Male sexual response is highly dependent on age. As we grow older, it becomes more difficult to physically arouse us. Generally we need more stimulation to get hard and our refractory period gets longer and longer. When I was 20, I could come twice with only 10 or 15 minutes between activities. Now that I am more than twice that age, it’s difficult for me to get off less than two days after my last orgasm.

This is very common. Sadly, most of us get interested in BDSM, orgasm control (including wearing chastity devices), spanking, and other more exotic sexual activities when we are over 40 years old. All of this stuff would be much easier to do and clearly more dramatic if our hormones were flowing more freely. Imagine how much more difficult male chastity would be for a 20-year-old.

The subject that’s both appealing and useful, especially as we age, is male sexual training. A lot of the fantasies are around training a guy to get hard on command and perhaps ejaculating when told. The first, getting hard on command, is probably fairly easy to do with the younger man. Us older guys need physical stimulation.

using your other sex organ: your brain

We recognize that our most powerful sex organ is our brain. Extending the concept, suggests that by stimulating the brain we can also produce physical arousal. I absolutely believe this. When I write or read about activities that are exciting, I find myself getting hard. Unfortunately, this isn’t a reliable way to arouse me.

I can’t predict which topic or stimulus will physically turn me on. Apparently there are other factors below the surface that affect this. However, it’s obvious that I can produce an erection without direct physical stimulation if conditions are right.

In “Clockwork Orange” the villains play Beethoven’s symphonies while they torture people. It gets to the point that just hearing Beethoven sends them into a panic. They have been taught to associate the music with a brutal experience.

learning from religions

Religions do the same thing. Over years of church attendance, people learn to associate the music, the smells, and the drone of prayers with a mental state that is both receptive and powerfully linked to what they call “prayer”. While we don’t have a lot of studies on the topic, there is good evidence that when in that mental state, people can make things happen. No, they can’t make spoons bend or objects rise, but they can affect disease to some extent and influence events involving friends and relatives.

Eastern religions go more directly to this mental state. Practitioners are conditioned by the smell of incense, the repeat of mantras, particular physical positions, and other techniques to quickly get into that special mental state. I am a strong believer in this.

The big question is, can we do the same thing with sexual stimulation? I’m pretty sure that we can have some success. I think it’s age-dependent as well as requiring absolute consistency in preparation. In other words, a strictly organized approach is needed to make this work.

Teaching your senses

If you are willing to try, a multi-sensory approach probably has the best chance of succeeding.

1 Sound Most of us associate particular music with events of importance to us: our first dance with a loved one, a particularly poignant moment in life, the loss of someone. You get the idea. It’s the “Clockwork Orange” association. It doesn’t have to be music. It could be the sound of the ocean, a thunderstorm, or any other sound that influences your feelings. Pick one. Produce it when you’re getting ready to begin the mood for sex.

2 Smell Our sense of smell is directly wired to our emotional center. Remember the smell of brownies baking in grandma’s kitchen? How about your lover’s scent when he or she is excited? You get the idea. Since we want to set the stage for arousal, we need a scent that we can easily produce when setting a scene. One choice is incense. That won’t work for me. I am allergic to most of them. Perhaps a perfume might work. Women have been using that for centuries to attract men. You get the idea. Put on the music or sound, and produce the scent.

3 Touch This is the trickiest arousal stimulus. In the beginning, it has to be direct stimulation of the penis. If you are young, it may be just touching you someplace other than your genitals that will work. For us older guys, we probably need direct penile stimulation at first. The trick is to use at least two points of stimulation.

Start off with touching a sexually exciting spot that is not the penis. If it can be a G-rated spot, like behind your ear, so much the better. If not, rubbing the butt or balls almost certainly will help. When you start out, your partner should first stimulate that second spot. Then, without stopping move to your penis and stimulate there as well.

