[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Danalee at 06 Aug 2004 17:49:11: Re: 30 years too late--UPDATE
As an answer to: Re: 30 years too late written by Danalee at 21 Jun 2004 00:28:35:
I had agonized over all this ever since discovering there was a name to put to the condition. I also felt responsible for passing along the information if I could find my ex. I found his website and sent him an email with the link to this site and left it at that. I haven't heard from him but I hope he finds his way here. Thank you.
>Thank you for your constructive, supportive response. I appreciate it. This all happened in 1973-1977 while we lived in Scotland, Australia and then in the US. I had about nil sexual experience anyway, so his being uncircumcized didn't bother me at the time; but eventually, as our mutual efforts to have a sexual relationship failed I realized something was wrong. He wouldn't even make the effort after awhile. I blamed myself; was I unattractive? had dinner been tasteless? was the house not clean enough? Both of us lost a great deal of self-esteem. I came to this site to learn; not to be crucified for being young, afraid and ignorant. Thank you for your understanding, and thank you for sharing your experience. I am extremely grateful.
>>>foreskin hung out over the glans, very ragged and long. You couldn't even see >the glans, ever
>>>embarassment. Looking back I don't understand why a physician/pediatrician
>>>didn't step in at some point. Surely, it must've been apparent that this was not
>>>healthy?
>>Yes and no. If the foreskin can retract when flaccid but not when hard, then a physician may not notice anything wrong since he can retract foreskin and see there there are no infections.
>>Or it could be that the physician did recomment treatment to the guy and knew very well that his foreskin was not functioning properly, but the onwer consistently refused for whatever reasons (fear of pain, pride, refusing to admit he is "deffective" etc) and claims that his foreksin causes him no problems.
>>When I was a teenager, I too had long foreskin and although it could retract fully, I was concerned about its length and set out to find as much information as I could in medical books. Alas, while the problems of the foreskin (infections etc) and circumcision techniques were documented a billion times, there was very little if any documentation on how a normal foreskin was. (for instance, medical books showed no authoritative information on whether a "normal" foreskin retracted by itself or continued to stay on glans during erection).
>>With this in mind, if that is the information physicians had, then they had very little to judge your ex husband's foreskin, especially if he was in the USA. Without good documentation on the "normal foreskin", the only way for a physician to gauge a patient's foreskin would be to compare it against all the other foreskins's he has seen in his job. And in the USA, the average physician hasn't seen enough foreskin to be able to pass judgement on an individual foreskin, and your ex's physician may have though your husband's foreskin was perfectly average and thus didn't make a fuss about it.
>>Also note that 30 years ago, the term "partial circumcision" where the foreksin is just shortened instead of totally removed was unknown and doctors would have refused such a treatment (many are still quite reluctant). Even some 20 years ago, when my foreskin was trimmed, it was still very rare, and it is only because I had read about it in a short passage in one urology book that I knew it could be done.
>>I find it extremely hard to understand how a guy such as your ex would not have realised something was wrong with his penis, especially when sex with you just didn't work. I suspect he was more in denial.
>>Had you challenged his manhood/courage because he feared getting his penis fixed, I suspect he may have done something about it.