Listen, if you don’t wanna jack off, that’s fine. Maybe you don’t actually enjoy it, or maybe it’s occupying too much of your day. You do you! There are some guys, however, who’ve decided they need to take things a step further. They don’t just need to stop masturbating — they need to “retain their semen” instead.
In simplest terms, semen retention refers to never ejaculating, either through masturbation or sex. Practitioners believe this gives them access to a special power stored within their balls; one that allows them to unlock all types of revelatory physical and mental benefits.
The thing is, almost all of these “benefits” are unfounded myths. While there’s some evidence that short periods of abstaining from ejaculation can improve sperm count, motility and other fertility factors, there’s no research that says never ejaculating can improve your health. In fact, any temporary benefits tend to cap out after a few days or weeks of abstinence, meaning there’s no real point in keeping all that semen to yourself indefinitely.
Nevertheless, some people in the subreddit r/SemenRetention believe in its gospel so steadfastly that they think marriage is “suicide” because it would require having sex and depleting their bodily energy. Many have otherwise taught themselves to have sex without ejaculating, all in the hopes that they can reap some benefits from constantly contained cum.
With that in mind, here are some of the more absurd “benefits” semen retainers think they’re getting…
Semen retention will give you focus to draw sacred geometry
“Semen retention has me drawing sacred geometry again, no caffeine, about 20 hours of work so far,” one of the top posts in the subreddit reads, showing off various progress pictures of a page covered in complicated geometric patterns.
Honestly, yeah, it looks pretty cool. But is an abundance of semen really responsible for this? Hard to say — there have been zero studies on the correlation between semen retention and the ability to draw shapes, so it seems unlikely. Nevertheless, semen retainers believe the practice improves their mental clarity and focus enough to create great art.
Elsewhere on the forum, guys have claimed that after a month of retention, it feels like “a lot of the bullshit from before is just gone,” that it’s “much easier to navigate between thoughts” and that they can “do intense deep work sessions for longer periods of time with higher levels of concentration.” And sure, maybe there’s some anecdotal evidence to suggest that not thinking about sex as much will help you focus on other shit, but scientifically speaking, the research just doesn’t back this up. Nobody has done a formal study on whether people who don’t masturbate have better concentration, though some research has suggested that orgasming can actually help you concentrate better by releasing chemicals that make you relaxed and happy.
If you ejaculate more than once a month, your body has to pull semen from elsewhere because your balls are empty
This concept was shared in r/SemenRetention just three weeks ago, citing an Ayurvedic claim that because all parts of the body are connected, semen must come from a variety of organs and tissues when it’s depleted from the testicles. Specifically, the poster claimed that it takes 30 days for the body to turn “food energy” into 10 grams of semen. No source is provided other than a borderline incoherent illustration.
There are a variety of reasons why this is false. Ten grams of semen is the equivalent of around two average sized loads. As Brian VanHooker reported for MEL, your testicles produce around 1,500 sperm per second. While there are several other hormones and trace minerals that go into producing the full semen-package, assuming you’re eating properly, your body is fully capable of producing several loads per day, each of which contain millions of sperm. So no, it doesn’t take 30 days to make 10 grams of semen.
More importantly, you do not contain sperm or seminal fluid anywhere else but in your genitals. Your testicles create the sperm, your prostate gland and seminal vesicles create the seminal fluid and they mix together when you’re about to ejaculate. If you never become aroused, they never mix, and if you become aroused but never ejaculate, your body just flushes it out. In either case, fluids stay entirely within your reproductive system. There are no globs of semen just aimlessly floating around your heart. Moving on.
Retaining your semen will turn you into an alpha male athlete
The idea that athletes shouldn’t have sex before important games goes all the way back to the first century, when Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia suggested that a man’s strength would be improved by not cumming.
Wrong. In 2016, researchers at the University of Florence in Italy reviewed hundreds of studies on the links between sports and sex, and found no correlation between having sex and decreased athletic performance. Even so, r/SemenRetention clings to the notion that not cumming will turn them into some sort of alpha super-jock. “I have so much power (testosterone) bursting through my veins that my hand is always very firm and strong, and my legs are like anchors or roots, always firm too, as if I am always ready for combat,” one guy wrote after seven months of not ejaculating.
Cool, but sorry, bro — it’s not because of cum.
The secret powers of not ejaculating are being hidden from you by an elite society
Two years ago, a member of r/SemenRetention suggested that the practice is deliberately hidden from men because the elite don’t want them to know about it. His theory was that because it takes over two months for a sperm cell to fully develop, guys who are cumming all the time are impregnating women with under-developed sperm. These sperm then turn into children with mental illness and disease, who are therefore docile slaves to the people controlling the world. “Imagine how powerful the human race would be if we all grew from Spermatogenesis seed,” he wrote. “That is a nation of warriors, divine beings who are not so easily manipulated and controlled.”
While he’s right that it does take roughly 64 days for spermatogenesis to occur, the problem with his theory is that sperm that hasn’t undergone full development can’t fucking swim. Thus, a sperm cell that isn’t entirely formed isn’t capable of reaching the egg and causing pregnancy. As mentioned, men are creating new sperm by the thousands every second — but functional sperm don’t actually leave the body until they’ve matured in the testicles. When someone ejaculates several times a day, it’s possible for their semen to have fewer functional sperm in it — and men who are struggling to conceive are sometimes advised to abstain for two or three days prior to intercourse — but no one’s out here impregnating women with half-matured sperm.
Not cumming will make you a chick magnet
At the core of most semen retention arguments is the idea that by not cumming, a man will be abundant in testosterone to the point that it radiates from his body and captures the undivided attention of hot babes incapable of resisting such hormonal allure. It doesn’t matter that semen retention has no effect on testosterone levels in the long term — guys still think it will make women are more attracted to them.
“The way you talk, how you behave so non-needy and relaxed, this passion for life you have, the fucking great skin and glowing eyes you have all that shit makes woman go crazy,” a semen retainer wrote two years ago. “They can sense you are different than 99 percent of semen-draining guys, you look like a tiger surrounded by little pussies. It’s a natural attraction, not dependent on status and possessions — that’s just superficial attraction. But raw fucking attraction she can’t explain, she just smells the pheromones of masculine testosterone that you emit and her panties get more wet than SpongeBob’s ball sack.”
Notably, this poster also claimed that women are most fertile when they’re on their period, which is distinctly untrue. With that in mind, the rest of the claim speaks for itself. Studies have found that women who are ovulating (the time they are actually most fertile) prefer the scent of men with higher testosterone, but no studies have found that not ejaculating can increase your testosterone.
The bottom line
Once again, nobody cares if you don’t ejaculate, but there’s zero scientific evidence to support the claim that it does anything for you beyond some sort of placebo effect that makes you think you’re Wolverine. Not orgasming just means you’ve got a little more time in your day, and your body will inevitably recycle the unused semen out of your body like any other waste you produce.
But hey, maybe this is all just what the elite want you to think.
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.
