“Semenarche” (also called Spermarche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermarche ) is a powerful experience for most pubertal males. One study finds:
The first ejaculation, biologically significant in sexual and reproductive functioning, was found to be psychologically meaningful but socially invisible. …. All of the boys in the group had sex education in school, yet many felt unprepared for their first ejaculation, which occurred earlier than they expected and before formal education. … Common responses to semenarche included surprise, curiosity, pleasure, and confusion. Most subjects did not tell anyone that this event occurred and many boys initially confused ejaculation and urination. The association of the first ejaculation with sexuality makes it a charged event. Psychosocial and developmental difficulties in sexual education for young males are noted.
In my case, I entered puberty ignorant about sexual intercourse and masturbation. I was vaguely aware that a man made a baby by doing something with his penis to deposit sperm (whatever that was) in a woman. I didn’t know how often it happened; maybe once per baby? And I had no idea that manual sperm releases were possible. I had experienced a couple of “wet” dreams (really dry orgasms) but had not connected that with sex. What I did know was that my penis was erect often in the bath, and that felt really, really good. I spent more time playing in the tub, rubbing my little pubertal penis, playing “periscope” by instinctively thrusting my hips out of the bath water, grabbing it in my hands, etc. I had no idea what I was doing; I just did what felt natural.
One day I was sitting naked on the edge of the tub, soapy penis in hand, rocking and squirming, when the most amazing feeling overtook me. It felt like a sneeze coming on, but infinitely more compelling. As the feeling grew I was scared — what was happening? Was I having a heart attack? If so, I didn’t want it to end. Then it was over. I didn’t realize that I had ejaculated; if there was more than a drop, it was lost in the soap suds.
The episode totally amazed and confused me, but I eagerly wanted to repeat it. Over the next few days I tried various experiments and found a combination of rubbing and straining that could call up the good feeling on command. But I also worried about what I was doing to myself. Was it OK? Was I causing injury?
I needed to learn what was happening, and here I made a big mistake. Somehow I had heard of the word “masturbation” and thought that might be what I was doing. I looked up masturbation in the dictionary, but misunderstood the definition: “manually stimulating the sex organs to orgasm”. I understood orgasm to mean a state of arousal, but I was doing much more! I was worried that I was doing something unnatural, possibly harmful. Was I the only boy who could do this to himself? Had I broken something in my private parts? I thought I should stop, but … you know how that goes. I wondered if I should talk to somebody. But I could not possibly talk to my parents, or a doctor, and I had no close male friend I could ask about so private a concern.
So I kept masturbating, worrying all the time about what I was doing to myself. At some point I re-read the dictionary definition, and realized that “stimulate to orgasm” meant (for a male) ejaculation. Now it was clear: I was masturbating, ejaculating sperm!. I was doing what other boys called jerking off, joked about, making obscene pumping gestures. On the one hand, I was reassured that I was not unique or somehow broken inside. On the other hand I was what they called a masturbator, a jerk-off.
My parents never told me not to masturbate; they never warned me it was bad; they never told me anything about sex. But I absorbed the atmosphere of the time, and understood the hints of other boys, that masturbation was something only a pathetic dork would do, that the act invited ridicule and mockery. I continued to masturbate privately, guarding my embarrassing secret, with a sense of growing shame about my daily surrender to my urges.
I lived in a small town with a poor library. I sought advice from books, but only found Victorian-age works such as Freud’s work on narcissism or Havelock Ellis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Ellis#Auto-eroticism which described masturbation as a psychological and social problem. Worse yet, Ellis’ book had several “case histories” of masturbators, whose lives both aroused and alarmed me. Thus the authorities seemed to concur that what I was doing was a dangerous, addictive habit. I felt great shame and I didn’t want to be weak, to give in and be controlled by this habit. But the more I struggled against it, the sweeter was the inevitable yielding to temptation, and the struggle itself became a game.
I won’t say more now about how masturbation became intertwined with my unsuccessful teenage attempts to lose my virginity. The main point here is how my early experience masturbation was tightly connected with shame, embarrassment, anxiety, and sense of failure. This eroticized the connection between masturbatory gratification and shame/guilt. Would I have turned into the chronic masturbator I am today without that initial imprinting? Who can say.
Hade anyone of you to take medicines against masturbating during puberty?