Advice from three of our guy friends. This week a straight woman asks, “What do blue-balls feel like… is it really that painful, or that big a deal? Is it even a real physical phenomenon?”
Straight Single Guy (Tyler Barnett): Blue balls are the testicular equivalent of a migraine headache. They are very real and can be very painful: pressure builds up due to sexual excitement from direct stimulation and has nowhere to go. Imagine having to sneeze, getting right to the second before and holding it for 15 minutes. Now, to be clear, I’m referring to situations where sexual activity has already begun (i.e. handjobs, oral, whatever) and then stopped in the middle for some reason. Mere kissing doesn’t cause blue balls, and those guys who claim otherwise are probably pigs. (To suggest a romantic situation that starts with kissing HAS to end with an orgasm is not only absurd, it’s borderline abusive.) But in those situations where physical contact with the johnson has been initiated by a second party and then arbitrarily withdrawn, it can be not only physically frustrating, but emotionally frustrating as well. It’s like, Why would she do that? Why??? My work ethic has always been to finish what I start, and I recommend this philosophy be applied to the bedroom as well. Of course, guys who find themselves in this situation have a very easy solution: masturbate! Much like Excedrin cures a headache, masturbation will cure blue balls. It’s really quite simple.
Gay Single Guy (Jay Dyckman): Truthfully, I had to look this up. Wikipedia claims it is “the condition of temporary fluid congestion in the testicles and prostrate region caused by prolonged sexual arousal in the human male.” I say no way. Total urban legend. “Prolonged sexual arousal?” What kind of oxymoron is that? I don’t know any guy who “prolongs” sexual arousal. Sexual arousal in men is like Superman: it’s up, up and away, end of story. Maybe it existed in the ’50s, when people would just “neck” for hours and it wouldn’t go anywhere. But those days are looooong gone. Hi Bristol Palin! And gay-wise? Uh, never an issue. However, if I’m wrong and there really is such a thing, I would sincerely hope they look like Smurf balls — because that would be kind of cool.
Straight Married Guy (Jim): What does it say about me that I’m not even sure I’ve ever really experienced blue balls? All I can say for sure is that not having orgasmic sex is the worst part of not having orgasmic sex. I’d prefer to think this is an evolutionary advance, rather than a carefully cultivated myth I’m ruining for half of everyone. Maybe someone who wasn’t effectively celibate in high school can explain if it’s only a problem with new balls.
Our “wise guys” are a rotating group of contributors, some of whom wish to remain anonymous and some of whom like the attention. This week’s Straight Married Guy is Jim from New York, our Gay Guy is Jay Dyckman, an LA copywriter, and our Single Straight Guy is Tyler Barnett, owner of the LA PR firm Barnett Ellman. To ask the guys your own question, click here.
Blue balls is real. I had it last night. Drove up to my girlfriend’s house earlier in the day. We made out for a couple hours and some touching but nothing else. Well when i was leaving, about 12 at night, i had the WORST ache in my balls. I got in the car and drovr about half a mile and stopped to take a piss on the side of the road. i got back in the car and my balls were aching so bad… it was like i just got kicked really hard, except the pain was this intense for about an hour or so. Went home, went off, and felt better. Blue balls SUCKS, and is most definately real.
Elizabeth, obviously I can’t speak to Sambo’s tale, but in my limited experience it actually felt akin to getting tagged in the nether region. Not crippling pain, but it definitely took my breath away.
I’ve certainly never regarded as justification for coercing anyone into anything.
Sambo, while I would never suggest that blue balls aren’t real (like I said before, women experience something I imagine to be quite similar), don’t you think that maybe some of your symptoms had something to do with the fact that you were drunk? Really, your story sounds more like someone hit you there, rather than just not allowing you to come. Obviously I can’t know, that just sounds WAY more severe than anything I’ve ever heard anyone experiencing.
Oh – and as an aside, I think that if you beat someone with your testicles, it’s more likely to cause you that kind of pain again, than to cause them pain. I’m just sayin’. 😉
I can’t believe any guy would say that Blue Balls are a myth. THEY ARE NOT.
Here’s a true story from my past.
One time in college I was walking home drunkenly with a girl in the middle of the night, hopefully to get my end away. However, half way back to her place we were so horny we started eating each others faces on a path through a small wood. Due to the secluded nature of said path, we gradually got more and more physical until we were lying in the dirt, tearing at each others’ clothes manically. She soon she had my pants down and was giving me a five knuckle shuffle. She had been going for a good few minutes when we heard people approaching. She had to stop and the moment was lost, after that she said she should go home and left me, unsatisfied..
I started walking home and after a few minutes got the most righteous ache in my love spuds. I am talking severe groinal pain, so bad I had to sit on a bench at the side of the road for half an hour (at 5 in the morning). The pain was so bad at one point that I was dry heaving onto the hard shoulder.
When I eventually made it back to my dorm room I was in so much pain still that I had to sleep with my gajungas on a pillow, after having taken three paracetomol.
If anyone suggests to me that blue balls are a myth I will personally take them out and beat this person with them.
Madamoiselle L: I fully know what you are talking about female wise. I have had this often… It’s achy, and sometimes I get a bit of a stomach ache. But I have never felt like I needed to force someone into sex because of it!
