In a perfect world, you’d get to enjoy your every boner. But the miracle of the human body didn’t design it that way. Instead, you get occasional boners that are just a freaking nuisance, springing up at exactly the wrong time. How, then, can you make them go away?
There are numerous tips n’ tricks for turning that Cock Clock back from 12 to 6. Most of the top picks on Reddit involve refocusing your brain onto something else, like thinking about filing paperwork or mowing the lawn, counting down from 100 by 7s (100, 93, 86, etc.), or attempting to think of something repulsive. The former two are probably a better move than the latter — in trying to gross yourself out, you might just end up with a confusing boner you’re even more frustrated about.
There are also a few more physical erection-stoppers, though most sound like urban legends. “Walk heavy on your heels,” wrote u/7evenCirlces two years ago in r/AskReddit. “[It’s] legit. Some girl told me that in 11th grade. I have no idea where she gained this forbidden knowledge. But it works.”
The same person alleged that doing this triggers the sympathetic nervous response, moving your blood away from your boner and toward other muscles in your body. While exercising has often been cited as a more legitimate method of boner removal, walking heavy on your heels will probably at least make you look and feel stupid enough that it goes away. So, there’s that.
Similarly, as my colleague Ian Lecklitner can personally attest, flexing just about any muscle will redirect blood flow and make the boner monster leave you alone. For an article two years ago, he tried it himself. After getting erect and then flexing his bicep, he began counting to 10. “To my amazement, my boner began wilting within seconds, and it was completely and utterly flaccid by nine Mississippi,” he wrote. “I literally watched my dong go from Excalibur to soggy hot dog before I could even count to 10.”
Urologist Jamin Brahmbhatt confirmed that it wasn’t just in Lecklitner’s head — at least not entirely. “Your theory on the blood flow shift is accurate,” he said. “The blood in your body is directed to where it needs increased nutrients, and therefore, if you’re flexing, the blood flow may be redirected. To be honest with you, though, flexing may also help the mind to focus on something else. And when your mind is distracted, you’re likely to lose your erection.”
To double-confirm, I asked Michael Ingber, a urologist at Garden State Urology and medical director of COR Medspa for his thoughts on the matter. His advice, however, was more existential. Rather than wondering how you can make your boner go away, perhaps you should be thinking about why it arose at all. “Erections come from a variety of stimuli — while most common is sexual, there are also rare conditions where erections happen when people get scared, experience pain, or in other more rare situations that are unexpected and inappropriate from a social perspective,” he tells me. “In general, removal of the stimulus that produced an erection in the first place would be the best thing.”
Ingber notes that some men need to work with mental-health professionals to help them assess why they’re having boners they don’t want. He also mentions that you probably shouldn’t hit your boner to make it go away. “There have been reports of men being ‘hit’ by their spouse when they have erections when they’re not supposed to,” he says. “These can actually cause penile fracture, which is a surgical emergency. Obviously, this isn’t recommended.”
If you’re at the end of this article, you’re now hopefully distracted enough for your boner to have gone away. It’s also worth stating that if you’ve had an erection for more than four hours, you should seek medical treatment ASAP, as you could be experiencing priapism, which can cause long-term damage to your dick.
Trust me when I tell you that no amount of flexing your pecs is gonna help with that.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
