Photo “Blue bells or something” by Flickr user leff. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Em & Lo have a year-end post titled “Top 10 Things We Learned from EMandLO.com Commenters in ‘09.” One of the items on their list was “Blue Balls Exist.”

Turns out I left a comment about it there that, in retrospect, is good enough — and first-person enough, to repost a minimally-edited version here.

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I didn’t start getting them till pretty late in life. It’s a deep ache, not so much in the testicles as higher up. It sounds like it’s different for different men but for me just being aroused for a long time isn’t enough to trigger it. It also has to have been a pretty long time (maybe a week or longer) since my last ejaculation too. Since that doesn’t happen very often blue balls don’t happen to me very often either. I mean, even without frequent partnered sex you can still have frequent masturbation.

And speaking of which, I’ve got a feeling that as masturbation has lost most of its stigma blue balls has probably become a lot less frequent in the general population. And if nothing else, its certainly painful enough, and the “preventative medicine” is pleasant enough and harmless enough, that it shouldn’t have to be terribly common either.

I agree with some of the other men [who commented at Em & Lo’s] that ejaculation once you’ve got blue balls isn’t entirely pleasant. The orgasm’s nice but the achy cramps in (what seems to me like) the epididymis and vas deferens knocks out a lot of the enjoyment. But! The nice thing? If it’s been that long since my last orgasm it’s pretty easy to get aroused again. And the next orgasm feels just fine.

All that said, I disagree completely with anyone who suggests that “taking care” of blue balls anyone’s responsibility but one’s own. It’s usually up to you to go that long without ejaculating, it’s easy (and often surprisingly quick) to deal with, and if you’ve had them once you can recognize the warning signs soon enough to call things off before it really gets bad.

So. Sample script you can try out: “I’m really enjoying this but if we keep it up I’m going to get blue balls. I’d like to keep going if you’d feel comfortable helping me have an orgasm. But otherwise I want to stop.” And, incidentally, by making it a choice for your partner instead of an obligation she (assuming your partner’s a woman) may be a lot more interested in continuing than she might otherwise have been.

(I originally said it here.

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Note: further down in their comments a number of women mention that they get distinct and painful aching after prolonged arousal. I’m betting they’re not the only ones. Yet more evidence that men and women have more in common than Mars/Venus ideology would have us believe.

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Feel free to chime in with your experiences with “blue balls,” whether you have actual balls or not.