[sebbie]

Part XIX

One fascinating way to look at arousal extending from an initial arousal all the way through to orgasm is that it is simply a form of stress. Thinking about stress unrelated to sex, human beings cycle back and forth between periods of stress and periods of no-stress. While stress may be thought of as primarily having to do with the mind it is usually accompanied by physical changes to the body which often includes things such as blood pressure, heart rate etc. When it comes to stress the mind and body are clearly quite intertwined.

You might think that stress is always a bad thing and to be avoided no matter what, and that the ideal life is stress-free. But if that were the case, humanity would have not achieved a wide assortment of goals that were achieved under stress and probably would have been impossible without stress. Accomplishments in stressed-out situations occur in a wide variety of activities, astronauts, sports heroes, people who save lives of others, and arguably many people actually perform better not worse when quite stressed out.

The college student about to take a tough exam might actually perform better on the exam because of the stressed out condition. The athlete seeking to score the winning basket might somehow make what appeared to be a near impossible effort work to win the game. High-pressure situations can turn out very well.

With respect to sexual feelings and arousal, it may be helpful to realize that anything that leads to arousal is a (perhaps curious) form of stress. Given that it might be helpful to think about ways in which the mind and body copes with stress in non-sexual situations and perhaps use what we know to better deal with stress in sexual arousal.

Once a guy achieves puberty, a guy’s mind quickly focuses on two different ideas that conflict. Idea 1 is how much sheer fun and pure enjoyment is readily available and accessible in his groin. Idea 2 is a near constant worry that something is going to happen in which the sheer pleasure of sexual arousal will occur in a time or place in which he no longer can maintain control. The stressed-out situation happens not only because his body is undergoing physical changes as arousal takes place, but also because of the near constant fear that the guy is going to perhaps quickly get into a situation whereby he can no longer shut down whatever is happening to him.

Think about a guy in a gym locker room who is not only aroused for some perhaps unclear reason, but everything is quickly getting to a point whereby he no longer can delay having an orgasm. But male peers are wandering about the locker room, and at least a couple of them have noticed the predicament he is in. Even though being hard is really pleasurable, the overwhelming stress here is one of sheer fear, maybe even terror. And even if a guy has never experienced a real-world situation like this, guys constantly worry that this could happen to them. This leads to a huge amount of stress.

Or, think about a swim team that must wear swim briefs for a meet and some of the participants have never done that before. These guys probably worry that their bodies are going to react to this situation in ways that could be quite embarrassing. A partial erection in the locker room pales to the fear of still having an erection when the guy goes out to swim in front of a crowd of people. And, horror of horrors, what if something really terrible should happen, say a full orgasm complete with a pulsating penis clearly visible by the crowd under the skimpy swimwear? This is terrifying stress for guys.

The other stressful situation is in early dating, where a lot of guys perhaps foolishly believe that getting a hard-on when dating a female is a good, more than acceptable or desirable thing to happen. This morphs into the idea that if this doesn’t happen on schedule like clockwork the female with think he is an unattractive date. Again we get back to the notion that guys would like to be able to turn sexual arousal off and on like a water spigot using the mind as the control box, but somehow that is not how it usually works, at least not a lot of the time.

Or consider an older male who has a difficulty in getting and maintaining an erection for a mate. The inability to direct the penis to do what the guy thinks it should itself becomes a stressful situation which makes mate apprehensive and stressed-out.

If a guy masturbates by seeing how quickly and efficiently he can get off without detection, he does not learn the fine skills necessary to cope with these varied and interesting situations. There is no better way of learning how to NOT a degree of control over one’s erection than masturbating this way under time or fear of being discovered pressure.

The problem is that guys all need private time alone to explore their own bodies that does not involve getting off in a hurry to avoid being caught doing “something he shouldn’t be doing.” If a guy has a fear, say a fear of putting on a swim brief because he could end up hard, then he needs to get himself a swim brief, take it home and experiment with his body in private. Better an orgasm happens in private than in the locker room or in front of a crowd at a meet. A guy can “train himself” in such a situation such that wearing a swim brief is less stressful.

Adult males generally face too problems in sexual relations. These are either ejaculating too quickly (premature ejaculation) or too slowly (delayed ejaculation). Both of these can be treatable medical conditions, although I will say that many guys struggling with premature ejaculation with their sexual partners may have inadvertently “taught” themselves how to do this as teenagers when they found ways to masturbate quickly to orgasm without being discovered by others.

Finally, I would encourage every guy to face his “demons”, especially with respect to items of clothing that might lead to an erection or orgasm. If a guy fears that in wearing a swim brief he might get an erection and perhaps even ejaculate, there is no substitute for buying a swim brief and getting into it for the first time in the privacy of a bedroom, and see exactly how the penis actually responds as opposed to how the guy thinks it might respond having never actually worn a swim brief.

The same goes for other clothing items guys think might cause “problems” in this respect: compression gear, athletic supporters of various shapes and sizes, football pants, wrestling singlets etc. Now if you could only figure out a suitable line to feed your younger brother when he asks you “why are you wearing that?”

To be continued…