I had my second Aneros session this morning. Let me preface my recounting of it with a few admissions of guilt:
– It was a very long session. I went against the advice of more experienced users who recommended sticking closer to 30 minutes. All told, I had my Aneros in for 3.5 hours.
– It was not actually my second time using the Aneros. I slipped it in one other time between this session and the first as a way of increasing arousal during sex with my spouse. But I don’t really count that as a “session” because I wasn’t focused on the specific sensations the Aneros may have been generating. I wasn’t practicing Aneros.
– Which leads to my third and final confession: After having done that, I was advised by someone to keep Aneros sessions and sex with someone else (or masturbation) separate until I had more experience. I think this advice makes sense and I will follow it in the future, but I didn’t follow it this morning.

They say confession is good for the soul. I don’t know about that, really, but I do know that I want this blog to be as truthful and accurate as possible. Maybe others will learn from my experiences. I hope that I will also learn, both by putting the experiences into words, which forces me to think more deeply about them, and by looking back at the mistakes and successes I have along the way. So yes, at the risk of shame and public recrimination, I will freely admit when I do something that may be unwise or counterproductive.

If that sounded a little over-dramatic, well, it was. :). I don’t really feel guilty about any of that. No harm was done and I enjoyed myself. And I learned a lot.

Moving on then. It was a long session. Why so long? Well, mostly because of when it began. I woke up around 2 am with a very persistent and insistent nocturnal erection. I laid in bed trying to ignore it and go back to sleep. But as I laid there I thought, hey, I’m aroused, I want to have another Aneros session anyway, I’m not managing to get back to sleep, so…. why not?

So I slipped out of bed quietly and used the bathroom. Standing up seemed to take care of the erection as gravity pulled blood down toward my feet, which was useful for emptying my bladder. I lubed up and inserted my Helix Trident, opting to try using Boy Butter H2O this time. I also again put on my glans cap to contain leakage. I don’t think that I will always do that, but it is useful when I don’t want to make a mess. And it protects my glans from distracting stimulation as well, which is helpful.

I got back into bed, laid on my back, and began to focus on my breathing and on relaxing every part of my body I could. Like my first session, I experienced a mild rush of pleasure about five minutes into the experience. I thought maybe that meant things would go at least as well as the first round. Unfortunately, I was wrong, at least in terms of the intensity of pleasure I felt. Which is not to say it wasn’t a good session. “Good” can mean different things.

After that first mini-o I continued to focus on relaxing and doing nothing, even more so than the first session. In the previous session I had experimented more with flexing and relaxing different muscle groups: PC, rectal, abdominal, etc. In that session, however, relaxation seemed to be the key to triggering pleasurable sensations, so I went with that. But perhaps I relaxed a little too much this time. After a little while, my arousal began to fade and I stopped feeling much of anything. This is another reason the session went so long. I really wanted to get at least a little more out of it. Had I quickly achieved a powerful and satisfying Super-O, I might have ended my session and gone back to sleep. But I didn’t, and my hunger wasn’t yet sated, so I just kept going. This is the part where some of you are probably nodding your heads and thinking of times you’ve felt and done the same, and perhaps regretted it.

Well, I don’t really regret it. It wasn’t a waste of time. I didn’t let myself get frustrated. For one thing, what else was I going to do at that hour while not sleeping? Sure, maybe I would have been able to get back to sleep if I’d ended my session and tried, but I’m on vacation and it’s Saturday. I can take a nap later if I need one. But more importantly, I learned some things during the remainder of the session:

1. Relaxation is important, but so is maintaining a state of arousal. I did manage to get aroused again, and I did have some more pleasurable feelings, though maybe not as strong as I’d have liked. With maybe one exception, described later.

2. There are many different kinds of distractions that will disrupt the flow of a session. Like snoring. Or someone stealing the blankets. Or someone grunting and moaning while dreaming. Yeah, maybe trying to have a session while my husband was a sleep next to me wasn’t an ideal choice.

Worse, though, was something that had nothing to do with him: abdominal gas. Having some big gut bubbles burbling around really interfered with my concentration. On the other hand, when one such bubble tried to sneak out, it triggered some involuntary contractions that led to another weak mini-O. But on the whole, I wouldn’t recommend trying to enjoy time with one’s Aneros while gassy. Pausing to visit the bathroom again to remove the Aneros and pass some gas helped quite a bit, though more built up again later.