The idea is to teach you to associate getting an erection with stimulation on that other part of your body. You will almost certainly learn to be able to do this. After you do, your partner can try stimulating a less directly-sexual location in the same way to see if you can be trained to get hard doing that too.

putting it together

Our objective is to use the combination of stimuli to produce sexual arousal. I don’t think it’s possible to do this by yourself. You may be able to do it. Anyway, a good approach is to first execute step one. Put on the music you want to associate with arousal. Be naked when you do. Your objective is to learn to get hard as quickly as possible with minimal direct stimulation.

Next, step two: Initiate the scent you want to associate with arousal. The music is playing. Your partner is with you, and you are naked. Give yourself some time. Lie down on the bed with your partner. Snuggle a bit. No touching right now! Just close your eyes and absorb the sound and the scent.

Once you are relaxed, your partner should then touch. In the beginning, she will directly stimulate your penis while also gently rubbing the secondary spot. In my case, gently tickling my balls is very erotic.

Don’t expect a lot to happen in the beginning. You almost certainly will get hard because she is playing with your penis. That’s good. Stay there, relaxing, and soaking in the feelings.

Her job is to get you as excited as possible. You aren’t going for the gold. You want to just feel how exciting it is as she does these things for you. Once you are thoroughly turned on, she should stop.

This isn’t edging or teasing. She should stop well before you get close to ejaculating. After she stops, relax and breathe in the scent and enjoy the sound. She will probably be touching you in other places. Enjoy the close, sensuous experience. After you lose your erection, she can stimulate the non–penis spot, balls in my case, again. Continue that stimulation for a while to see if your penis reacts. If it doesn’t, she can stimulate your penis until you are thoroughly turned on again.

Rinse and repeat. A training session would probably contain four or five sets of “exercises”. When you are done, that doesn’t mean you get to ejaculate, relax a bit, and then turn off the music. Remember, this is an exercise in arousal not ejaculation.

training for both of you

The value of exercises like this is to condition you both to associate activities, smells, and sounds with male arousal. Your partner may well get turned on too. That’s fine, but it isn’t for her. The idea is that she will have a very interesting tool that will get you hard and ready for more activity.

It will also teach both of you that sex with a man does not have to end in ejaculation. Women already know that this is true of themselves. Both men and women have been conditioned to believe that once a man is hard and directly stimulated, ejaculation has to occur. These exercises can help change that view.

Obviously, this can be done in a BDSM context. It certainly doesn’t have to be. Redirecting sources of male arousal is helpful. Most of us never got a chance to learn the value of non-penile stimulation.

Even if these exercises never train you to get hard when stimulated someplace other than your penis, it will teach you both how to relax and enjoy a nice, sensuous experience.

This can take a long time to work. Like most things sexual and BDSM, consistency is critical. Perhaps one of these sessions always precedes actual sex. That would probably strengthen the connection between these other stimuli and male arousal.

If you try this, please let me know your experiences.

It surprised me when I discovered how easily I could be conditioned to almost-unconsciously change a behavior. For example, the first rule Mrs. Lion made for me was that I would be punished if I spilled food on my shirt. Her thought was that I would be unable to avoid this and it would give us both good practice with punishment. That worked for a while. After a month or so, I almost never spilled food on my shirt. I had been conditioned to avoid it. All it took was consistent punishment every time I did it.

She has had similar results with other rules. Some of them require “reminders”. I appear to “forget” after a month or so. This is true with most of my chores. I really try hard to do them. Somehow, one gets away from me. Mrs. Lion notices and punishes me. If her spanking is sufficiently memorable, it will be at least a month before I repeat the offense.

We’ve established that punishment is a good teacher. A reward is supposed to be too. I’m not suggesting that I get a treat every time I do what I’m supposed to. I’m thinking more of reinforcing desired behaviors. I thought of this in terms of, let’s say, kissing. It’s been my experience that women like kissing a lot more than men. At least that’s true of me. What if every time I kissed my partner, she massaged my cock. I love that and can’t get enough of it. Hypothetically, she loves kissing and can’t get enough of that either.

