When it comes to sexual pressure, the issues are abundant: the pressure to get hard (or wet), the pressure to perform as good as our last show, and, for some of us, the pressure to perform while drunk in a bar’s handicap bathroom stall. (And we’ve all been there, amirite or amirite?)

When we fail to alleviate the pressure, things can go real limp, real fast. Add to this that your partner feels like the issue is his or her fault, and the pressure flares up like a raging case of herpes, causing you to get even more anxious about sexual activities. And there you have it, folks: a wicked, never-ending whirlwind of performance anxiety, something Dylan knows all too well.

A few months ago, Dylan was too down to go down on his new girlfriend, Olivia, experiencing the whirlwind of performance anxiety for the second time in his life. He had had trouble with it several years ago with one of his old girlfriends, Mara, and it seemed like history would repeat itself.

“Mara just couldn’t handle it when I couldn’t get hard. I understood her feelings, but I couldn’t handle it either. It wasn’t her. I was feeling my own pressure to do as well as I had been doing. But you couldn’t tell her that,” he said. “She felt like it had something to do with her body or looks, and that was not the case. I couldn’t convince her that it was me, and I got tired of trying to after a while.”

Girls and guys have been hearing the whole “It’s not you, it’s me” routine for years—it stopped being a go-to line years ago and has now come to mean, “I’m just trying to let you down easy.” Thus, Mara dismissed Dylan‘s explanation and continued her own self-reflection, a delusional one that showcased mammoth thighs and a muffin top where no such things existed.

“We would have sex, but she and I both were nervous that I wouldn’t be able to perform. And then I was nervous she’d think it was her fault,” Dylan said. “When I got that anxious, I couldn’t perform at all. And when she noticed it, she couldn’t either. We dealt with it for a while, but it killed the relationship and we broke up.”

A one-night-stand or two seemed to fix the problem—no feelings or care between he and his barfly conquests equaled no pressure. But enter Olivia, and the anxiety started happening again.

“We were good for a while, and the sex was great,” he said. “But f*** if it didn’t start again a few months into the relationship. I started putting pressure on myself to perform as good as I had been, as long as I had been, and it just triggered it all.”

But Olivia wasn’t as self-reflective as Mara. In fact, she took it quite well.

“It was so strange. I expected self-consciousness from her, so I started apologizing. But Olivia kind of just eased me back into it when it would happen,” he said. “She’d see what was going on, tell me it’s not a big deal and that we don’t have to continue if I felt weird. We’d then go back to kissing and playing around. I would almost always be able to redeem myself and have sex.”

But it wasn’t without some hit to Olivia’s ego.

“I knew it somewhat affected her, though. After the first time it happened, she asked me if it was her. I reassured her it wasn’t and explained the issue. After that, she’d just walk me through it. And when she saw that being calm and helping me out would get me hard again, she felt better about it.”

While Dylan lucked out with Olivia, some only get the Maras. But even when this happens, the situation is usually fixable. Like Olivia and Dylan, you need to develop two important factors that can ease the issue: an attempt at understanding, even if you don’t, and communication. And when both of these flow between partners, a different whirlwind occurs: one that eases both players when one player can’t get in the game.

But note that performance anxiety is like a no-holds-barred badass muscleman pumped up on coke, steroids and a motive to kill some libido, with no gender being exempt from his wrath. So if it persists and you need some divine intervention (i.e., a conversation with a doctor or counselor), don’t go limp; get that issue checked out.

Releasing the Pressure Valve,

Stella