Swell Blog

By Timothy I've been on androgen deprivation treatment (ADT) since March 2024 - I've had literally no testosterone in my body for more than a year and a half. Yet it is important to me to remain sexual no matter what. Being on ADT, it often feels like pleasure and orgasm are on the other side of a sheet of glass. I can see them but I can't quite reach them. When I first had my testosterone taken away by ADT, I could still orgasm for the first few weeks.  Then I just lost that ability. I cried [...]

When the cock in your life is soft, that isn't necessarily the end of the harder side of sex. Some partners love it when people use strap-on dildos or penile extension sleeves to enable more robust penetrative sex without needing a flesh-and-blood penis to be hard. What follows are just two real life stories from heterosexual couples. They are by no means the only ways to play sexually beyond erections. Wife invites husband to use strap-on dildo Here's the full anonymous post from the Facebook group comment excerpted in the image above, shared to simply expand your sense [...]

For ten years, women have benefited from the wisdom and ground-breaking research contained in Emily Nagoski's New York Time bestseller Come As You Are. Now it is time for men - especially those with erectile differences - to learn parallel lessons. As Nagoski says What I need is to hear that it is okay to feel sad that my body will never be what is used to be. I put a lot of effort into learning to love that body, and now I have got to start all over again learning to love this one. It's tough to learn to [...]

By Rhys Leeming With all the potentially helpful things I found to address my ED, I also found a few to avoid. And they can be just as important. Stress, anxiety and focus on the wrong things can be very counterproductive. What I share here is based on my own experience and reading, and is not intended as medical advice. Recovering from prostate surgery is a long journey. I feel like my attention to health details, how I felt, and what I should be focusing on made my journey that much quicker. Intimacy, love and gratitude were much [...]

The first live open global online conversation about my Beyond Erections book will be on Saturday, July 19 at 1 pm Eastern time. You are invited! [Editor's note: See post-event feedback below] The event will be hosted by the wonderful somatic sexuality expert Erica Leroye in conversation with me. She's the curator of the amazing website and community It Doesn't Have To Be Hard. Formerly known as Soft Cock Week, this celebration of softer sexual creativity helped inspire the writing of Beyond Erections. Beyond erections conversation A penis is an exquisitely sensitive body part for its owner. It can [...]

By Dr Rhys Leeming Here's the list of chemicals, gadgets and actions that helped get my erections harder after prostatectomy surgery. They helped me go from about 70% hard to over 90%. You might find they help you too. Restoration of a decent sex life with my wife took more than the actions below. While they all help ED in a functional way, the other major contributor was learning not to be disappointed at the status of my recovery at any given point. I had to unlearn all the previously hardwired responses coming from my penis and groin [...]

In honour of Masturbation Month, I invited readers in May 2025 to share anonymously the ways they pleasure themselves with soft cocks. Here's the most comprehensive soft penis masturbation response I got. The only background information available is what the author provided in the anonymous form. Where I have added a note for clarity I have put my comment in square brackets []. Here's how our featured contributor summarizes his situation: My ED arose from a radical prostatectomy in 2009. Now at 73 it looks like there is a contribution from advancing age although I can't really measure [...]

By Rhys Leeming Faaarking hell. I’m up here in Far North Queensland getting some late summer sunshine before the Tasmanian winter sets in. I wake up with an expectant grin for the pre-breakfast activity. We've changed almost exclusively to morning sex these days - my erections are a bit stronger at that time of day. With the holiday feeling I was confident that I didn't need Vitamin V - just a cock ring would be enough. But then I realize I didn’t pack my cock ring! . My shitful memory and the forgetfulness of old[er] age are an [...]

All too often, says men's sex coach Cam Fraser, people treat the male body like a machine. As if "male sexual function is something that needs mechanical fixing." In our conversation last month he welcomed Beyond Erections as a "beautiful holistic pleasure-oriented approach to soft cock sex, exploring intimacy and sex without erections ... in a way that is sorely missing from most conversations about male sexuality." About the book, he says "there is nothing else like it" in world literature on male sexuality. It was a privilege to reconnect with Cam Fraser, who is less than half my [...]

My book was summarily ditched by Amazon ten days ago. It was only thanks to three trusty bricks-and-mortar booksellers, each with online portals, that it remained available from April 2nd until now. Here's the story of what it has taken to get global supplies flowing freely again. The story points to some of the many lessons to be learned about discussing socially awkward and undiscussable topics. The book is a respectful and practical work of adult sex exploration and education. It brings a sex-positive approach to the erectile differences that affect half of all men over 50 and their [...]