Erection Issues From Chronic Pandemic Stress?

heinrich57

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I'm a 32 year-old male, healthy and active, and I've been experiencing some subtly perplexing erection issues lately. Sometime during the first few months of the pandemic, which were incredibly stressful (I live in a major city in the northeast) I noticed that my morning wood became much softer and more infrequent. I had no issue with getting erections and masturbating, so I didn't think much of it. The change became my new normal for most of the pandemic. Occasionally I would wake up with a rock-hard erection, but this was the exception.

Since getting vaccinated and dating again, after 14 months of not having sex, I'm starting to notice some more troubling changes. Pre-pandemic, simply making out or feeling up a woman I was into was enough to get me hard. In March of 2020, a week before the pandemic, I got home after a first date makeout session and I was so horny that I sprung an erection right in the shower and shot a six foot stream of cum, which I had never done before. Now...I'm not nearly as responsive. I had my first full-on sexual encounter a few nights ago and despite taking 20mg of viagra as a one-time performance anxiety insurance policy (I was nervous about my performance, given the long dry spell), I was barely able to get an erection, despite being horny. We had some intercourse but I lost the erection when we switched positions.

Now, upon reflection, the fact that this happened after months of declining morning wood is...concerning.

The fact that I *can* get hard when masturbating (which I did *very* often during the pandemic) is somewhat reassuring. Even if I wake up with a soft penis, I can get very hard with just a bit of manual and visual stimulation, if I'm horny and relatively relaxed. I watched a good deal of porn, but not in massive doses constantly. I'm going to talk with my doctor about the morning wood issue, but the thing I'm wondering about right now is whether anyone else here experienced erection changes amid the stress and isolation of the pandemic. I know that stress can cause elevated cortisol levels, which can have a negative effect on testosterone, and this is one of the things I'll be asking my doctor about when I see her this week. But again...I wondered if any of this sounds like deja vu for anyone.