Health

Careful , gentlemen!

Why You Should Never, EVER Have an Affair

by Andrew Daniels/Men's Health

We're guessing that hurt.

Cheating on your wife not only fractures your relationship—it also fractures your penis.

In what can only be described as the most painful example of karma on medical record, a new study in Sexual Medicine found that men who have extramarital affairs are more likely to break their penises.

Doctors at the University of Maryland found that half of their penile fracture patients between 2007 and 2011 sustained penis injuries when they were having affairs.

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Andrew Kramer, M.D., the study’s lead author and a urologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, blames the men’s adventurous infidelity settings for their damaged goods. “A lot of these guys were having affairs in weird locations,” he says. Think: cars, elevators, bathroom stalls, and offices. “If you have sex in a weird location or a physically awkward situation where you don’t have total control over your penis, you might not be able to protect it from getting crushed.”

As a nation of men collectively cringes, we bet you’re curious about how exactly that unfortunate scenario can unfold: When you’re on top of her during intercourse, you can control how hard and how frequently you thrust, says Kramer. But when she’s on top and dictating the action, you can accidentally slip out, leaving your penis unprotected and at an angle where it can buckle if she makes an awkward landing.

“A buckling of a rigid thing is what makes those erectile chambers tear. Then you’ve got a penile fracture,” Kramer says. And the likelihood of such a snafu increases during rough “cowboy sex,” as the urologist refers to it.

The solution: When she’s on top, use your hands to protect from her downward thrusts. “If she’s rigorously bouncing on your penis, get yourself in a position where you can be in control,” says Kramer. “Stabilize her pelvis with your