All About The Penis
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I am dealing with a man with a small penis. Pretty darn small - and small testicles. I'm going to say about 4 - 4.5 inches when erect and 3 inches in girth - I think. I'm doing this by looking at my own hands - I've never actually gotten out a tape measure and checked the guy. But it is only especially interesting being a women of 35 and my last boyfriend that I dated for 5 years having an especially HUGE one - probably the biggest one I've ever seen up close. NOW, this guy with a small one - I've been dating him on a 'casual' basis for 2 years now and I'm in love with him - and I'm depressed and suffering. I love his company and the chemistry is great. I am a short little girl, and a small torso and I have no problem experiencing sexual pleasure with this man and an orgasm. I never even gave the issue of a 'small penis' a thought until dating this guy. My poker face came naturally, and I didn't realize how serious this issue might be for a man. I was never a girl who engaged in small penis jokes or found much humor in them. Now, I think the size of his penis is a major issue for him, and I think he is delighted we have great sex but I fear this is why he settles for me - only the sex. I also wonder if this (the size of his penis) is why this relationship has not progressed to the next level - I am not a woman that he feels he has a true emotional connection with beyond sex. The size of his penis inhibits him emotionally on some level. So why am I in love with him? I don't know. It's a typical tale - being in love with someone you truly can't have - someone emotionally unavailable or unrequited. But because of the size of his penis - and this is truly a new problem to me - there seem to be issues. Or maybe it's something quite different. Maybe I underestimate him. I have always been a wild child by nature - but I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on psychology and I've turned this situation over in my head a million times and I'm having a hard time pinpointing the exact problem and how to approach it. Aside from having a small penis, this man has a very edgy personality and can be a real straight up jerk - he runs extreme hot and colds sometimes. We have never had a straightforward conversation. He knows I would like to have a baby someday (I'm 38 now) and although he says he wants children - and, yes, I do see another side of him that might - and though we have had unprotected sex many times, when he has ejaculated inside of me with no problem and not even thinking of the risk, the first major time that the possibility of pregnancy has come up (I was 2 months late for my period) he was first a jerk and then he was very cool about it. Now I have gotten my period and I am not pregnant, and he now says he doesn't want to talk to me and thinks we shouldn't see each other anymore. And I feel like I should have kept my mouth shut about the possibility of being pregnant because it didn't go over well with him. I think I am in love with this guy, so what if he does really want kids but can't get past his issues - why does he keep having unsafe sex with me knowing that I am not on birth control and that I would like to have a child? I've turned over all the possibilities in my head: imagine visiting a fertility specialist, getting assistance, working with my fertility clock and the possibility of artificial insemination using his sperm if we need that extra boost to make it happen. But if a man has a delicate ego and a small penis - how difficult would it be to drag him into a doctor to deal with all this? (As in: "Sorry, your penis is small, your testicles are small and your sperm count is low - you can't get her pregnant without medical assistance."?) This might hurt his sex drive and sexual psyche in a major way. As a women, I feel like if he really loves me it would be worth the effort and we could get through this. But in the course of 2 years he has told me time and again he does not want to commit to a serious relationship and he just enjoys having sex with me. I know it's crazy for me to stick around, right? He is 42 and notorious for dating women in their early 20's. He has been a real jerk at times and prior to the thought of my being pregnant was very depressed for several months and treated me like crap. I cried a lot and worried about him endlessly (I think this is why my periods might have been late - emotional turmoil), and the small penis and pregnancy thing. He is really into driving fast, with a wild, edgy, and risk-taking life style -if that tells you anything about his personality. I'm no psychologist, but I think I know well enough that having a small penis should be no reason for a man to treat a women like crap. And again I think maybe I'm the one overestimating the small penis problem. Like I said, I have kept a poker face about it, we have never addressed it as an issue (although he has slightly alluded to it), but it has never kept me from standing up for myself if he deserved it, nor has it prevented me from letting him dominate me often emotionally or sexually. So now, am I really in love with this guy or do I just feel sorry for him (which is an injustice in itself -adding insult to injury)? I probably have the answers I need but my heart is still breaking and I guess I just need to hear it from someone else and know that I'm not crazy. Answer: The guy seems like a commitment phobe, is rude and possibly abusive, and seems to have a death wish and a low self-esteem. Clear out now! Work on your self-esteem, get some counseling, and fid a man who can give you what you really want. As for the issue of whether a small penis could make a man behave like this, well, I'm guessing it might. If a guy has a low self-esteem, and this somehow comes to be focused on his penis, then all of the behavior is attached to his perception of himself as an inadequate man. Such a guy might want to put women down to make himself feel better. There are two issues here, I think: the Small Penis Syndrome (SPS) - when a guy has a normal cock but believes it is too small - and when a guy really does have an abnormally small penis. The first of these conditions has been described at length by Kevan R Wylie - check it out on this link - http://www.majorityrights.com/images/uploads/penis_size.pdf. Basically, small penis syndrome stems from our association of the penis with masculinity - a subject about which I have written elsewhere on this website - and it affects men who wish to be seen with not only a large erect penis but a large flaccid one. (Well, don't we all, you might say......and possibly we do, but not to the extent that it disrupts our normal lives and causes us to search out solutions for a problem which only exists in the penis-owner's mind.) Note again: it's about men who think their cock is smaller than it should be (which means smaller than average, I suppose) when in fact it is normal. Why? It's a form of body dysmorphic disorder, a psychiatric condition, which in its mildest form has