I was excited to read about how friends and girlfriends see one differently. But what does this have to do, you ask, with one’s penis?
The author of an essay on the matter raises some really interesting points about how friends perceive one as opposed to significant others — “friends with benefits and deficits,” my boyfriend and I have termed it — and his girlfriend’s intimate knowledge of his limitations and vulnerabilities, as opposed to the face he presents to the world. Which is — well, I can’t do it justice.
On the other hand, my IRL friends probably view me as either mysteriously smart or smart in unpredictably innovative ways, or possessing a relatively capable and trustworthy intellect that can most of the time add a unique viewpoint to the discussion. I think many of my friends mostly see me as a smart and intellectually-formidable friend (not that it’s a competition, but that our friendship is often in the context of frequent discussion in which viewpoints are discussed and challenged in a friendly and enjoyable manner). Some friends I feel are unaware of the ‘limits’ to what I might come up with while others may have some understanding of my limits yet sometimes appear genuinely surprised or intrigued (to the extent their egos allow) by whatever point I’ve brought into the conversation.
Indeed, this is a fertile issue for discussion: he’s right, as the walls of careful self-presentation begin to crumble, we’re exposed, and that’s both terrifying and freeing. We expose all kinds of things to our partners. To wit:
Another difference between how my girlfriend sees me and how my friends see me is that my girlfriend knows the size of my penis and other sexually-oriented information. As she has seen it from perhaps many angles and in many situations and environments, I think she is intimately familiar with the majority of aspects of my penis – it’s color, shape, size, regularities and irregularities. She also knows how long on average it takes me to achieve an orgasm over a wide variety of sexual acts, what my face looks like during sex, the sounds I make, which positions I’m used to, and how much sex I typically want to have (daily).
And, naturally, his friends must wonder about this.
But friends have hardly any of this information, while probably having, at one point or another, wondered about the size of my penis or idly explored a curiosity about what my face looks like while I have sex. But as far as I can remember, there has not yet been an occasion in which my penis has been exposed to any of those I call friends. I don’t use public showers i.e. in gyms or swimming pools that require a membership and prefer not to piss openly in front of others (actually I can’t) so any penis ‘flashing’ my friends might have been subject to has been merely coincidental and unintentional and left unmentioned…I have not had sex with any of my friends (except maybe a few who were girlfriends at the time or who I had sex with in a sort or ‘trial period’ in which we were assessing whether our ‘thing’ would become longer-term) so unless an ex-girlfriend of mine has taken the time to describe my sexual behavior and mannerisms to a current friend, my friends remain clueless regarding this information as well. I do not foresee myself ever discussing with any friend, comfortably, the aesthetic aspects of my penis or things like my facial expressions during sex, any time in the future.
In short, we hide our proverbial penis from the world; the literal demarcation point of intimacy and slef-expression. Except, of course, when we’re waving it around in articles.
How My Girlfriend Sees Me Vs. How My Friends See Me [Thought Catalog]
[Image via Shutterstock]
GET JEZEBEL RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