Even though what she is doing is obvious, I’m willing to bet it will work. I’d learn to associate kissing with sexual stimulation. After a time, I wouldn’t need to be stimulated every time. I would just get aroused because of the association. I’m not suggesting Mrs. Lion do this with me unless she really wants to. My point is that if we think of things that we currently assume should be instinctive or at least habitual, it’s possible to “train” your partner to behave as you wish.

be objective

Instead of assigning emotional value to the desired behavior, like kissing, consider it as something you want to teach, like not spilling food on my shirt. Yes, kissing is a sign of love. It’s not the only sign and it isn’t universal. However, instead of feeling bad that he doesn’t love you enough to kiss you for long periods of time, recognize that he needs education.

Unlike curing bad habits, or enforcing chores, something like kissing will respond much better to rewards. I’m very sure that I wouldn’t learn to kiss long and passionately if I got punished every time I stopped too soon. I would never really understand what was desired. If, however, she played with my penis, either through my pants or directly, as long as I was kissing and increased her stimulation when she particularly liked what I was doing, I would quickly learn how to kiss her the way she likes.

A long time ago a woman I was seeing did something like that with me. I was very quiet, even silent during sex. This bothered her. Instead of discussing it with me as something I did wrong, one afternoon when we were both naked, she started masturbating me. She asked me if it felt good? I told her it did. She said that as long as I kept telling her how good it felt, she would continue. She would stop if I stopped talking. I worked hard to keep up the chatter. I thought it was silly, but it was worthwhile to do it because she was really making me feel good. Over time, she repeated this once or twice a week. I never learned to be a chatterbox, but I definitely make noise especially when I am near orgasm. I don’t do it consciously. She conditioned me to behave the way she liked. We both had fun while she did it.

More often than not people internalize these lapses as a sign of bad feelings. She could have decided that the reason I was so quiet was that I wasn’t really having fun with her. Instead, she looked at the situation objectively. It was obvious I was having fun because she had no trouble at all making me ejaculate. If I didn’t like what she was doing, she would have a much harder time. She realized that I never “learned” to express myself verbally during sex. She decided to fix it.

The moral of this story is that when you assume something your partner is doing or not doing means he is unhappy with you, nothing will change for the better. However, if you look more objectively at his behavior, it may be that he simply doesn’t know how you want him to react. A good way to fix this is to “trade” doing something to him that he likes in return for him doing the behavior you like. You don’t have to be sneaky. You can tell him exactly what you’re doing. It doesn’t matter. I learned that. All you have to do is be consistent and make sure he is having a good time too. It really works. Try it.

W

When we started out with enforced male chastity over six years ago, we didn’t have any idea how life would change for us. Now that we are approaching our 4000th post, I guess I’ve grown more reflective. Change has a way of sneaking up on me. Something starts out as a sexy novelty, like male chastity. It feels weird and fun in a sexy way. Over time, the novelty wears off. By then, it’s become a habit. It’s just the way we are.

I’ve been required to be naked at home for so long I just don’t notice. I have learned to stand back when cooking to avoid hot fat hitting my protrucing penis.

This came home to me on Sunday morning. We were lying together in bed watching “In the Kitchen with David” on QVC. We like to see the new products and enjoy the silly demos. The show is a combination of, “I can’t believe anybody would want that!”, and “Let’s order that.” Yesterday we ended up with some delicious cinnamon bread and a couple of sliding stands for our coffee pots. By the way, I have decided to start adding information about exactly what we use to do things.

Apropos of nothing, Mrs. Lion turned to me and said,

“You forgot something, didn’t you?”

I thought for a second and nothing came to mind. I gave Mrs. Lion a blank look. She reminded me that I didn’t set up the coffeepot. One of my daily chores is to add water to the coffeepot put a new filter in and put the washed coffeepot into the coffee maker. I replied,

“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

In a very matter-of-fact voice, Mrs. Lion said,

“Yes you are. You also forgot something else. Yesterday was punishment day.”

“Oh shit.”

I asked her what was going to happen. In that same matter-of-fact tone she said you are going to be spanked. I made a vague reference to the fact that these were minor offenses. She simply said,

“You forgot punishment day.”

I didn’t say anything else. Clearly, forgetting to set up the coffee maker is a misdemeanor, but to Mrs. Lion continuing to forget punishment day on Saturday has become a more serious offense.

