is because the erection depends upon signals from the brain to function. If the brain become laser focused on a feeling, such as jealousy, it can often lead to the brain shifting priorities and attention away from other brain-reliant matters. Thus, with jealousy on the brain, the signals to produce an erection can get lost in the shuffle, causing missed erections, which then translates into feelings of embarrassment and shame over the inability to achieve an erection, which spirals into full blown erection dysfunction.
So, yes, jealousy-induced erectile dysfunction does occur. If you’ve been struggling with feelings of jealousy, and you find it increasingly difficult to achieve an erection, work with a mental health professional to get to the root of your feelings of jealousy, work out a way to overcome the feelings, and your erection, and your relationship, should get better.