Hi,

I'm 20. When I was about 15, in one of my first sexual encounters, my girlfriend tore my frenelum (lots of bleeding). I never saw a doctor about it, but after it healed, I was able to (more or less) fully retract my foreskin. I don't recall ever being able to do so before.

However, I believe my frenelum is still too short, and I have some scar tissue that is taut and sore during intercourse. I hope this pictures might explain better (I don't make a habit of posting pictures of my penis on the internet. I hope this is ok.)









What I believe happened is this: before I tore my frenelum, it hadn't developed properly, and was attached right to the end of my urethra. Notice in the topmost picture that there is a white line that extends down from the opening to the urethra to a larger white blotch, then contiues. This is the tissue that I believe tore, with the larger white blotch marking the half-way point (the "bottom" of the original tear". There is now a large, flattish membrane connecting my foreskin to the head of my penis (marked "restrictive tissue"). Is this a regular frenelum? It doesn't look like pictures I've found on the net.



During intercourse, there is tightness in this membrane which can be painful. I'm not sure if it's the membrane that's sore, or the scar tissue on it. I suspect it is the scar tissue, as the pain is quite sharp. It makes it extremely difficult to put on condoms (I'm unable to "roll down" the condom over my penis, I have to stretch the base of the condom and put it over the head in one go. I suspect this is why my condoms often break during intercourse.)

I don't want to be circumcised, but I was very interested in lengthening or eliminating the connective tissue between my foreskin and the head of my penis, either by stretching or by a procedure I read about where a needle and thread is used to tie off the frenelum, thus severing it over the course of a few days.

I'd be really grateful for any advice from anyone.

I've been trying to see a urologist about this for years, but I travel a lot, and I always seem to get appointments too late (e.g., I'm leaving my current country at the end of may, I went to see a doctor six months ago and just got an appointment with a urologist in july. Useless.)

Thanks for this forum! It's a great service, I've been looking for decent advice for a long time.

I trust you have noted by now, my comments on the frænulum to the thread immediately before (below) this one.

While the technique you describe is very clever, and is indeed, most likely what I would use if someone came to me and insisted on a surgical solution to such a problem, my advice would remain that you pursue the stretching first and for a reasonable length of time - you comment on "trying to see a urologist about this for years" - I (we) have to say that if you had been attending to stretching for this period of time, you would most likely have no problem now!

Clearly you can retract your foreskin quite easily at this point, though I am not sure quite how much of an erection you had as the pictures were taken. I would presume you are specifically saying you could not fully retract your foreskin before the initial tearing of your foreskin but could retract it easily enough to visualise the whole glans. And I presume that your girlfriend was simply trying to retract your foreskin by way of a "hand job" to the degree that she expected it to do so.

"Lots of bleeding" as you correctly determined, was no reason to see a doctor (who would have done nothing more than told you to give it a little time to heal), any more than had you done much the corresponding thing to your girlfriend, and torn her hymen - people generally realise that this is no cause to see a doctor.

I see no reason you should not lodge pictures on the Internet - you of course wish them to remain anonymous to avoid social repercussions. The point is that such matters need to be discussed, and illustrations are necessary to make clear explanations - the general prudery present particularly in American society is responsible for great suffering.

What we will say of course, is that what you demonstrate here is quite normal, simply one variant of a frænulum. If you perceive it to be excessively tight and uncomfortable during intercourse, then most certainly do proceed to stretch it.

I would caution against seeing a urologist. They do tend to think in terms of circumcision - perhaps because that is how they make money. (Of course, they make money performing a variety of procedures, but a circumcision would be the way of making the most from what you present as a relatively trivial matter.) If it came to tying the frænulum, any competent "generalist" can perform this as a strictly "office" procedure - possibly without using anaesthetic at all (it "bites").

I cannot see why this would cause great difficulty putting a condom on - I suspect you are attempting to use an overly complicated method of applying the condom - please do read back through the threads here and find my comments on putting on condoms. You can not however blame tearing of condoms on this - this is strictly an indication of the young lady not being sufficiently lubricated for the act - as quite likely is the discomfort of which you complain, since with adequate lubrication (and even with a tight vagina in a woman who has not given birth), there should be little "drag" pulling the foreskin or condom, back.