One other source of distraction for me was this blog. I kept noticing things and thinking, “Oh, I should note that in the blog. And I’ll describe it like this…” And by that point whatever pleasurable sensations I had begun to experience had left, like a lover who feels ignored. I’m going to have to learn to quiet the analyst side of my brain to some degree while enjoying the Aneros.

3. Variety is the spice of life. I found that trying to do the same thing for too long was unproductive. For example, too much pure relaxation allowed my arousal to dissipate. I would occasionally find some technique that seemed to work for a time but then fizzled out.

My theory is that I ended up saturating the neural pathways, possibly because those pathways are still developing and reach their capacity quickly. It’s kind of like an hourglass: the opening between the chambers is narrow and only allows a trickle of sand through it. If you were to open the end of the hourglass and push on the sand to try to force it through more quickly, you would likely cause a blockage as the grains of sand are pressed against each other and the pressure and friction prevents them from sliding past one another. Continuing to push won’t be useful.

I believe that as we practice with the Aneros and the neural mapping continues, that opening widens, or more openings or pathways are formed, and more sand can get through more quickly without saturation. Like sipping through two cocktail straws instead of just one. I found that when I reached the limits of one form of stimulation, it was best to move on to another form. Or another position. Laying on my back worked best for the most part, but changing it up seemed to reset things for a time, getting me out of a dead end and back on roads that lead somewhere.

4. Less is more. When I inserted my Aneros for the first time, I was surprised by how little immediate stimulation it provided. I was expecting fairly intense direct pressure against my prostate. That didn’t happen, even when I squeezed my PC muscles with all my might. But I soon discovered, and was reminded again today, that more is not necessarily better. Like that diner that brags about having the biggest portions in the state. Do I really need a stack of dinner plate sized pancakes with my three egg omelet, sides of bacon, sausage, and ham, country potatoes topped with sausage gravy, and as much house coffee as I can drink? No, I really don’t. Give me a satisfying portion of superior quality food and I’ll be much happier.

The same concept seems to apply to the Aneros. I found that strong and/or rapid contractions were not all that effective for me. But if I instead worked very slowly, or if I made tiny changes in the amount of pressure I applied, I was able to bring on some pleasure waves. At least until I hit my saturation point for a given stimulus. Two effective variations on this theme were to start either completely relaxed or with my PC and sphincter muscles as tense as I could make them, and then flutter my PC muscles as infinitesimally as possible. I still haven’t managed to completely separate my control of my PC muscles from my sphincter, but when I managed that trick, it worked even better.

Returning to the hourglass analogy, pushing too hard blocks things up. A little gentle encouragement might make the sand flow a little faster though.

5. P-tab placement is as important as people say it is. I noticed I wasn’t getting much sensation on or around my sweet spot. A small adjustment took care of the problem and enhanced sensations elsewhere as well

I’m sure I’m forgetting other valuable learnings from the session, but I think that’s more than enough to call it a successful session, despite rapidly and repeatedly hitting today’s limits on pleasurable sensations.

I learned all of those things over the course of three hours. A significant portion if that time was spent just sort of dozing without any real focused intent. I think that had I tried to have a session that long during the day when there were many other things I could be doing with my time, I might have become bored or frustrated. But I didn’t. It worked for me this time. I’m sure my post-vacation sessions will be shorter, simply because I won’t have as much free time to spend.

My session ended not long after my husband came back to bed after a trip to the bathroom. We got nice and snuggly and one thing led to another and a good time was had by all. I won’t share all the details so publicly. I didn’t really have an opportunity to remove the Aneros before or during that activity. Hence my violation of the advice to not use the Aneros during other sexual activities just yet. Oops…

Again, no harm done, as far as I’m concerned. I enjoyed the the session despite the length and relative infrequency and low intensity of pleasure waves. And I learned from the experience, and that’s all I really expect from my sessions at this stage.

So that’s that. I hope you enjoyed reading about this session. The next won’t be until Monday morning at the earliest.