When I was in the 10th grade, I got what I assumed was the worst sex advice anyone has ever received. In a class on “saying no” and “not sending mixed signals” our elderly teacher informed us that if we men wanted to stop our sexual urges while “in the heat of the moment,” all we needed to do was rap our penises with a pencil and all would be fine.
That’s bad advice on two counts: First, who’s carrying a pencil with them everywhere they go?; Second, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t just not be averse to having their penises hit with blunt objects but may actually enjoy it. I thought this was the worst advice I could get — outside of “never have sex” — but it turns out that there are other people out there who were even more creative when teaching others how to best prepare for fornication.
Thankfully, all that bad advice has been collected in a recent Ask Reddit thread which invited users to share their own experiences of being given terrible advice. One person, for instance, was told that pregnancy wouldn’t occur unless both partners finished at the same time. Another couldn’t let go of this gem, alleged to be ripped from the pages of Cosmo:
“A SHOELACE: Wrap it around the middle of his shaft once, so you have two long ends. Then … pull on the strings, flossing it up and down.
Not even sex store employees can be trusted:
Not me, but my sister works in an adult toy shop, and she told me this story. A customer asked her co-worker the difference between two types of We-Vibes, and the employee told her that one was for “square vaginas”, and the other was designed for “triangular vaginas.”
Your friends from high school are also wrong about everything and will only cause you pain:
Dip your balls in a mug of hot water to kill all the sperm. Then she can’t get pregnant.
And so is your brother-in-law, whose own advice failed him:
My brother in law once told me he believed that if you pull out 3/4 of the way, it won’t make it all the way up and she won’t get pregnant. Seriously. He is the semi proud father of two kids, both before age 22.
Never, ever do this:
Mine was to have your gf put a mint in her mouth before oral. Not really bad advice in and of itself, but we didn’t have any mints, so she grabbed a breath strip and went down on me before it was fully dissolved.
It promptly stuck to my penis and burned with the fury of 10,000 icy suns. It wouldn’t wash off for five full minutes, and afterwards my gf had laughed so hard at my convulsing agony that all we could do afterward was go to bed and try to forget that night ever happened.
And let’s hope this teacher got the break she needed after a complaint to the school board:
When I was in 7th Grade sex Ed. Our biology teacher (who was depressed and crazy after a year of cancer treatment) said “the more protection you use the better, if you can you should always use two condoms at the same time!” And I raised my hand and said “no, you shouldn’t do that, that will cause friction and it will break” when I said that she snapped back at me “are you saying that you know more about sex than I do? You will stay after class and I will call your parents to tell them that you have been looking up inappropriate media online.” I didn’t know what to say after that but I called her bluff.
She was not bluffing.
Even moms don’t always know best:
I remember when i was 16-17 yo, a friend’s mom recommended that if you use a little cola or sprite up the snatch before a gentleman friend comes around, it’d make him going down on you “better”…even at that age all i could think to myself was “this is how yeast infections start”
Not even your own:
“Don’t worry about being compatible [sexually] with your future husband, because if you love him you’ll love that part of him too.”
Said to me by my religious mother when I questioned the ‘wisdom’ of completely abstaining from any and all remotely sexual activities with a potential spouse, apart from chaste kisses. Oh, and you’re not supposed to even talk about that stuff too much or it could arouse the two of you, which is just as much a sin as actually doing the deed.
Just never trust parents in general. Ever:
My Dad decided it was time I had the talk and proceed to be so socially awkward about it that I walked away knowing less about sex than going in. He first described a vagina as “a second butt where you have a penis.” Then proceeded to say “one day when your older and married you take your penis and put it in her cough then you pee in her.” Yes you read that right my father told me sex was me putting my penis into a second butt and peeing. I am so thankful for sex ed and pornography because without my first time would’ve been much different.
There are thousands more comments where those come from. Read them all and then check out our guide to having the best sex of your life, no weird stuff required.
