Erectile dysfunction due to your missus stealing your mates

In a new study, researchers have discovered erectile dysfunction (ED) can happen because you’re not happy that your partner is friends with your mates.

Scholars from the University of Chicago and from Cornell University found a connection between ED and social networks that are shared by men and their partners. The scholars have dubbed the situation as “partner betweenness”.

ED occurs, in this sense, because your missus has become better friends with your mates then you are.

"Men who experience partner betweenness in their joint relationships are more likely to have trouble getting or maintaining an erection and are also more likely to experience difficulty achieving orgasm during sex," write sociologists Benjamin Cornwell at Cornell and Edward Laumann at University of Chicago.

The partner betweenness systematically disconnects the men’s emotions, what little there was, from one another and transfers the connection to the woman. She then becomes the ‘better friend’.

The scholars argue that partner betweenness undermines men’s feelings of privacy and autonomy, which naturally give us our masculinity. This feeling that we are not, in a sense, a ‘one man wolf pack’ can lead to problems with partner satisfaction and attraction.

"Partner betweenness is a significant predictor of ED: A man whose female partner has greater contact with some of his confidants than he does is about 92 percent more likely to have trouble getting or maintaining an erection than a man who has greater access than his partner does to all of his confidants."

The scholars do stress that shared friends are necessary for a couple to in order to contribute to a sense of couple hood and also to provide a base support for the relationship.

If you’re experiencing any problems where it counts then talk to your partner about the problem. Let her know that you need your man-friends just like she needs her girlfriends. If that fails, talk to your GP.