Category: Performance Anxiety

Before we get started today, I’d like to take a minute to explain something to ya’ll. You will notice just to the right of this posting there is a section called CATEGORIES. If you scroll down from there you will notice that there are loads of topics— well over a hundred — that I’ve written about and/or included in one of my podcasts. Next to the topic you will notice a little number. That reflects the number of postings that include that particular topic. Isn’t that fucking brilliant?

So if you’re looking for information about something, I encourage you to check there first, before you send me a question. You may find that I’ve already covered your concern at length.

The CATEGORIES section is also a great resource for those looking to investigate new and interesting aspects of human sexuality.

Name: Martin
Gender: Male
Age: 50
Location: ?
Thanks in advance for your assistance, Dr. Dick.
Here’s my dilemma; I’m so in love with my partner, he’s actually the man of my dreams. We met much later in life, he being 45 and I’m 50.
I was married before w/children, out now as a gay man and all is well with my children’s relationship.
My partner has always known he was gay, has had numerable relationships and was a sexual addict. He has wanted me to understand his past in relationship to his level of happiness now, stating that he was a bottom slut only because he was never truly in love or satisfied.
He wants me to believe that “I”m the one” that has changed his life-long addiction to strange dick up his ass.
I can’t seem to get past his past slut behavior, and oftentimes get so pissed off because he wants me to meet and develop friendships with many of these past fucks (primarily because they were military buddies also).
Why can’t I accept his slutty past and stop the suspicions?
Why do I get so upset just knowing that he was a total bottom slut??
How can I get him to understand that I have no desire to know any more about his sexual past and just focus on creating our lives???
Thanks.

Martin, Martin, Martin! How you do go on, honey. Take a look at your language, why don’t ‘cha? Could you possibly be more pejorative when speaking of the sexual experience of someone who has lived a different lifestyle than you? I doubt it. Look at how many times you use the word “slut” to describe the man you say you love. How can you tell me you love someone you have so little regard for or understanding of?

Your man wants you to understand his past, but you don’t take it at face value. You belittle his experience, possibly because it doesn’t match your own very limited, sexually exclusive, predominately heterosexual lifestyle.

Listen, lots of gay men (and some straight men) have loads of sex for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes just for the fun of it…or, as your man suggests, just to be a big ‘ol bottom slut. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. A guy can be happily sexual without loving each and every one of his partners. And the sex can be really great too. Just like a guy can have very unsatisfying sex with somebody he loves deeply. None of these things are necessarily dependent on the other. Don’t make such a tangle of it all, Martin. Sex, love, intimacy are all very different things.

I also want to reinforce my belief that there’s no such thing as a sex addict. Compulsive behavior? Sure! Out of control behavior? You betcha! Self-denigrating behavior? Absolutely! Sexual addiction? No way!

Try for just a minute to extricate yourself from your sex-negative mindset by exchanging the notion of eating when you talk about your friend’s sexual exploits. Would you have the same revulsion if your guy said he had shared food with lots of other guys? Some of it was fast food that didn’t satisfy very much. Sometimes he ate just because he wanted to, not because he was hungry. And now he wants you and he, as a couple, to be friends with some of the men he ate with. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me!

Your man is trying to open you up to seeing life and sex as most openly gay men do. This is fundamentally different from how some formerly closeted men see life and sex. If you let him, he just might help heal you of your sex-negativity.

Finally, jealousy is one of the worst human emotions. It is a kind of hatred, you know. Sometimes it’s hatred of another, but it is always self-hatred. We’d have no reason to be jealous if we had enough self-confidence. You say you love this man, but I challenge you on that. It’s clear to me that you have a much greater love of your provincial notions about sex then you have for this guy.

Here’s a tip, Martin — jettison the unhealthy attitudes about sexual expression and give your guy a chance to be himself, not what you want him to be, or what you think he should be. You’d be well served by working with a sex-positive therapist to help you get over this. Do it now, because if you hesitate you will surely ruin the very relationship you claim to treasure.

Name: Pete
Gender: Male
Age: 60
Location: New England
What is sounding the penis and why is it called that?