been called "Locker Room Syndrome" - a feeling of inferiority induced, perhaps, by seeing the large penises of older boys and men when one is a child.....seems like seeing Dad's penis can be an education in more ways than one. And of course, it's possible for fears about penis size to attach themselves to remarks made by sexual partners: that includes remarks made with the best of intentions, let alone those made with deliberate derogatory intent. Poor sexual self-confidence and the denigrating effects of other men can accentuate the problem.....I once received an email from a guy who had worked as a lifeguard during the summer vacation. His small flaccid cock - about which he had previously not been in the least concerned - was mocked by the other lifeguards when they gave him a vacuum penis developer as a birthday present. The fools: his erect penis was normal size, by his own account. However, this did not make any difference to his psychological reaction, and it would be fair to say that the poor guy's life was haunted from that moment on...."obsessed with penis size" would not even begin to cover his thought processes. This is - needless to say - made much worse if a guy has small or poorly developed testicles. This accentuates the appearance of the small penis, since the scrotum is small and there is no uplift of the penis. "Genital confidence is impaired", is how Wylie puts it, and many men will know what he means, whether or not they suffer the extremes of SPS. He lists some of the consequences of having SPS - and here I guess the consequences can apply to men who think they have a small penis and those who do have a small penis alike: lack of social confidence, parauresis, avoidance of sexual partners, avoidance of certain occupations, never being naked in front of others, not going swimming, and so on....and so on.... Management of SPS might include education, information, mirror work - to get a true perspective on the size of one's penis - psychological therapy, CBT, counseling....and, if the penis is on the smaller side of average, help in coping with this. Wylie also briefly brings his report into the internet era by considering whether or not penis stretching devices actually work. (There are no well-conducted studies on the subject, but this may be relevant: http://www.thundersplace.org.uk/usps_v_modern_age.html I have a feeling a similar case was played our recently, but can't find a reference to it.) He also suggest using drugs to reduce anxiety in men with small penis syndrome, which frankly sounds like a good idea to me. Imagine being obsessed with penis size your entire life! This is one of the most thoughtful articles I have seen on the subject of penis size, or, rather, on SPS. And so - what about men who really do have a small penis? This means anything less than 7cm when stretched to the maximum of its flaccid length. These guys do have a problem, whether it be endocrinological, developmental, genetic, or whether. These are the guys who really do have a challenge....I hate the word micropenis, for while it does cover a certain category of medically determined cases, a quick look at www.imagesofsize.com will clearly show you that many men are abnormally small even though they do not formally come in the classification of micropenis. In most cases, the finger of blame is endocrinological problems during fetal development or puberty: the tragedy is that apparently a lot of these cases could be treated if they were identified during puberty. That of course requires a boy to be confident enough to seek help. But I have met a few of these men, and I know they do lack confidence in all kinds of ways. They feel lacking in masculinity - there's the association of penis size and masculinity again - and they often lack sexual experience. Let's face it: if your cock is very small, it takes balls to enter into sex with a woman. How can you trust her, trust what she might say, when your self-esteem is probably running low anyway because you're so inadequate in the area where, understandably, every man wants to be more than adequate? They feel, quite simply, less of a man than other men. And is that a surprise? No, of course not. So what's to be done? Well, the small penis support group - otherwise known as Measurection - is incredibly helpful here. Assuming you're reading this because these issues apply to you, Measurection is a place where you can be in the company of others who really do know about the suffering that can ensue from being abnormally small - along with, I regret to say, a few men with SPS. Second, if you make sure you only date women with whom you feel safe, you will be able to get a sexual partner eventually. It's a matter of confidence. I've known men who have almost no penis get into very satisfying sexual relationships.....it's really about a vision of yourself as able to live a normal life. I admit that's hard, but I know it is possible. Wikipedia has quite an interesting article on penis size. This is about the psychological effects of hypospadias.
Text of the article referenced above. One of the largest sources of commentary on the Mental Help Net website in the past months has been due to a series of articles having to do with men's anxiety over their small penis size. In the original articles, An Anxiety Disorder: Small Penis Syndrome, and Male Self Concept and Small Penis Syndrome, Dr. Schwartz's premises was that in many cases, men's penises were not as small as they thought they were, or as unacceptable. A literally outpouring of responses followed which, for the most part, were angry and in opposition to the implication that the perception of having a small penis was a psychological problem more than a physical one. Attempts made by Drs. Schwartz or Dombeck to clarify the issue were largely met with skepticism or rejection. This spirited discussion was not something we anticipated when the first article on the topic was published. In responding to the ongoing discussion we have struggled to better understand the mindset of the men who complain about this issue which goes by the label, "Small Penis Syndrome". In the current essay, we want to present our working understanding of the psychology behind Small Penis Syndrome, and we want to talk about what men who are dealing with this issue can do to help themselves to feel better. What we have to say about these men comes from our observations of the comments they have left in response to Dr. Schwartz's essays, and some of the interactions that have occurred therein. In making statements about the psychology of an entire group of men we will be drawing a sort of caricature or composite image; something that describes issues this group of men faces in the broad sense, but maybe doesn't perfectly fit any individual case. We know this, and don't want anyone to feel that every thing we say here must specifically apply to them. Read the full article here: Characteristics of Men with Small Penis Syndrome Click to view the Small Penis Syndrome Forum |
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