Growing up feminine — a guy’s pov

CHPTR 2 — P*rn, Parauresis, and Sexual Identity

There three issues that have worsened overtime as I have gone by living, despite my mentioned improvements in relationships with guys. Issues that have escalated to worse. I’ve been suffering from some level of porn addiction, paruresis, and confusion about my sexual identity.

PARURESIS (SHY BLADDER)

As i mentioned in the previous section — Part 3 of this story — , not learning how to properly pee standing up when i was a kid is something that has driven me to feel really insecure about myself and not man enough. This has ultimately led me to consume porn, but aside from that, it has also had another more obvious consequence: i’ve had, and continue to have, paruresis.

Paruresis, as defined by the Notion’s AI chatbot — I have written this whole article in notion before putting it out here, that’s why — is “a social anxiety disorder characterized by the inability to urinate in public restrooms or in the presence of others, even if one has a full bladder”. I’ve had it for a long time but it is only three years ago that i actually found out it had a name. It is also known as “shy bladder syndrome”, and it is something that has also impacted my social life significantly.

When i was a kid, and i’m referring to when i was in one of the first years of elementary, i remember with great detail a moment that i tried to pee in the urinals of the guys restroom when there was nobody else but me. Be it because i was nervous, or bcs i had to pee a lot or god knows why, i had somewhat of an erection and when i tried to commit the act of just peeing i was not able to control the stream. After i experienced that, i remeber feeling so ashamed that i was not able to do such a simple thing. I tried to control it one more time and when i realized i was literally not able to empty my bladder as a normal guy, i went straight into the stalls to finally pee sitting down. From that moment until high school, i never tried to go to the urinals again (or at least not that i remember) and whenever i ahd to go to the brathroom i would use the stalls or wait until i arrived home from school. Actually, i remember that most of the time when i was at school, i would contain my urges to go to the toilet until either we went home, or, if it was early in the morning, until it was the middle of a class where i knew there were high probabilities of having the restroom for myself.

As you might be able to see, this complicated my social life way more with the guys, since i didn’t want to be near any male figure for a long time due to the fear of needing to use the public restroom at the same time as them. On top of the fact that my interests and behaviors didn’t align very well with the rest of the guys, having paruresis drew an even bigger line between guys and I.

Nonetheless, thankfully, when i reached nineth grade, i decided to change this situation. I cannot recall the reason for this sudden change but the important thing is that i made efforts to change and from that moment on, i tried to go to the toilet when i needed it instead of when there was nobody. I would try going to the urinals if there was no one, and go to the stalls if there was someone. I’ve been doing that ever since, and although slow, i have noticed some progress, also trying different techniques that i saw online.

Now, i’m able to more or less pee in the urinals even when there is someone in the restroom. If they are beside me i can’t and if there are lots of people i can’t either. But if it is just a person and it is not too close to me i can. This is definitely a huge sucess for me, however, in my way to where i am at, i have gone through a particular experience that has made my path towards healthy masculinity and confidence harder. This is having to deal with men jerking off in the urinals of some of the places i’ve been to.

I don’t want to dwelve deeper into this bcs it is relatively recent that i faced the experience, and the memories are disturbing, but I’ll share just a bit more to warn anyone that is reading this and might be oriented towards the same path that i took.

Basically, in my strives to pee as a normal dude in the urinals, i have tried drinking lots of water whenever i existed my house to force myself to go to public toilets. I was forcing myself to get accustomed to peeing in public urinals, and although the idea makes sense bcs the more that you do something the more that your body and mind treats it as “ok, that’s normal, now let’s move on” — which is the attitude i’ve wanted to achieve regarding this topic — , the fact that some public spaces can become places for sexual activity did no cross my mind. So, as i have gone to these public urinals i have faced in many cases people jerking off or looking at me with a sexual intent. The consequence of this, if not obvious, is that it has made me become hyper aware of my surroundings, so instead of treating restrooms as a space where you do your things and go, it has become more of a place where i need to be alert of creeps. So ye, instead of getting rif of paraurosis faster, it has now slowed down the process.

The good news about this is that now i know what i should not do. Since I started to encounter these situations more often i have quitted going into public restrooms in subways and other fishy places and I have been able to continue with my “training” against shy bladder in healthier atmospheres. The bad news, however, is that being present in these sexual environments for the time that i was until i decided to remove myself from them actually opened another door in my life to something i had only seen in porn sites; cruising.

*If you have paruresis like me and want to practice peeing standing up try it somewhere where you know it is safe, and never try unsafe, dirty places unless you have successfully gotten rid of this disorder completely. If you do so, you won’t encounter perverts and your life will be a little better, I can assure you that.

I tend to be very lenient with people suffering from some sort of sexual problem bcs, as you can see, i have been there. But what i cannot stand is grown men, who have obviously had more time to deal with their issues, using public spaces for their perverted actions. So pls, if you ever encounter somebody o the kind, report him, for people like me that have not have the right mindset at the time to do so.