Insecurities of a small penis

Some heavy issues being discussed here.

My story and self-view was heavily influenced by being incredibly late to mature (I did not hit puberty until 10th grade). During 7th and 8th grade, I was self-concsious but not hugely so as the only time I saw other naked men was during PE (physical education) time at the gym and there were a fair number of guys who also hadn’t hit puberty and met the twig and berry description.

Then in 9th grade I was sent to boarding school and lived in a dorm with open showers, no escape, and still sporting a hairless nub of a penis whereas almost everyone else by now had at least hit the early stages of puberty. I was also small physically (5 foot, 95 lbs) and the combination of the two led to a lot of derision and “pin dick” commentary from certain others in the dorm to the point where I tried to squeeze my less frequent-than-better-hygiene-would-dictate showers in an odd times, like during the middle of the day, when less people would be around. As for lining up for the morning shower rush — forget about it. As for confiding with anyone — friends, family, professional — about this issue, you had to be joking!

The funny thing is I’ve grown to 6’2 200 lbs (some of that weight-lifting enhanced). Post puberty and more recently PE have enhanced that nub to 7” bp X 5.125” g plus given it a more hirsute appearance. Those all around dimensions put me at above average by varying degrees, and I certainly feel a lot better about myself now. I suspect I can now easily peer over the balding heads of many of my boarding school tormentors and if we were to ever have occasion to share an open shower I suspect I would measure up quite well there too.

But still even with 20 years of passage since that time and a better view of myself those memories of shame and fear have never fully faded away. That’s what has me interested in PE and what keeps me sticking at it even though I have been a slow gainer.

There are many others on the Board with maybe different stories but similar feelings. Those are united factors. So keep the faith PE brothers, bainsh those negative thoughts and experiences to the basement of your mind but keep enough of a memory so that your PE commitment stays strong.

I also was very insecure. I never measured my dick as a young guy, that I can remember. Last year at 42 yrs old it measured barely 6” NBP, and a little over 5” girth midshaft. Most likely it was about the same size as a young lad. You smaller guys often say “I just want an average size of 6” but back then I’d never heard of what average was. I thought my dick was small because I saw friends/classmates with much larger. These were the guys who got all the girls.

I know at least a couple times, there were girls I could have screwed but I’d heard from other guys (the big dick guys) that the girls had loose pussies. There was no way I was going to try anything with my little dick. At least now you younger guys have the advantage of the Internet, and even though all the surveys are questionable at least gives a ballpark idea of what is average. But, none of that matters really when it comes down to it. Just because we coulc say, I was “average” and some of you are/were “below average” I probably felt just as bad as you do. Especially since I too am a “grower” and was always very small flacid. Now at about 6 3/4” NBP x 5.5, it still seems small to me. One of the first of the few women I had sex with told me, “I’ve never been with anyone as big as you.” What BS, heheh….. she didn’t say she’d never had bigger ;-)

wesb

This thread hits home. Once I get something off my chest, I find it hard to repeat myself or share the same emotions to the extent I did previously.

I think this thread relates to what I’ve felt in the past:
Edited version of my history.

That’s a great story Bro, you are for sure my PE hero and an inspiration to all small and regular guys that if you put your mind to it you can be big

Isn’t it sad the pressure society puts on us? It’s not enough that we worry about what the women think - but even the other guys in the gym shower. I had some insecurities as well, especially since I’ve always been a grower & not a shower, but I still had to pause at the morgue reflection.

That story would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. I’ve never quite thought of that, but I’ve certainly had my own insecurities. What a commentary that is on our present society. Sex - and penis size - have become so engrained in our pop culture (movies, TV, music, jokes, T-shirts, etc.) that it can even haunt some men to the point of worrying about how they “measure up,” even as a corpse.

But I also used to not wait long after sex to get dressed, because it would invariably shrivel to even smaller than usual. I also would not let a woman pull down my pants while I was completely flaccid, etc., etc. But the post-mortem morgue fears really drove home this whole issue to us guys.

If you just set your mind to it, you can accomplish alot, not with just PE, but with everything in life.

Ophiosaurus,

i fell what you are saying.
I hope i will reach this goal as well …..