Cuisinart coffeemaker that grinds beans and brews coffee automatically. We use Peter’s Blend from Porto Rico Coffee in New York. They ship.

That’s what got me reflecting. It wasn’t that I’ve earned a spanking. It was that this entire process has become a routine event. There is nothing notable about earning and delivering punishments. They are simply part of our lives. I did ask when I was going to be spanked. Mrs. Lion told me it would be today (on Sunday). That’s it. I will also get a punishment for forgetting the coffee maker. I suppose I’ll find out what that is when she decides to administer it.

In most other people’s homes, this would be a fairly notable event. How many husbands and wives routinely receive and administer punishments? No discussion is required or expected. At the proper time Mrs. Lion will tell me to get into the bedroom. I will assume the position and she will punish me. Routine. No different than making the bed or letting the dog out.

Since we have been together, I have had a rule that I’m not allowed to wear clothes while home. There are exceptions: I can wear a T-shirt if I’m cold, and if we have company, I can be dressed. This is so ingrained that it’s not even noted anymore. Only at times like yesterday morning, when I’m thinking about how things were a decade earlier, I realize that things other people might consider incredibly odd are routine parts of our lives.

We aren’t the only people doing things like this. In a recent post on another blog, the blogger noted that her husband isn’t allowed to wear clothes at home either. That blog’s been around about as long as ours.

Over the years, we’ve evolved these practices to work for us. It’s true, while being spanked maybe routine, I still think about it and I am not pleased that sitting down tomorrow will be uncomfortable. I also feel angry that I forgot such an obvious pair of chores. I’m going to work much harder to avoid making those mistakes again.

the hanson ferule paddle in bloodwood. ouch!
The Hanson ferule paddle. This bloodwood model is the most effective spanker she owns. If Bloodwood isn’t available, they usually have a 1/2″ Maple. Select the thickest, hardest wood for best results. They have a model with holes. Totally unnecessary. Ouch!

That last paragraph is a very good example of how something is working for us. A year ago, I would’ve been focusing on how hot it was to be spanked on my bare bottom. I might even get a little aroused thinking about it. Now, I think about how simple it would’ve been to just prepare the coffeepot and remind Mrs. Lion of punishment day. Stupid lion!

That’s not to say I’m not going to forget again. But I felt a really strong incentive to be have a better memory. I know that a spanking of Mrs. Lion’s new variety is really horrible. It’s serious enough to incentivize me to be a lot more careful about what I do. As I reflect, I realize that this is exactly the reason she does it. Domestic discipline (FLRD) is fully integrated into our marriage. It’s no joke.

I’ve learned that it takes a while to transition from novelty to an integral part of our relationship. If something we do has potential to improve our lives, we have learned to pursue it even though in the beginning it’s difficult. The best example of this is Mrs. Lion and spanking. She’s evolved from a timid, gentle spanker, to a full-fledged disciplinarian. She has told me that her focus is to effectively send her message. She’s doing a good job. She’s tried a lot of different paddles. I think she settled on one that is absolutely the most painful. She’s not worried about me having a good time anymore. She’s interested in helping me learn to do what I’m supposed to.

We are still in the very early stages of Mrs. Lion punishing me for doing things that annoy her. I can think of several times that I cut her off or changed the subject before she could finish her thought. She didn’t do more than growl a little when I did. I’m not sure why she didn’t punish me. She said she would even for the slightest thing. I guess more work is needed there.

Anyway, my Sunday reflections feel good. We’ve changed a lot over the last six years. We’ve made lifestyle changes that neither of us considered in the past. They’ve successfully helped me to change, helped Mrs. Lion express her feelings, and helped us keep the romantic fires burning. I guess in our house we use a paddle to light the Yule Log.

It’s one thing to assign a punishment, another to remember to do it

mouth soaping reminder
Mrs. Lion has forgotten to soap my mouth for two weeks. We are trying a reminder on the bathroom mirror to help her.