Sounding is a kind of urethra play. It’s called that because the it involves sounds, a kind of dilator. Why not mozie on over to Dr Dick’s Stockroom and check out the Sounds & Dilators section. You’ll get an eyeful!

Urethra play freaks out lots of folks. Most of us equate having something inserted into our urethra…for any reason…with a root canal by a sadistic dentist. Not something purposely done for the sheer enjoyment of it.

I’m always curious about how folks come to odd fetishes like urethra play. One of my correspondents back in July, Georgia, wrote that her urethra play began when she was a child. She asked her mother where babies came from. Her mother said it’s where peepee comes out. Georgia looked down there and saw this teeny-tiny hole. She knew having a baby was difficult and painful and thought, no wonder! So she decided she’d better try and make the opening bigger. And so it began.

Once a guy told me his fetish started when he was playing doctor with his older cousin. His cousin inserted a twig into his urethra, mimicking how he thought a doctor would take a patient’s temperature. This guy said that the moment was so sexually charged, even as boy of no more than 5, that his piss hole became an object of fascination and pleasure from that day onward. When I knew him, he was able to insert the bristle end of a toothbrush into his urethra. That bit of unsolicited information just about made me swoon into a faint back then. Even now, retelling that story gives me the willies.

So ok, this isn’t for me, but I am told by those in the know that because the urethra is such a sensitive organ, stretching it can provide exquisite sexual pleasure.

Practitioners of this unique kink often start out young, like Georgia and the other guy. Maybe it’s just a function of one’s natural curiosity about his/her body, when one day he/she discovers their urethra. They toy with it, stretch it and find pleasure. Once that happens, of course, it becomes like most pursuits of pleasure. It becomes a fascination, then a full-blown kink.

If a little accidental stretching is pleasurable, they wonder, what about intentional stretching with one kind of gadget or another — Q- tips, thermometers or a ballpoint pen? Once these kids are old enough to do some research, they discover an array of medical implements available to them; like latex or plastic tubing, catheters and urethral sounds and dilators. Well, you can see how this could just grow and grow…pretty much like any fetish. Pleasure is curious that way, spurring us on to higher and higher heights.

But like all pleasure related things, practitioners ought to have their wits about them when they play with their pee hole. I think it’s ill advised to be stretching your urethra with just any old thing lying around. One’s bladder and urethra are sterile areas and one ought only use sterile equipment and procedures while inserting anything in there. And one ought to take one’s time with this sort of play. Incremental stretching is advised. The use of mind altering, or body desensitizing drugs is not recommended, for obvious reasons. Like I always say, safe and sane play is happy play.

And here’s something you should know — the male urethra is approx. 10 to 13 inches long and has a “J-shaped” curve to it. The female urethra is much shorter, only approx. 2 1/2 to 3 inches long, and there is no curve. Therefore, a woman can stretch her urethra much easier and to a greater extent than a man can. You will find that these gender differences also makes for gender specific toys.

Name: Alice
Gender: Female
Age: 19
Location: Minnesota
My new boyfriend is really frustrated and doesn’t want to have sex anymore because he can’t come. He says he’s had this problem for a while and hasn’t come with any girl for over a year. I see how upset he is and I know he still wants to sleep with me but says it hurts when he gets excited and nothing happens. Is there something I can do? I tell him to see a doctor but I don’t think he will. thanks a lot!

Wow, that’s a bummer Alice. Unfortunately, you don’t supply me with enough information for me to make an educated guess about what might be up with him. So I’m gonna make a stab in the dark.

If I had to guess, I’d say the lad is suffering from a real bad case of performance anxiety. He doesn’t need a medical doctor; he needs to relax.

Here’s how this nasty thing works. Say a fella has a less than satisfying sexual experience for one reason or another. Before he know it, he replaying the incident over and over in his head, till that’s all he thinks about. The proverbial molehill becomes a mountain. He brings his anxiety to his next sexual encounter. His hyper-consciousness primes him for more disappointment. And he’s ready to interpret all disappointment as a failure.