I, too, was a later bloomer which made things worse. I remember showering with the “gorillas” and it made me feel very inadequate. I didn’t hit puberty until the end of 10th grade. I shot up quick (I am 6’2”) but my dick still remained fairly unchanged when flaccid (got to 5.75 BP) . What a bummer, I thought I would have gotten bigger “down there” since I was getting taller.

I was very athletic, but the big stumbling block was taking a shower with the boys. I would find any excuse not to shower. I had a “bad” ankle so I always had to ice it after the game. I played Lacrosse and loved it, but I think I would have be better at it if I wasn’t constantly thinking about how to avoid the the other guys from seeing my dick. I refused to become an object of scorn. I just wish I knew about PE back then.

Ophios

Yep, people do ‘orrible things to eachother and themselves. I’d just like to explain my first post on this thread about me givin’ up, givin’ in, and doing PE instead of just learning to live with what I got, ‘cos it was the easiest thing to do.

Cosmetic changes ( from PE, weightlifting, whatever ) have a much more direct impact on a traumatised self-image than therapy *if* the problem lies in the individual experiencing body image, perceived social worth and self-worth as being wholly inseparable. And the fact is that we live in a society - society here meaning simply a community of shared values - which is indeed appearance-obsessed and hypersexualised, and which actively sustains this kind of insecurity.

These insecurities, complexes, hidden fears, are sometimes so ingrained and run so deeply, that is, they are so much a fundamental part of how a person experiences his social and physical self, that to overcome them would require a radical change in both the individual’s character and world-view.

I still maintain that *in these cases* it is sometimes more pragmatic, or at least permissable, for the person to simply make a concession to his weaknesses and fears, and work, so to speak, from the outside in. Sooner or later the deeper issues have to be addressed, but the individual would have at least affirmed his power to effect measurable positive change in the outside world. This is surely a stable basis to build upon. What looks to be a minor cosmetic effect to the observer, such as, say, slightly larger genitals, or a decreased bodyfat percentage, or a slight increase in muscle definition, to the individual represents a degree of control over himself and his situation, and for that very reason, represents a source of hope.

Or, again, it may simply represent conforming to societal pressures. More usually it has elements of both. Either way, it is very difficult to progress without a working amount of confidence and self-belief, whatever its source. Put bluntly, sometimes you have to take what you can get.

As a side note: When women casually, or frankly crassly, state a preference for a larger penis, men usually internalize the sentiment on a far deeper emotional level than was intended. For women, it is simply measuring a man in an identically *simple* ( the most diplomatic word I could find ) way that women are measured by many men: by physical attributes. But for men the issue seems to encapsulate every fear we have of rejection and its implied messages of worthlessness.

And again our culture supports this, in the same way it supports anorexia through a continual stream of images of thin models and actresses.
Except, of course, our phallocentric fears are sustained in a much less public way: through rumour, anxiety-laden conversations with female friends, internet polls and forums, pornography, by a series of small or brutal humiliations at the hands of our peers, or possibly our significant others… and the hopeless ideal of overall physical perfection which informs so much of modern consumerism.

Gawd, I think I nearly choked on my own psychobabble. Last time I write anything at 3 in the morning. Excuse any spelling mistakes, I’m off to bed.

Yip

Yippee,
You make some excellent points. And I agree with your indictment of our modern materialism, consumerism & hypersexualized world culture. The fact is, penis size just wasn’t something that peasant men from the Middle Ages obsessed about. It generally wasn’t discussed - certainly nowhere near how it is today - and who knew back then what “average” really was? Also, most marriages were arranged then, women tended to be virgins at marriage (overwhelmingly so); therefore, the average woman in the olden days had experience with only 1 cock - her husband’s. And even her husband wasn’t exposed to other penises the way men are today (through public education, organized sports, etc.). Especially through pornograpy, internet, TV, movies, books, magazines, etc., etc.

And yes, women are also held against the “tall skinny glamor model” image; but I would say that the whole penis size issue is far more primal, far more private, therefore far more traumatizing. The FACT is today that when 99% of men finally do marry, they marry a woman with infinitely more “cock knowledge” than a woman from even 100 years ago. A lot of women today have had lovers in the double digits (some even more so). They’ve read the women’s magazines, seen the polls, talked with the girls, etc. They tend to know what is small, average or large. And guys know this of course. It puts far greater psychic pressure on men. When we’re unhappy with our units, it tends to make us generally unhappy with our lives.

