[sebbie]

Too Loose? Too Tight? Too much of a “Good Thing”?

At puberty, guys quickly learn that there is a lot going on down there with regard to sensations in the groin area whenever clothing comes in contact with certain places. But what exactly happens when the penis comes into contact with cloth is highly variable. Guys worry a lot about the possibility that they could get an erection (or even worse!) in a situation that could easily be embarrassing. Yet, every guy is very fond of the very sensations that could quickly lead there, and this turns into what I call a proper place and time dilemma. The scary part about all of this is that a guy quickly realizes that it is all but impossible to “will” feeling horny and all the rest of it away simply by saying to yourself over and over again “this is no time or place for this to happen to me”. It would be convenient if this were how it was. Of course, then a guy could turn on an erection at an appropriate time when he is with a sexual partner who is interested in having sex. But feeling horny and getting an erection cannot simply be turned on and off by one’s will as if it were a water faucet. The weird part about all of this is that sometimes feeling horny and getting erect do not happen when the guy wants this to happen, but perhaps even worse, sometimes this happens when the guy desperately wants this to not happen.

No better example of all of this that a swim team encountering the idea of wearing swim briefs in competition for the very first time, with members fearing that getting into a swim brief for the first time is going to result in an erection. How does a guy prevent that from happening? Am I the only one facing this “problem” or are the other guys somehow trying to deal with this situation as well? How do the guys who have been wearing swim briefs for a long time still cope with this? Are they so “used” to wearing them that this is no longer an issue? What gives here, anyway?

This is a specific version of a more general problem that haunts the decisions men make with regard to picking underwear bottoms in general. When I was young, nearly every guy my age wore cotton briefs, the so-called “tighty whiteys”. Then somehow, wearing tighty whiteys in say a gym locker room was no longer the cool or normal thing to do. There is a remarkable “herd instinct” here. All the cool guys were wearing loose-fitting plaid boxers, which addition to being loose-fitting, provided little if any support in the groin area. But that was good because that meant that a guy wearing plaid boxers was never going to get an unwanted erection (which might cause all sorts of other knotty social issues).

The third stage of all of this took another turn. First, if a traditional tighty whitey was too snug and too tight, then traditional cotton briefs for men were made in what was called “full size”, a loser fit with coverage that extended above the belly button. But at the same time, we were starting to see the appearance of compression shorts, often with legs extending mid-thigh and claiming to provide the support that a plaid boxer obviously would not. Of course, the compression shorts fit snug over the groin, which could lend back to the same old issue of “if I wear this will I get horny and erect?”. But still, the NBA and college basketball players soon nearly all had compression shorts peeking out mid-thigh from underneath their uniform bottoms, this must be the thing to do!

Guess what? The underwear manufacturers responded with designs that were really compression shorts masquerading as something that could be worn as daily underwear. Never mind that as underwear goes, these designs were really expensive for daily wear. In the gym locker room, appearing in compression shorts was going to give the guy a degree of approval by the other males for being an athlete interested in compression, and was a safe bet in that regard. And for guys interested in finding underwear as a self-pleasuring aid (do guys really make underwear choices focusing on designs that are useful in a self-pleasuring context? Oh, perish the thought that this could actually happen.) No wait! Why not? Maybe not in a semi-public area such as a gym locker room but at home with the bedroom door closed. Who is gonna know? If a garment makes you feel horny, for goodness sakes what is wrong with enjoying that in private, or even with a sexual partner? Goodness!

But can a snug fit with a generally tight-fitting item actually be too much of a “good” thing? Do guys actually keep garments that stimulate them in self pleasuring? Of course they do. It's not a question of what so much as a question of what works well for you in your personal self-pleasuring quest. This is all both a really fun and not-to-be-missed experience that is open to guys.


Except, of course, it would be embarrassing for any guy to be discovered actively engaged in doing this.

Ahh, what the heck!

Sebbie