It seems like we publish a potpourri of unrelated, sexual, power-exchange posts. We are chronicling our travels in the somewhat murky area of sexual play and power exchange. Most recently both Mrs. Lion and I have been writing about my anal training. The initial goal is for Mrs. Lion to be able to get her entire hand up my ass. We always, at least until very recently, believed this was impossible. Over the years, Mrs. Lion has tried and has on occasion, managed to get three fingers up inside me. She has been successful getting larger dildos and, however. Anyway, that’s not what I’m writing about today.

What I’m writing about is the importance to me, at least, of consistent activities that stretch me, so to speak (see what I did there?). The objective isn’t so much to inflict discomfort or make me feel small and humiliated. It’s too change me in ways that surprise and sometimes delight Mrs. Lion. Since she isn’t very interested in sex for herself, her creativity has to move in the direction of things she can train me to do. I think the concept of being trained is very exciting. I love that she does it.

The other night she wondered aloud, “What happens after I finally get my hand up your ass?”

I had no answer. I certainly wasn’t going to suggest she go for two hands, then two hands and a foot, etc. I know people do things like that, but I think one hand halfway to the elbow is probably sufficient demonstration of intimate domination for me. Actually, I do have an answer for her. I know a couple who have been doing advanced anal play for decades. To my knowledge, they never went past getting one hand into his butt.

Instead, on an almost-daily basis she would get that hand up inside him. After some practice, it didn’t take very long. It was a sort of intimate, emotional, sexual experience for them both. There was something they could do almost any time they were alone. I could see us doing this too. It’s almost a sort of sexual hand shake. Well, maybe not. What it is though, is an intimate connection. It’s also a highly emotional message sent to me about my role, at least my sexual role, in our relationship.

In fact, maybe being fisted is a foundational piece of the sort of need I have. I want to feel Mrs. Lion’s control. I really love it when she trains me. Correction: I love it when I think about it. The actual training is frequently quite uncomfortable. One reason we have a domestic discipline component to our relationship is that it gives Mrs. Lion the ability to do more than just try to please me with these activities. She also has a serious route to disciplining me and training me to improve my respectful love of her. On that subject, ever since Mrs. Lion agreed to punish even minor emotional infractions, apparently I haven’t committed one. How about that? I’m sure my streak won’t last much longer.

More and more of our belongings turn up as Mrs. Lion excavates the dozens of cartons we packed for our move. We still haven’t found my shock collar. It’s a toy that we haven’t used in a long time but we both mention it now and then. I suspect Mrs. Lion wants to give it some use once she finds it.

Sometimes it feels that our progress is almost glacial. It moves very, very slowly. Then, out of the blue, we both begin to feel more motivated and stuff starts happening again. The bottom line is that it’s way too easy for each of us to get wrapped up in all the other stuff we have to do. It feels like taking the time for other activities, like fisting, takes too much of the day away from what we really need to get going. The fact is that’s absolutely wrong. A fisting session, for example, takes less than 15 minutes. Either of us, or should I say both of us, can spare that at a most any point when we are together.

It’s much more about resolve than it is scheduling. And that gets me back to the whole concept of training. Mrs. Lion knows the training requires consistent effort. It has to be a front-of-mind activity. Our usual play, on the other hand, can easily recede into the background. We both regret it when that happens. For example, I’ve been owed a mouth-soaping for two weeks now. Mrs. Lion will mention it and then forget to do it. She thought it might be a good idea to put a Post-It note on the bathroom mirror. I had a similar idea and I printed a picture of a woman soaping a man. I taped this to the bathroom mirror. Perhaps this reminder will help.

Maybe the same is true about all the other stuff we talk about and manage to forget to actually do. I haven’t worn that spiky jockstrap since I first tried it on. Again, reminder is needed. Maybe we need to sit down and have a little meeting and then ask our electronic personal assistant (Alexa) to remind her of various activities at appropriate times during the week.

I don’t think it’s a matter of getting priorities rearranged. I think it’s more about being reminded appropriately. I have been doing some other minding, but I don’t like to because it feels like I’m topping from the bottom. I guess we’ll have a meeting and talk about all this and see if we can’t figure out a solution that works for her. I guarantee it will work for me. I don’t get a choice in these things.