The most obvious insecurity I forgot to mention was less sex. I would have had a lot more of it in the past. I had to let many opportunities go by the way side, especially if the girl looked too hot. I went for women with less sexual experience because there was a better chance that they weren’t with a guy who had a “big one.”

Wadzilla,

We tend to forget that body image is largely kinaesthetic. It consists of physical sensations, the proprioceptive senses, as well as visual images. The face is usually main kinaesthetic focus of how we experience our bodies: in fact an incredibly complex array of social communication depends on facial expression. There are also our hands and mouths, our first experience as babies of exploring form and the physical world. And of course there is the centre of ( male ) adult sexual gratification, the penis.

Which is partly why penis anxiety involves such a distortion of body image, and from that, self image. It is an anxiety which can be experienced in clearly physical terms. Any time sexual feelings are aroused, one’s fears fall fairly heavily in response, resulting in an nasty miasma of physical and emotional conflict, with the only resolution ( usually ) coming from some kind of suppression. It can get to the point where any sexual feeling is tainted with a degree of shame and frustration.

Also, emotional distress can cause huge distortions in the kinaesthetics of body image, and this easily translates into visual distortions of the body image. The penis may never *look* large enough whatever angle we look at it from, just because it will never *feel* large enough.

It’s not surprising that, in men, dysmorphic disorder is just as likely to be centred on the penis as the face and contemporary issues like bodyfat.

As for penis anxiety being more damaging for being more private: one thing I’ve noticed in this forum is the sheer sense of relief that comes with being able to talk about an extremely common, but socially censored, fear. In the real world, the subject is swept under the carpet the moment it comes up. Even women’s penile preferences are discussed in more depth than men’s attendant anxieties. And these are anxieties which need addressing, if they reach a point where a person is afraid that even his corpse will be laughed at.

Sticking my Facile Hat back on, Ophio, I hope you get to bang huge, sprawling numbers of hot chicks. If size really is such a big deal for the ladies, at least it lets guys off the hook for when we want to indulge in a bit of mindless superficiality. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander! So, go goose some people.
Ah, I’m getting cynical in me old age.

Yip

Yippee wrote:

>Cosmetic changes ( from PE, weightlifting, whatever ) have a much more direct impact on a traumatised self-image than therapy *if* the problem lies in the individual experiencing body image, perceived social worth and self-worth as being wholly inseparable.<

Yeah, man. That’s what happens when you assign so much value to your body parts! But hey, we’re human.

I like big breasted women. My wife isn’t one of them. Would I love her more if she was?
Nahhhhh. She brings up implants from time to time, and I always say “No way.”

Sometimes I think our relationship would get better if I just let her get the damn things, because she’d feel better about herself - for a while. But I know that before too long, she’d just be obsessing about something else. Because that’s the way humans are…

Is a bigger dick going to solve any of my problems? Probably not. But it’ll temporarily (maybe a few years, at best) give me something positive to think about, and hopefully that’ll give me confidence in other areas of my life.

Good point about this forum. Give me one other example where men can talk about this kind of shit publicly. Hell, if I even brought this stuff up privately with my best compadres, they’d probably laugh me out of the room, and then avoid me. I can’t fault ‘em though, I’d probably do the same.

Thank God for anonymity.

craig68 (or is that really my name?)

Very good posts here.

Thunder, may be this should be bumped up to the top page as a more permanent thread.

What do others think?

a.k.a. Craig:

You hit the nail on the head. One would be a pariah if they shared what we do in this forum. But God, it is so good to get this shit off your chest.

It took me 9 years just to tell my wife (now ex) that I thought my dick wasn’t big enough. After getting up the courage to share my most guarded secret she gave me no support whatsoever and just shook her head (in a mocking way) and said I was fine. I stopped there and didn’t tell her any of my experiences and fears of the past relating to this.

About 5 months later I found out she was fucking another man for a year. Guess what one of the thoughts was going through my head?…yep, he must have had a bigger dick.

Ophios