Do read back in the forum. Now when I say (and I often do) that you need to read "a few pages back", I mean you really need to read every thread from each index page, then every thread from the next, and so on, for something like six index pages. Yes, that's sixty threads but really, they're not long and you're the one wanting to learn about it - there's no reason you shouldn't have or spend the time and if you do that, you really will learn a lot about the subject and about your particular problem as it compares to what others have discovered.

> I cannot see why this would cause great difficulty putting a condom on

I shall take your advice and read over the rest of this great forum, but just to address this point:

The difficulty in putting on condoms comes from the action of "rolling" the condom over the head of the penis while depressing the tip to avoid trapping air inside. When my penis is fully erect, the foreskin retracts fully, but in doing so puts a great deal of pressure on the frenelum, which is painful. The condom rolls down to the base of the head of the penis correctly. However, when I attempt to unroll it over the bunched-up foreskin at the base of the head, the force required really hurts the frenelum, as this is where all the pressure on the foreskin is felt. Even when I'm successfuly at unrolling the condom over the bunched-up foreskin (which is in itself painful and uncomfortable, trying to unroll the condom over the rest of the shaft of the penis continues to put very, very painful pressure on the frenelum. Therefor, the only way I can comfortably and completely put on condoms is to stretch the base ring with two hands and pull it down to the base of the shaft, trapping some air in the tip. It is this trapped air I suspect leads to the breaking of condoms (or at least, condom instruction sites posit that trapped air can lead to broken condoms upon ejaculation as the ejaculate puts pressure on the inside of the condom. Personally, I've always suspected this as unlikely, seeing as a condom can be inflated to many times its size without break. Perhaps lubrication is the problem as you suggest, but I have had this problem with more than one young lady.

I've tried many different ways of putting on condoms (trying to avoid rolling the foreskin back, for example), but I've found the only way I can unroll the condom onto my penis in the way recommended by sex education sites is to fully retract my foreskin, leading to quite severe pain.

> would presume you are specifically saying you could not fully retract your foreskin before the
> initial tearing of your foreskin but could retract it easily enough to visualise the whole glans.

I could retract the foreskin partially, but not enough to visualise the glans (I could reveal perhaps 30% of the head of the penis). Before the incident, I had no idea a foreskin was supposed to retact fully. After my penis healed, I found to my amazement I could retract the foreskin fully.

It is clear from your descriptions here, that you have a particularly tender frænulum. On that account, I would be leaning toward the idea that you might (as I have indeed mentioned before in other threads) contrive some means to put continuous tension on the offending part; this involves the use of adhesive tape and an elastic strap tethered to some other body part! This allows a lesser amount of tension to be much more effective (but is still likely to take a few months).

Now, in regard of that condom ...

Reading between the lines, you say "When my penis is fully erect, the foreskin retracts fully", but I suspect you mean not that your foreskin retracts by itself, but that you can pull it back. I should be rather surprised if it causes discomfort merely by being pulled back, particularly given the photographs you provide which I have to say, show a very normal-looking and not particularly short frænulum.

Also, your somewhat circumlocutory description that "the only way I can unroll the condom onto my penis in the way recommended by sex education sites" does suggest that you are following some advice that the foreskin needs to be pulled back first.

As I see it, the correct instructions read "hold the teat of the condom and unroll it over the erect penis, all the way to the base". That would be it in a nutshell (). I have a strong suspicion that the instructions were originally written for the American market, in a time when circumcision was so common that the marketers literally had no idea what a foreskin was like, so they imagined instructions to suit, and other manufacturers simply copied the same instructions, so as not to be different.

No-one I have ever spoken to in the field of sexology can explain how or why any amount of air trapped in the condom would cause it to break - for exactly the reason you describe - condoms are quite tough. Similarly, no-one actually believes that the teat at the end is necessary to absorb the force of ejaculation - of course a young guy can spurt up to a couple of metres on occasion - but most people can also spit that far; there is no way you can spit through the end of a condom, is there? Whatever could - or would - burst through a condom would clearly be painful for the woman - but it isn't so!

