Part XVIII
Traditionally, men have been conditioned to believe that intercourse with a female was good. After all, that might lead to new life. But conversely, any other form of sex was wrong or unacceptable. Interestingly this view tossed masturbation together in with gay sexual behaviors of any form, and I guess is a reason why young bully guys sometimes accuse another guy unfortunately caught masturbating as being gay. This is not something a “real” male would ever do never mind that nearly every male is masturbating but hasn’t yet gotten “caught”.
I was interested in finding out what the current medical thinking was with regard to the possible usefulness of male masturbation as a method of treating prostate surgery patients after surgery and whether the medical profession saw any role for male “self-abuse” as a post-surgical treatment of sorts.
Think about this. Any sort of activity in which sexual arousal happens to a certain degree is going to put the human body under stress. We may be conditioned to believe that any sort of stress is a bad thing, but thing about a body builder who uses weight conditioning in an effort to build muscle and make a stronger body than would be the case without being stressed by the weightlifting. Or, think of the issues an orbiting astronaut faces in the absence of gravity. So being stressed is not necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on what the specific stress happens to be.
Under stress, the body responds in certain ways, some automatic, some nearly so. Heart rate and blood pressure rises, for example. But, the stress associated with, say running, is very different from the stress that occurs during arousal, though some of the same events happen.
A lack of stress can lead to physical problems down the road. Think of the astronaut working in a weightless environment. Muscles weaken, including the heart, and so long term working under weightless conditions requires an exercise regimen to keep muscles working and not being subject to atrophy.
I know a lot of stuff from simply having been there. Pre-surgery I was told that one side effect of the surgery was that I might not be able to get an erection at all, or if I did it might be weak but could improve over time. But, I was assured that I could still have orgasms. Actually, I learned how this could happen already next to a jet in my hot tub. That is a weird feeling of going from nothing to ejaculation in less than 30 seconds, almost as if the semen was being sucked from my body by some giant external force.
Think about this: a guy comes home from surgery knowing that at least for a time, he will be unable to have an erection. If he has a female partner he will not be able to engage in intercourse. So, the likely response will be “we can forgat about having “real” sex for a year (or two, or three…)
So what does the guy do post-surgery? Well maybe just crawl off in a corner and decide that he is stuck in a life with no more erections. And after all, is it even meaningful to have an orgasm without an erection?
I do not have a wife or other sexual partner, but I do have a long list of things that I like to do and these have made me a sexually a very happy person. I’ve probably told you about a few of these already and maybe even dropped hints that this particular idea could do neat things for youto try on your own. Even I was not going to sit down with my urologist surgeon and explain all of this. After all he had surgeries to do. But suddenly, if I am going toi be able to reacquire my ability to get an erection, a lot of this stuff I have been suggesting becomes very important.
As a few of you perhaps know already
I am particularly fond of garments that help me to constantly think about my penis and groin area. A snug fitting swim brief, for example, or a strap covered by a pair of compression shorts. And, I am reading that anything that keeps me aroused, if even only a little bit, is useful treatment post surgery. Are the urologists recommending this as a post-surgical prostate surgery “treatment” of sorts? Well sort of. I suppose if I had a real sexual partner, that person could work overtime to keep me horny by touching and playing with various body parts as a treatment, even as I try to do the same thing for my partner. But this is not penis-vagina sex. It is an interesting form mutual masturbation in the absence of the ability to get a strong enough erection for penetration.
MOST of the post-surgical discussions I encountered on the Internet apply to a couple where the guy can no longer get an erection. Most of the stuff on the Internet says that with luck, erections may return after a year or two of healing but they would be weaker and not as hard. I have some actual data on that. Pre-surgery I was at most 6 ½ to 6 ¾ inches hard 5 years after surgery, the best number I can come up with is 5-5 ¼ inches and not as hard. But I do have orgasms, dry but powerful. And I have not lost my interest in masturbation techniques.
So the Internet is awash with post surgical prostate guy with wives--guys who can no longer get hard enough for “real” coitus. What to do? WELL, this is the point for both partners to learn about the wonders of mutual masturbation as opposed to penis in vagina. The wife is going to learn exactly where he likes to be touched and how. Meanwhile, he is going to learn some of the details of where SHE likes to be played with that he never bothered to learn when they were both regularly engaged in partner sex. And some of the guys even write that because of this event, the relationship, now built around mutual masturbation not coitus, has reached a whole new level.
In gay anal intercourse, the prostate gland plays an important role for the pleasure of the guy being penetrated, and if the guy no longer even has a prostate or the ability to get a firm erection, this could be a potential relationship problem. Most of the discussion on the Internet centers on post-surgical issues heterosexual couples face, and there is only passing reference to the possibility that the surgery may mean major changes for gay couples as well.
Any number of articles where masturbation is mentioned as a post-surgical treatment after prostate removal are out there, including several written by faculty at major medical centers. The doctors are all endorsing masturbation as the best first method for regaining one’s sexual health after surgery, but in some cases are also suggesting that frequent masturbation is an essential part of rebuilding a guy’s capability to have a decent erection after surgery, and that this is something that could and should take place.
To be continued…