You Shouldn’t Feel Bad For Giving Him Blue Balls

Growing up in a small, conservative, Midwestern town I seemed to always be behind the learning curve of sex lingo. You’d be entertained to know what I thought a blowjob meant and I will refrain from letting you know what age I was when I realized 69 wasn’t just a popular numeric value.

Another topic that I was (am) less than knowledgeable about: blue balls. To combat my missing information base, there were a few things that helped – friends and Google. Both of which can’t be fully trusted. However, I have a great guy friend who told me years ago, “Stacey, don’t let any guy let you believe blue balls is a real thing – it doesn’t exist.” Being a guy who seemed to have some experience in that realm, I took his word for truth.

Looking at the other side, Google, there are a few other opinions. 58,600,000 results to be exact. Articles range from: “What is blue balls?” “Blue Balls: A Real Thing?” “The Science of Blue Balls”, and my personal favorite, “True Detective, A Recap: Blue Balls In Your Heart”. Sites like Cosmo and Elite Daily have articles describing Blue Balls as: “a real problem impacting countless men across the globe”. Whoa, where are the charities raising money for this cause? I have not witnessed one Kickstarter dedicated to the relief of blue balls.

So, you can begin to see my confusion. Truth be told, I hadn’t given much thought to blue balls until recently. To make a long story short, I was recently dating a guy and this came up. (Sorry for the terrible pun and also my apologies to my dad who is probably reading this right now). Anyway, here’s the story. Went out with a guy a few times and things were going pretty well. He was one of the most genuine, kind people I had ever gone out with and we had a ton in common. (Please take note of ‘he was’).

On one date, he took me down by the lake, had a blanket, and wine. We just sat by the water, talking and taking in the scenery. Felt almost like a producer from The Bachelor helped him orchestrate the whole thing (minus a helicopter dropping us off). I was impressed (hey, I had just gotten out of a relationship where my heart was treated like it went through a coffee grinder, give me a break for the bar being set so low).

Later, when we got back to his house the question of staying or going home came into play. I was interested in the guy and thought I would stay for a bit. Five minutes later we were in his bedroom and the train was moving too quickly for me. I decided to pump the breaks and this is when he played the blue balls card. I don’t know what my exact reaction was or what my face looked like, but it was something along the lines of, “WTF.” I straightened up my shirt and headed for my car. Later, he texted me a screenshot of the Wikipedia entry about blue balls. Again, WTF.

Now, I know that many women (and men) have faced situations that are on a much worse scale regarding sexual situations and I want to also state that I was never uncomfortable or felt unsafe with this guy. That’s not the point I’m attempting to make.

What I’m trying to say is this whole debate over whether or not blue balls is a real thing doesn’t fucking matter.

I don’t care what science has shown. I don’t care if someone has “lead you on”. I don’t care if someone was “asking for it”. I don’t care if someone said they’d spend the night and you took that to mean something more. If someone doesn’t want to have sex with you – tough luck.

A person should not be made to feel guilty because they do not want to have sex with you. A person should not feel guilty – period. We’ve all grown up on the “No Means No” campaign and now maybe we can begin to disassociate guilt from the word “No”. Well, at least this is what I can hope for.