And David from July 9 … Wikipedia doesn’t qualify as a good source of information. I can go put whatever I dang well please on that page you link to… So there is no guarantee that the info is accurate.
Just a funny anecdote. When I was in High School (this was NOT the Man I have now) I was dating this guy, and we made out, nothing too intense, but he claimed he had a case of Blue Balls and if I didn’t “do something about it” he would have “permanent damage.” I thought he was being a jerk (I didn’t know him that well, and wasn’t sexually active yet, and sure didn’t want HIM to be my first, and not for that reason.) So I told him, sorry. He persisted, that he would be “damaged” and it was “up to” me to fix the problem, and I finally got upset and said, “That’s what the Good Lord gave you a left hand for.” And went home.
Sheesh.
Oh, and I did want to add, my Man has also told me this has happened to him, but more when we were younger and not having sex regularly enough or before we started having sex, and just petting (Hey, I was YOUNG!) At least for me, and my Man, this is NOT like a migraine. (at least for us.)
I have terrible migraines, and it is one of the worst pains imaginable. (In some ways worse than childbirth.) There is a HUGE difference between being physically uncomfortable from being sexually frustrated and the nauseating 10+ pain of a migraine.
Some women have a very similar situation.
It usually happens when you are having sex, and for whatever reason, you can’t or aren’t able to orgasm.
It feels like menstrual cramps. My guess is blood and other fluids build up in the uterus, ovaries and outer pelvic areas and when the congestion is not relieved, IT HURTS!
When someone in a movie (particularly a woman) says “I ache for you.” I think of this condition.
I don’t know if all women experience this, but it is very unpleasant, and if you can’t orgasm, your man can’t seem to help (or sometimes falls asleep, eh ehm!) and can’t even get to the point where you can relieve yourself, you can get not only “congested” but VERY VERY irritable.
I don’t think anything actually “turns blue” though.
I have always gotten blue balls since my mid teens, I’m 43 now. It hurts pretty bad for me but not so bad I can’t take it. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain you’ve every felt for me it is a 6. When I do have it I am glad when it finally subsides. Usually for me it will last for 2 or 4 hours before it finally starts to go away and yes it will only happen if I have a hard on and am very sexually aroused for like 30 minutes or more and then don’t organsm. Its a wierd thing but I’ve always just put up with it.
I have know guys that say they never get it and others that say they do. It just depends on how an individual guys boby works.
Blue balls are a very real, quite painful phenomena. I cant give an exact definition or the scientifical reason that they happen but I can say that the do happen and they are quite painful
Me too, DC. For me, it’s mostly around the vaginal opening, but it might be different for other women. It hurts *a lot*, but I would never use it as an excuse to push someone into sex. Like others have said, masturbation was invented for a reason. 🙂
As a woman I have had a similar experience in my nether regions when they have become engorged. It’s an achy feeling.
Funny, blue balls just came up with my boyfriend the other day. I got back from a long trip away and upon my arrival home, he surprised me with a mini-vaca outside the city. On the way, we were kissing in the car which led to rubbing, and while stopping to pay a toll on the highway he mentioned his stomach hurting. I asked him why and he said it’s from getting excited but not coming..kind of the same feeling as when a guy gets hit down there. I was like, oh yeah, we call it blue balls (my man is Italian..lol, bit of a language thing occasionally) So yes, I think it definitely does exist, although it’s just a nickname for the feeling when theres alot of buildup and no release, nothing changes color – ha. And probably not all men get that feeling which makes it so debated.
I agree with David, I resent the implication that the condition is a myth, it’s certainly not. It’s not an excuse to pressure anyone into doing anything that they don’t want, as I have experienced this condition and I went ahead and took care of it myself with no lasting ill effects, but it does happen. In my case it wasn’t a pain near a migraine, it was very uncomfortable however.
According to wikipedia, there’s quite a lot of science behind this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_balls
The formal term is vascocongestion, or “epididymal hypertension”– “the condition of temporary fluid congestion in the testicles and prostate region caused by prolonged sexual arousal in the human male. It is often accompanied by a cramp-like ache of prostatic congestion and pain/tenderness or edema of the testes”.
Reading this, I kind of resent being told that blue balls are a myth. I agree with other commenters that they’re no excuse for being pushy with a partner, but that doesn’t make them any less real, or any less painful. And I’m not surprised that your one gay wise guy is a skeptic, because I suspect that most men intuitively understand this about each other and would never let it happen. Female partners, sadly, are often used to the idea of sex without orgasm, and may imagine that men are comfortable with the same.
Which brings me to a final point– Em and Lo, can you do a post about antidepressants and anorgasmia? I’m not currently on anything, but I’ve tried prozac, zoloft, and lexapro in the past, been sexually active on all three, and found that it was either difficult or impossible to have an orgasm. Sex began to feel like a chore. It helped me understand what some women experience– the mild plateau of sexual excitement that eventually gives way to soreness and boredom, since an orgasm just isn’t happening. Another thing I discovered, somewhat to my surprise– even if they know the reason, women tend to take it very personally if they can’t get me off. I think antidepressants seriously damaged a relationship, and now that I’m off them, I’m as horny as a 13-year-old again.