I’m a man in his 30s with a tiny penis. I grew up knowing it. For a long time, it embarrassed me. From my teens into my 20s, the thought of people knowing this fact terrorized me. I had sexual partners, but being intimate was the only time I felt comfortable with someone seeing my penis. I wouldn’t strip down in locker rooms, and even going to the doctor made me anxious I would have to take off or lift the bottom of my gown.

The feelings of embarrassment and shame started to subside once I accepted that my penis is and will always be very small. The older I got, the more I recognized I couldn’t change it. With that, I became a little more open about my size. Beginning in grad school, I’d shower at the gym, and it would amaze me that so many guys were so much longer and thicker than me. I couldn’t help but wonder what guys thought seeing so many swinging dicks, then mine just poking out. I knew it was a bit of a spectacle, but I didn’t mind showing it.

I also began to feel more comfortable with partners, hanging out naked, displaying my modest package, sometimes drawing attention to it. One night, a girlfriend wanted to sketch me, so I posed nude. When it was finished, my penis looked basically like a button. She put the sketch on the wall, where one of her friends spotted it, and noted the small penis right in front of me, not recognizing I was the model.

Subtle cues started appearing during sex. Multiple girlfriends suggested having anal sex, one doing so after recently implying that I could not reach her g-spot. Another partner tried to hide the difficulty she had stroking my penis when only part of the head reached past the end of her fist. I noticed that I never seemed to reach the back of anyone’s throat during oral.

In my early 30s, I ended up moving in with some guys and a woman. It was a friendly household, and the woman was very open. One time after returning home, she wanted to greet me, so she walked into my bedroom when I was lying nude on my bed, my flaccid penis pointing toward the ceiling. After that, we grew more comfortable being nude around each other, sometimes walking naked between our bedrooms and the bathroom, or going pee while the other was in the shower. She would sometimes gently comment on it, never with a mean spirit, but never denying it was tiny. This was particularly resonant, as she admitted previously that she looks for partners with big penises. With her, I felt comfortably inadequate.

I’m happy to discuss these experiences, others I’ve had, or those you’ve had involving someone else’s small penis.