Can someone please offer some advice so that I'm better informed before going to see my doctor? The reason being i don't want to be forced into a full circumcision unless its necessary. I'm 26

My foreskin retracts when my penis is flaccid but there is a very slight tightness about half way down my penis when the skin is fully retracted. When I do this however my frenulum pulls the glans of my penis down.

When my penis is erect my foreskin retracts just beyond the head of my penis but returns forward if i take my hand off my penis. both my frenulum and 'the ring' around my penis are very tight when im erect. When I'm erect the tight ring around my penis is just beyond the head of my penis whereas when I'm flaccid its half way down.

My question is: Do i have phimosis or a frenulum breve or both?

You're 26, so unless you decide to take the doctor up on any offer, it's highly unlikely your penis is in jeopardy. Furthermore, there is almost never a necessity to circumcise, regardless of what you may have heard. Short of cancer, gangrene or severe injury from an accident, I really can't think of any reasons.

I suspect your condition will require working on both the ring and the frenulum. Do you know how to do the exercises? Read back over several threads to get a feel for it, and then ask away about how this may pertain to you.

Well of course, we have been saying with considerable regularity and frequency here, that one way and another, an unretractable or nearly so foreskin and a short frænulum generally co-exist.

In other words, a tight foreskin opening hinders or prevents retraction and without regular retraction during childhood or adolescence, the frænulum tends not to be "put on the stretch", but a short frænulum also limits retraction and may therefore discourage retraction to the degree that stretches the foreskin opening.

You might as well consider the two matters simply two aspects of one problem, because that is precisely what they are as the foreskin opening and frænulum are part of the same structure (which if you are not used to retraction, may not be so easy to see) and as I always advise, you virtually always need to practice both "exercises" simultaneously, with a slight bias toward doing more of the frænulum stretch, as that is the slower to achieve results.

Though you might pick up the term "frænulum breve" if you had been reading this forum through, it concerns me that people who come here and use that particular term (which is to my mind, simply an obfuscated version of the more direct and less emotive "short frænulum") have been to other sites which have influenced their thinking with such perverse concepts as to imagine that circumcision might somehow be "necessary". Or that there is something other on offer than a "full circumcision".

Take a step back and look more broadly at the situation. You have a foreskin that is difficult to pull back. OK, but what is the problem - is there actually something - anything - that this prevents you from doing? If there is, it is likely that you are mistaking another problem, such as poor sexual technique, as a physical defect. How might you ever imagine that cutting your foreskin off would improve its function?

It is very wise that you wish to be better informed before going to see your doctor, but - why do you want to see your doctor or what might you want him to do? Unfortunately, doctors are by and large not very capable in managing sexual matters, and are more accustomed to seeing any report of problem with a foreskin as nothing more than a request to have it cut off, with which they generally acquiesce and will assume as a matter of routine, that you will wish the same even if you are not clear about it.