WalkingMan
New Registrant
I'm new to the forum, and grateful for the opportunity to share, seek help, and help others com to terms with what's happened to them.
To set the stage, I was born in the U.S. in 1965 to native-born parents. At that time, about 85-90 percent of newborn boys fitting that description got circumcised shortly after birth.
Thanks to our small-town doctor, I didn't get a circumcision. My mother later told me the story of how that happened. I'll save that for another post.
One thing Mom said she learned from the doctor was that she had to retract and clean under my foreskin until I learned to do it.
My memory of this was, at the end of each bath, being told to stand up for my mother to open my foreskin and scrub the glans with a soapy cloth. The sensation was so intense, it made me giggle and my legs twitched. It felt "good" yet it was too much for my body to take, like being tickled to the point of losing one's breath.
Sometimes this cleaning took place when I was simply standing in the bathroom while my mother prepared the washcloth, unrelated to routine bathing. She'd tell me to lower my pants and underwear so she could clean my "talliwacker." I complied, not imagining I had any option.
(I would learn much, much later that boys under age 5 usually don't have retractable foreskins. The membranes are fused like a fingernail to a nail bed, and they naturally separate as the boy plays with and stretches his own foreskin. Forcible retraction is premature and harmful. But my foreskin was fully retractable as long as I can remember, probably from forced opening, perhaps at the doctor's urging.)
Mom wasn't shy about this. If one of my older sisters happened to be in the bathroom, I still got my foreskin peeled back and my glans scrubbed. This continued until I was about to start first grade -- part of the story I'll continue elsewhere.
At some point in childhood, I developed an aversion to defecating in the toilet. When I felt a bowel movement coming on, I would sit down and clench my anus, resisting the pressure to cause what I can only now describe as a pleasant feeling. It wasn't that I didn't want to use the toilet; I just wanted to feel that particular pressure more.
This went on until at least the age of 9, despite my parents' disgust and shaming. At home, either they or one of my sisters would alert to the smell of feces, and I'd be taken to the bathroom for cleanup of the inevitable leakage that had soiled my underwear. A stern lecture would ensue, punctuated with wonder at why a boy my age couldn't simply go to the toilet when he felt the urge to defecate. I didn't have the words to answer.
I now believe I was self-stimulating. Here's why.
This podcast-interview with a somatic therapist included the phrase, "issues are in the tissues," meaning the body stores memories of assault within cells. My eyes flared when the therapist said that sexual trauma to a young boy is usually stored in the anal area.
Only then -- decades later -- did I make the connection: the "sexual assault" of routine, invasive hygiene measures stimulated my penis into sensory overload, and those memories got stored in the tissues surrounding my anus and rectum. I discovered I could awaken the "good" feeling by resisting a bowel movement, without the external overload.
(I have not yet sought somatic or other therapy for this issue, so this is only my analysis. It should not be taken as a professional conclusion nor advice.)
At some point around age 9, I did decide to quit holding my bowel movements and start using the toilet. The issue would not recur to me until I heard that podcast a few weeks ago, and began to wonder about the connection between what happened to me with Mom's invasive cleaning regimen, the toileting issue, and a seemingly unrelated sexual dysfunction that would manifest itself later.
I hit puberty at age 15 and began masturbating daily. Beginning at age 18, I would have four sexual encounters with four different women. With each, I was able to achieve erection, but my penis would go numb on insertion -- oral or vaginal. I could not ejaculate. My mind also seemed to wander during intercourse, not to anything in particular, but simply away from the here-and-now. I believe this is called dissociation.
These encounters ended in physical frustration for me ("blue balls") and fear that something was wrong with my genitals and/or brain. I desperately wanted to ejaculate inside a woman; that was the nearest thing young men had to a rite of passage, and I felt like a little boy until I could experience it.
In those encounters, I recall feeling unable to let my physical excitement build toward ejaculation, which happened easily while masturbating. Shouldn't a woman's vagina be more stimulating than my hand? Yet, my penis felt nothing.
