My mother was a nurse. When I was born, nearly all babies in the USA were circumcised. Mother wanted a tight circumcision—total—so I wouldn’t “do something disgusting like touch myself.” Apparently baby boys do that even in the crib. So from the beginning she knew that touching oneself was pleasurable with a foreskin and, if you ablated the parts that felt good, then no more pleasure and no problem (for her). I asked her late in life if she would have done the same to a daughter and she said “No, they don’t do that, but girls aren’t ‘disgusting’ like boys.”

Like most boys, however, I did “touch myself” but found early on that I needed lotion. Ironically enough, I found my mother’s hand lotions! Without the lotion, it was rough and chafed—I could still masturbate but needed to get some semen out as lotion. Otherwise, forget it. By age forty, sex was impossible without lotion.

My first experience of sex with a woman on a regular and sober basis was in my late twenties. I could not get off with oral sex—not enough friction. My ex-wife had had an intact husband prior and he enjoyed stroking of hand and mouth enormously. But I felt nothing. However, she came from a family line of mohels155 and was pleased with the look of my penis and the fact that it was a clean, total cut. Still, we both agreed that if we had boys (we didn’t—we had girls) they would not be circumcised, because it is a barbaric genital mutilation. And, she knew first hand (literally!) that it greatly reduced a man’s pleasure. What mother would wish that on her son?

Our sex life was good enough at the beginning of our twenty-year marriage. But as time passed, by age thirty and certainly by age forty, there was too little sensation in my penis to feel much during intercourse. Oral sex was never possible and that left me finishing myself with my hand after she had her multiple orgasms with oral sex. Not very sexy—masturbating after pleasing your woman.

During our marriage, the gender difference in sexual pleasure was a real source of tension. I knew that naturally women enjoyed sex way more than men. She would always have more than one orgasm and they were earthshaking. I never had an earthquaking orgasm or more than one because of the male refractory period. But then, the fact that I am a man born into a genital cutting society meant I knew my penis was getting weaker every year.

By the time I neared fifty I had lost interest in even masturbating. Well, the interest was there but it took too much effort to get the remnant of frenulum not eroded with time to feel anything. I used to joke, half kiddingly, that I wish I had female genitalia because the doctors would leave it alone. Plus, we both knew women enjoyed sex so much more, but to rob me of the pleasure a man can have created not grief but anger at the whole Abrahamic tradition of genital cutting. What type of God makes it his covenant to cut off penis nerve endings?156 Then believers conquer unbelievers and offer their conquered foreskins as a holocaust to God?157

Long story short, for the past ten years of our marriage intercourse was a chore. I had to really concentrate on some fantasy, stroke myself to the edge before penetration, then keep focused on the little pleasure that was there. A woman enjoys not only being pleased but pleasing her man. It was obvious that she couldn’t please me—not her fault but my circumcised anatomy. So one thing that brought us together, at least in the beginning, became a source of tension.

After the divorce, the last thing I thought of was sex with a woman. I have strong full erections. My health is excellent (BMI perfect, exercise daily), but the strong erection conceals the fact that there are few nerve endings left. At fifty I am a strong healthy man with a dead penis. A girlfriend could stroke it and stroke it and “How does that feel?” Well, it doesn’t. So I would simply please and not be pleased. The lack of reciprocity and give and take is really damaging to a man-woman relationship. And my dry penis would hurt her and what man wants to hurt the woman he loves for—maybe, maybe!—three seconds of pleasure and no buildup at all?

The lack of buildup was the thing that made all sexual encounters in our marriage so poor. She would build up and enjoy again and again. So, I would spend an hour or two in an erect state but no buildup. Eventually, although I was willing to give and not receive, my ex-wife tired of it and viewed our lovemaking as separate masturbation sessions (which they were, really). So we stopped having sex, she got a vibrator, and I retreated to the bathroom for occasional release of semen to eliminate discomfort.

The first thing my ex-wife said to a new girlfriend was “Sex with him will be lousy. He can feel nothing and his dry hard penis will hurt you.” Whoa! She knows why it is dry and hard but would literally rub it in the face of other women, telling them to choose a man who was intact.

The whole experience from my mother to my ex-wife left me very bitter. But to complain about the lack of sensation worsened relations with the wife. “Real men don’t complain.”

No, we just suffer terribly from this “problem with no name.”

John

51 years

Illinois, USA

12 December 2013