Well, you can see where I’m going with this, huh? His fears become self-fulfilling. Before he knows it, he begins to avoid sex. His relationships suffer. He develops a full-blown sexual dysfunction. And his self-esteem takes a nosedive. His preoccupation with his problem makes it less likely that he’ll be fully present during sex with his partner, which pretty much fucks up his sexual responsiveness and any hope for spontaneity.

It looks to me like performance anxiety is putting a damper on his sexual arousal and short-circuiting his sexual response cycle.

This is nothing to fool around with, especially for someone at his tender age. When I see this sort of thing in my private practice, I always begin the therapeutic intervention by calling a moratorium on fucking of any kind. This immediately takes a great deal of the pressure off the couple. From there we begin to rebuild the partnered psychosexual response one step at a time. We begin with sensate focus training, stress reduction and relaxation exercises. I have the greatest confidence in this method. It succeeds over 90% of the time.

Name: Roxy
Gender:
Age: 37
Location: SF Bay Area
Dear Dr. Dick, I am slowly but inexorably marching to my wits end over my current dilemma. I’m a part time TV married to a wonderful girl who I find very satisfying emotionally, mentally and physically. So what’s the problem, you’re asking? The problem is that before we got married I had several sexual encounters with men (yes, with me dressed and made up as a girl). Some of which were quite thrilling, and now I find that I am yearning to get all dressed up and find a male partner who will satisfy the girl side of my psyche sexually. I don’t want to cheat on my wife (with whom I’ve talked about marital fidelity…if I cheated and she found out, her line is that our sex life would be over), but I feel the compulsion to act getting stronger all the time… what should I do? Sincerely, Distraught in downtown

Before I respond to you, Roxy, I want to make sure my audience knows what we’re talking about.

Folks, Roxie here is identifying as a part-time TV. That, of course, has nothing to do with the box in your living room on which you watch The Brady Bunch reruns. TV in this context means transvestite. Which is literally the practice of cross-dressing, wearing the clothing of the other sex. Which as we all know, or should know must not be confused with a TS. And I don’t mean the poet, but a transexual. A transexual is a person that self-identifies as the gender other than the one he/she was assigned at birth. I hope we’re all down with that now.

It appears to me, Roxy, that you’re really overreaching here. Desires are wonderful things. We just better know the difference between a desire and reality. I encourage you to think twice about realizing this particular desire of yours if it means upending your marriage. Seems to me your long-suffering wife’s feelings deserves more than the casual consideration you afford them.

Most TVs I know would give their left falsie for a partner as understanding and accommodating as your wife. And look at you, considering fucking this up by skipping out on her. Just so you can get all gussied up and find a dude to pound the bejesus out of you to satisfy the girly side of your psyche.

I never advocate the cheating option. But I know how compelling sexual fantasies can be. On the other hand, maybe some kind of additional accommodation could be made with your wife. Maybe she’d be up for a 3-way.

I know this marvelously kinky woman, Abby, who pimps out her beautiful straight boyfriend to totally hot gay gays they meet at the best gay nightclubs. She does this just so she can watch the straight BF get pounded. I hasten to add that the beautiful straight BF is a willing participant in this unusual ménage. Curiously enough, he’d never think of doing this on his own. For him, the turn on is not the part where other guys fuck him, although that is pleasurable. It’s pleasing and being dominated by his kinky girlfriend that turns his crank. So when Abby snaps her finger, you know for certain that Ty will soon be buggered senseless. Now that’s devotion. And while this is not for everyone, it sure as hell works for them.

Will your little woman go for something like this, Roxy? Got me! One thing for sure, you’ll never know unless you ask. Here’s a tip. To sell this whole ménage thing to the wifie, I encourage you to play up how HOT it will be for her. How much fun she’ll have watching and possibly even directing her pansy-ass husband take it up the bung-hole. How it’s gonna blow her mind, and shake up your traditional sex roles and really spice things up in the boudoir. With a sales pitch like that she might just give it a whirl.

I don’t envy your dilemma, Roxy, but I think something interesting could come of this just as long as you’re upfront about it with your wife. If ya don’t, you’ll soon be a cock in a frock with his marriage on the rocks.

Good luck ya’ll