In fact, the ejaculate simply squeezes back along the inside of the condom - as you already know. And any air would no doubt do the same soon enough.

The mechanism for condoms breaking, is that having at some stage pulled almost or all the way out of the vagina, the vagina is too dry to allow it to slip in easily. In fact, within the condom, your penis is well lubricated, due to your pre-ejaculatory lubrication, which cannot readily escape. As you try and thrust into the young lady's vagina (which may well be quite tight), you thrust against the very end of the condom and push through it, stretching a very small area beyond its limit.

Thanks very much for your responses so far, Paul, you've been very helpful.

I have been reading up on the other threads on this forum, and I have to say that I am beginning to lean in favor of a surgical solution, the tying up method discussed. While I accept that this decision is very important (as it will affect my sexual sensation for the rest of my life), I'm not sure I want to commit to a quite demanding coure of stretching over the course of several months for uncertain results (although I certainly accept that many people on this forum have reported great success with stretching). The procedure of tying up the frenelum seems so neat and untraumatic that it's beginning to look very appealing. Also, I've been reading up everything I can find written by people who've undergone this procedure, and from what I can tell the loss of sensation is very slight to none-noticable, and the resulting increase in pleasurable sensation is fairly immediate and would certainly outweigh any lost feeling.

The accounts of the operationg (particularly here [ http://www.male-initiation.net/library/gallery/frenuloplasty/frenulum_tying.html ] make the procedure look so simple and painless that I'm quite seriously considering performing the procedure on myself. The appropriate materials (say, a 4 0 braided non-dissolvable suture with attached needle, some EMLA cream to use as a local anaesthetic, some kind of antiseptic cream) are easy enough to find at my local pharmacy, and the advantage would be that I could perform the procedure very soon, and I coult take as much time as needed to determine the optimum position etc. for maximum physical and cosmetic results.

I can see that the general position of the forum is in favour of non-surgical stretching solutions, and I can certainly see the appeal of that approach, but I think in my case tying the frenelum is a reasonable solution. My frenulum is particularly sensitive (as you noted), it's already sustained a very large tear that has considerably lengthened the frenulum (and I didn't notice any loss of sensation afterwards), and the amount of lengthening I'd need to accomplish through stretching to get the results I want would be considerable to say the least.

I'm considering documenting the procedure here to inform others if I go through with it.

Thoughts?

Robin, the screwball who runs that website which you have linked makes circumcision sound like a walk in the park. Take everything he says with skepticism. He is not normal when it comes to sexual matters. He also has a following of a handful of Englishmen who have little else to do outside of worshipping the mutilated phallus.

It is very unlikely that you'd have any consequences from cutting your frenulum, as many men have accidentally torn theirs without suffering problems. We just can't see risking any surgery unnecessarily. The stretching costs nothing, risks nothing, and takes no time to heal from.

Well, as I have said previously, I am not totally averse to frænulum tying if you think that will sort out your problem. We would most certainly be interested to hear of your progress if you do this, by way of reference for others who consider it. It will be salutary to see whether you find it the solution you are hoping for, considering both the short and the long term.

You are generally correct that the materials required would be some braided non-dissolvable suture such as BBS (Black Braided Silk) 3/0 would be better than 4/0 as you wish it to crush rather than cut through (and 4/0 silk is very easy to break); preferably on a long straight ("hand") needle if you are not using needle holders. Emla® would make the process painless - you apply it and pull the foreskin forward to cover it for 20 minutes to make it effective (it must not dry out during this time), and you use Betadine® solution (or tincture) immediately before the suture but give it time to dry (or a hairdryer).

In tying a knot, the first hitch should be a double twist at whatever angle you choose, and you use at least three hitches. You can use a second tie through the same hole at the opposite angle to remove a "wedge" of skin if you so choose.

The details of the procedure on the site you cite(!) are in themselves reasonable, but as Jim mentions, I am troubled by aspects of Harmen's enthusiasm!