Um, Can We Pls Talk About “Emotional Boners”?

Are those feelings in his pants, or is he just happy to see you? (Both. The answer is both.)

- Julia Pugachevsky

Men may not have periods or labor pains, but there is one unfair thing that comes with the territory of being biologically male: unexpected erections. The inconvenient boner coaxed by a buxom model on a pasta-sauce jar is a punch line in practically every coming-of-age movie. But deep in the subcategories of stiffies—somewhere between morning wood and immediate hard-ons for foreign accents— lies a very special thing called an emotional boner.

True to its name, the emotional boner is spurred by feelings, just not sexual ones. Matt, 30, says he got one when the subject of getting hitched came up with his then-new(ish) girlfriend. “We weren’t having a serious talk about it, but I got an erection just at the thought of marriage,” Matt recalls. “Even more confusing was that it happened multiple times after that.”