The stress and sex connection.
Imagine that you’re on a hike in a luscious green forest. From behind a tree, you notice the golden eyes of a jaguar. Your sympathetic nervous system triggers hormones that increase your alertness and arousal. Fight or flight.
Imagine next that your lover walks out from a small waterfall, soaking wet and so turned on. They want to feel your body rubbing right next to them in that fresh flowing water…
Imagine that you decide to take the plunge with your lover because you just love to see them dripping like that. But now your body is secreting cortisol. It’s a hormone triggered by the HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal) axis that constricts your blood vessels, pumping more blood to the cardiovascular organs so that you can fight or flee for your life.
The penis and vagina are made of erectile tissue, meaning that they expand when filled with blood. That expansion is what gives us the sensations of arousal. When the blood vessels are constricted, it’s harder for the body to pump blood to the sex organs. No blood, no arousal, no dripping between your legs.
When our body is creating stress hormones like cortisol, we don’t have the bandwidth to create sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen. The HPA axis works with the HPG (hypothalamic pituitary gonadal) axis to ensure our survival—the stress response ensures the survival of our body, the sex response ensures the survival of our species. We need to protect our body first so that it’s possible to protect our species.
It’s why researchers have found that chronic stress is associated with most sexual dysfunction like low libido, low arousal, infertility, distractibility, erectile dysfunction, and premature ejaculation (Bodenmann et al 2006; Hamilton & Meston 2013; Pressman et al 2018).
Imagine now that the jaguar jumps into the pool with you, lunging to clamp her piercing jaws around your skull, your HPA axis is working overtime. You are exploding with stress and not one drop of pleasure.
The jaguar is your thoughts, roaming the forest of your mind, waiting to creep up on you when you least expect it, especially when you’re dripping wet...