[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Paul B. at 28 Aug 2001 14:37:58: Sensitive glans.
As an answer to: phimosis written by Frank L. at 28 Aug 2001 07:05:57:
> Why is my glans so sensitive?
Because it's not used to being touched directly.
Consider two things. Firstly your nose. You can breathe through it, no problems. Sometimes you get a bit of fluff up it and you sneeze furiously - whether it hurts is variable, but it certainly irritates.
You can have mucous build-up in it, and you know it's there, you can blow it out and clear it, but it doesn't hurt. Note that if you get water up it, particularly fresh water, but also seawater, it is very irritating, again you sneeze and blow furiously to get it out. It's certainly very sensitive.
But some people for various reasons choose to or have to have it adapt to being touched. Smokers get used to having smoke in their noses - they even seem to like it, though I couldn't. People in hospital often have to have a tube passed through their nose into their stomach for drainage or perhaps feeding. It hurts like crazy (I have had this tried on myself for practice - It was impossible!) but over a few days the mucous membrane gets used to the annoyance and eventually it is hardly noticed.
Now in your case, having never touched this area before, it is very much the same as the inside of the urethra - the urine tube running down your penis on the inside. Even for those used to the glans being touched, putting anything in the urethra feels exactly as you describe. Nevertheless, if you insist on (or have to) doing so, such as some curious people who wear objects in there, usually related to (ugh!) piercings, but in a more serious sense, people (includes women) who have to insert or wear catheters to drain the urine from their bladder, this again gets used to the presence of the object.
This occurs by a combination of processes over the short and long-term. The nerve endings adapt to the situation and react less to the milder stimulation - that is, it takes stronger stimulation to produce the same degree of feeling, also the nervous system re-calibrates its response to what the nerves are "saying". And then, the mucous membrane responds to the irritation by growing extra layers and toughening the membrane itself so it is less easily damaged by the particular pressure it is experiencing.
This process is generally reversible to a varying extent - if you remove the foreign object, the membrane and nervous system slowly becomes more sensitive and reverts to its original state.
So you can adapt yourself to how sensitive you wish to be. Some considerations in the process are that while it can be a nuisance to be too sensitive, do remember that most girls' clitores are just this sensitive and do not like to be touched dry, but are quite pleasant to stroking with lubrication - either natural or artificial - applied, so why would you want to be otherwise?
The circumcised penis which tolerates substantial incidental abrasion is a bit of an artificial aberration from a physiological point of view. Even then is it then most pleasantly stimulated with lubrication.
So as you practice retraction, the retraction itself will be one factor to which your glans will accustom, and rinsing under a shower should be (progressively) tolerable, which is useful. Whether you really need to touch it or stroke it directly - well, you pick, but I think you will find that doing so with lubrication will be fine anyway, and that in the longer term includes sexual intercourse - having a foreskin allows you to enter a well-lubricated partner and then pull the foreskin back from the base, which should be an extremely comfortable approach overall.