I'd always feared ejaculating too soon, a fear widely spread by popular culture. But there I was, unable to ejaculate at all, despite having condom-free intercourse with a desirable young woman. In one encounter, I faked orgasm so she wouldn't wonder what was wrong, and excused myself to the bathroom, where I self-stimulated to ejaculation.
Finally, on my fifth sexual encounter, I was with a sexually experienced woman my age (26) who let me penetrate her without a condom. Then, sensing my frustration grow when I still couldn't hit climax, she asked if I wanted to penetrate her from behind ("doggy style") because she knew "some men need that." I said yes, and we changed position. Something began to build in my pelvic floor that echoed the sensations I'd felt while approaching orgasm through masturbation. I closed my eyes and let the rhythm of my swinging hips bring those sensations to a head. For the first time, I ejaculated in a woman. I felt relieved that at least I wasn't somehow screwed up to the point that I couldn't enjoy sex as my body wanted.
In subsequent encounters with her and with other women, I simply began intercourse in the missionary position, then when I felt the time was right, moved to enter her from behind. It always worked.
After I married, I found that at times, I could reach orgasm in missionary (or even supine, under the right circumstances) but getting up on my knees to swing my hips brought my orgasm on reliably, and I defaulted to it most every time. My wife seemed to understand, and accommodated me without complaint. I did carry a nagging belief that she would have liked to experience my orgasm in missionary, but this fear remained in my head.
During our marriage, I reached the age where my annual physical would include a digital prostate exam. I didn't fear it, but that first time, it shocked me ... and felt good. I went home to my wife with the sensation of my doctor's (a female, for what that's worth) finger still groping my prostate. That evening, I had what I would call supercharged sex with my wife, and she noticed the difference. We'd always had difficulty communicating openly about sex, so I didn't say anything about the exam, and she didn't ask. Once the sensations diminished, our sex life resumed its routine.
After a 20-year relationship, we divorced.
Just recently, I had an encounter with a woman I'd met through a dating app. And the same old problem returned: arousal, erection, no climax.
Then I heard the podcast with the somatic specialist. Then another podcast (same interviewer) with another, similar specialist. Then I gathered the nerve to look further into the connection between my mother's invasive hygiene, the toilet-training, and the anorgasmia.
I think I'm on the right track now.
To set the stage, I was born in the U.S. in 1965 to native-born parents. At that time, about 85-90 percent of newborn boys fitting that description got circumcised shortly after birth.
Thanks to our small-town doctor, I didn't get a circumcision. My mother later told me the story of how that happened. I'll save that for another post.
One thing Mom said she learned from the doctor was that she had to retract and clean under my foreskin until I learned to do it.
My memory of this was, at the end of each bath, being told to stand up for my mother to open my foreskin and scrub the glans with a soapy cloth. The sensation was so intense, it made me giggle and my legs twitched. It felt "good" yet it was too much for my body to take, like being tickled to the point of losing one's breath.
Sometimes this cleaning took place when I was simply standing in the bathroom while my mother prepared the washcloth, unrelated to routine bathing. She'd tell me to lower my pants and underwear so she could clean my "talliwacker." I complied, not imagining I had any option.
(I would learn much, much later that boys under age 5 usually don't have retractable foreskins. The membranes are fused like a fingernail to a nail bed, and they naturally separate as the boy plays with and stretches his own foreskin. Forcible retraction is premature and harmful. But my foreskin was fully retractable as long as I can remember, probably from forced opening, perhaps at the doctor's urging.)
Mom wasn't shy about this. If one of my older sisters happened to be in the bathroom, I still got my foreskin peeled back and my glans scrubbed. This continued until I was about to start first grade -- part of the story I'll continue elsewhere.
__________
At some point in childhood, I developed an aversion to defecating in the toilet. When I felt a bowel movement coming on, I would sit down and clench my anus, resisting the pressure to cause what I can only now describe as a pleasant feeling. It wasn't that I didn't want to use the toilet; I just wanted to feel that particular pressure more.
This went on until at least the age of 9, despite my parents' disgust and shaming. At home, either they or one of my sisters would alert to the smell of feces, and I'd be taken to the bathroom for cleanup of the inevitable leakage that had soiled my underwear. A stern lecture would ensue, punctuated with wonder at why a boy my age couldn't simply go to the toilet when he felt the urge to defecate. I didn't have the words to answer.
