[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Paul B. at 03 May 2002 00:27:45: Help available!
As an answer to: Please - Help needed written by Bill at 02 May 2002 22:45:16:
> on the underside of the penis, the glans is attatched to the foreskin.
This is called the "fraenulum" and as someone mentions elsewhere (recently), it is the mechanism that causes the foreskin to "spring" back over the glans.
Obviously, in your case, it is simply too effective in that task. The simple, straightforward approach is to "adjust" it by stretching it. The concept (elaborating on what Jim has already said) is simple common sense - the body works by the principle that the skin grows to accommodate whatever keeps it on the stretch from day to day.
Your problem is that you have as a child, not been pulling your foreskin back (or perhaps you were, but stopped doing so some time later for whatever reason). The skin has as it were, "presumed" that it did not need to come back over the glans, and accordingly not developed to do so. But your body continuously develops and maintains itself by the same processes, so you can cause it to correct the problem at any time.
What you do about it depends rather on how much of a hurry you are in to make it work properly. The process of skin remodelling is generally quite slow, working over a period of months rather than hours or days. It can be accelerated to some extent, in particular by applying tension most or all of the day.
Anyway, all this as a general background. "Fraenulum breve" or "short fraenulum" is a common topic associated with discussion of circumcision, but you need to know that it is an entirely relative matter. Your complaint, quite a common one, is that the foreskin will not pull back completely and comfortably. This is because the whole "loop" of the foreskin and fraenulum is too tight.
While you may tend to focus on the fraenulum as the "problem" and therefore tend to focus on stretching it, this can be difficult, and it is actually more profitable to focus instead on stretching the tight foreskin, which will mean that whether or not the fraenulum stretches in the process, you will be able to retract the foreskin comfortably, even though it may still tend to spring forward.
It is the mobility of the foreskin that is desirable for normal intercourse (and for that matter, masturbation) - whether it stays retracted whilever you have an erection and "looks circumcised" is something of a furphy resulting from how common the practice of ritual circumcision - essentially an abnormal state - is.
Look back over the descriptions here, particularly Jim's and perhaps mine, of stretching. Apart form the simple matters of developing a different habit - retracting the foreskin every time you pee and using a masturbation technique of pulling the foreskin back with each stroke and/ or holding it back for some moments to utilise (enjoy) the stretching sensation, the "exercise" of stretching the foreskin with two fingertips inside, pulling outward, for a few minutes, many times a day; whenever you can, will in time, achieve the desired result.