I now believe I was self-stimulating. Here's why.
This podcast-interview with a somatic therapist included the phrase, "issues are in the tissues," meaning the body stores memories of assault within cells. My eyes flared when the therapist said that sexual trauma to a young boy is usually stored in the anal area.
Only then -- decades later -- did I make the connection: the "sexual assault" of routine, invasive hygiene measures stimulated my penis into sensory overload, and those memories got stored in the tissues surrounding my anus and rectum. I discovered I could awaken the "good" feeling by resisting a bowel movement, without the external overload.
(I have not yet sought somatic or other therapy for this issue, so this is only my analysis. It should not be taken as a professional conclusion nor advice.)
At some point around age 9, I did decide to quit holding my bowel movements and start using the toilet. The issue would not recur to me until I heard that podcast a few weeks ago, and began to wonder about the connection between what happened to me with Mom's invasive cleaning regimen, the toileting issue, and a seemingly unrelated sexual dysfunction that would manifest itself later.
__________
I hit puberty at age 15 and began masturbating daily. Beginning at age 18, I would have four sexual encounters with four different women. With each, I was able to achieve erection, but my penis would go numb on insertion -- oral or vaginal. I could not ejaculate. My mind also seemed to wander during intercourse, not to anything in particular, but simply away from the here-and-now. I believe this is called dissociation.
These encounters ended in physical frustration for me ("blue balls") and fear that something was wrong with my genitals and/or brain. I desperately wanted to ejaculate inside a woman; that was the nearest thing young men had to a rite of passage, and I felt like a little boy until I could experience it.
In those encounters, I recall feeling unable to let my physical excitement build toward ejaculation, which happened easily while masturbating. Shouldn't a woman's vagina be more stimulating than my hand? Yet, my penis felt nothing.
I'd always feared ejaculating too soon, a fear widely spread by popular culture. But there I was, unable to ejaculate at all, despite having condom-free intercourse with a desirable young woman. In one encounter, I faked orgasm so she wouldn't wonder what was wrong, and excused myself to the bathroom, where I self-stimulated to ejaculation.
Finally, on my fifth sexual encounter, I was with a sexually experienced woman my age (26) who let me penetrate her without a condom. Then, sensing my frustration grow when I still couldn't hit climax, she asked if I wanted to penetrate her from behind ("doggy style") because she knew "some men need that." I said yes, and we changed position. Something began to build in my pelvic floor that echoed the sensations I'd felt while approaching orgasm through masturbation. I closed my eyes and let the rhythm of my swinging hips bring those sensations to a head. For the first time, I ejaculated in a woman. I felt relieved that at least I wasn't somehow screwed up to the point that I couldn't enjoy sex as my body wanted.
In subsequent encounters with her and with other women, I simply began intercourse in the missionary position, then when I felt the time was right, moved to enter her from behind. It always worked.
After I married, I found that at times, I could reach orgasm in missionary (or even supine, under the right circumstances) but getting up on my knees to swing my hips brought my orgasm on reliably, and I defaulted to it most every time. My wife seemed to understand, and accommodated me without complaint. I did carry a nagging belief that she would have liked to experience my orgasm in missionary, but this fear remained in my head.
During our marriage, I reached the age where my annual physical would include a digital prostate exam. I didn't fear it, but that first time, it shocked me ... and felt good. I went home to my wife with the sensation of my doctor's (a female, for what that's worth) finger still groping my prostate. That evening, I had what I would call supercharged sex with my wife, and she noticed the difference. We'd always had difficulty communicating openly about sex, so I didn't say anything about the exam, and she didn't ask. Once the sensations diminished, our sex life resumed its routine.
After a 20-year relationship, we divorced.
Just recently, I had an encounter with a woman I'd met through a dating app. And the same old problem returned: arousal, erection, no climax.
Then I heard the podcast with the somatic specialist. Then another podcast (same interviewer) with another, similar specialist. Then I gathered the nerve to look further into the connection between my mother's invasive hygiene, the toilet-training, and the anorgasmia.
I think I'm on the right track now.