Can couples really get stuck together during sex?
Homer described how Mars and Venus were
caught together to the "inextinguishable laughter" of the Gods (Joachim
Anthonisz, J. Paul Getty Museum collection)
It
sounds like a scene from a trashy sex comedy. But stories of getting
stuck during sex have been with us for centuries - and some of them
might just be true.
"It's not the most romantic ending a couple can imagine," says Dr Aristomenis Exadaktylos, author of a study of 11 years of admissions to his hospital in Bern, Switzerland.
He and his co-authors found plenty of patients who had experienced problems after sex - migraines, heart problems, even amnesia. But asked on the BBC's Health Check radio programme if he had come across a case of the woman's vagina clamping on to the man's penis, he said No - and added that the idea was probably an urban myth.
Two listeners, however, wrote in to dispute this.
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Dangerous Sex
- About 0.1% of ER admissions to University Hospital Bern come about as a result of sex
- Between 2000 and 2011 the hospital recorded 445 such cases
- Of these, 308 cases (69%) were male
- Most of the patients (78%) were younger than 40
- A total of 276 (62%) had a possible infection
- Fifty-five cases (12.4%) were neurological, including headache, amnesia and bleeding between the brain and skull
- Two patients had cardiovascular emergencies and no penile fractures were recorded
"I must tell you it is no myth,"
wrote one woman who asked to remain anonymous. "It happened to my late
husband and myself one night. He literally could not withdraw i.e. was
'stuck'. I attributed it to the intensity of the vaginal muscle response
during orgasm."
On one occasion he and his partner were having "very enjoyable sex" when he suddenly found that he couldn't withdraw. "Proceedings came to a halt and we decided that we'd better separate," he recalls. It took two or three minutes of fumbling and laughing - the experience wasn't painful for either of them.
John, who is now 75, has never before spoken about the incident and it was never repeated.
Dr John Dean, a senior UK-based sexual physician, says that both accounts are credible examples of a rare phenomenon that doctors sometimes call "penis captivus" (captive penis).
"When the penis is in the vagina it becomes increasingly engorged," he says, giving his hypothesis of what causes the problem.
"The muscles of the woman's pelvic floor contract rhythmically at orgasm. While those muscles contract the penis becomes stuck and further engorged."
Finally the vaginal muscles relax, the blood flows out of the penis and the man can withdraw.
Many dog-owners will have seen their pets getting stuck during copulation, which breeders refer to as a "tie". However, there are distinct anatomical reasons for this, according to Peggy Root, an expert in animal reproduction at the University of Minnesota. A dog's penis has a compartment which fills with blood after intercourse has begun, effectively locking the male in place.
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Find out more
- Dr Aristomenis Exadaktylos spoke to Health Check on the BBC World Service
- Dr John Dean also spoke to Health Check
- Get the Health Check podcast
Dr Dean says that several of his
patients have discussed with him their experience of getting stuck over
the years, more out of curiosity than because it was a major problem. He
draws a distinction between penis captivus and the more common and
serious condition of vaginismus, in which a woman's vaginal muscles
contract involuntarily, preventing intercourse.
Two reviews of the history of penis captivus, published in
1935 and 1979, highlight the public's longstanding fascination with it.In 1372, Geoffrey de La Tour-Landry related how a voluptuary named Pers Lenard "delt fleshely with a woman" on top of an altar of a church, and God "tyed hem faste togedre dat night". The following day the whole town saw the couple still entwined "fast like a dogge and biche togedre". Finally prayers were spoken and the couple's prolonged intercourse came to an end (although they were obliged to return to the church on three Sundays, strip naked and beat themselves in front of the congregation).
Mars and Venus depicted by 16th Century artist Raphael Regius (Special Collections, University of Vermont)
He is similarly sceptical about an account from 1931 about an event in Warsaw in the 1920s, which ended with a double suicide. This time, penis captivus afflicted lovers trysting in a garden after closing time, and the couple were only separated when the woman was put under anaesthetic. But the real tragedy came after journalists - "in their greed for sensational facts" - published the story. "The next day two revolver shots put an end to the mental sufferings of the two lovers," the story goes.
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Isbrand van Diemerbroeck17th Century Dutch physician
Cold water cure
"When I was a student at Leyden there was a young Bridegroom in that Town that being overwanton with his Bride had so hamper'd himself in her Privities, that he could not draw his Yard forth, till Delmehorst the Physician unty'd the knot by casting cold Water on the Part."Isbrand van Diemerbroeck17th Century Dutch physician
In his 1908 book The Sexual Life
of our Time, Iwan Bloch recounted another case of penis captivus
following on from a furtive meeting, this time in a quiet corner of the
docks in Bremen, Germany. The woman underwent an "involuntary spasm",
the man - a dock labourer - became trapped, and a great crowd gathered
to watch. Eventually the couple were carted off to a hospital,
chloroform was administered to the woman and they were freed.
This opinion is no longer held by experts, but the narrative of a clandestine meeting followed by public humiliation continues. Recent media reports of penis captivus - in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe and the Philippines - all concern adulterous couples.
A YouTube video showed crowds gathering around a house in Nairobi, where a couple were reportedly experiencing captivus
The Zimbabwean media reported last year that a woman was bring a law case against her long-term boyfriend for putting "runyoka" on her - a fidelity spell that caused her to get stuck on her lover. As one report put it, she was demanding compensation from the jealous boyfriend "for humiliating her and trying to control how she should use her private part".
But there are several accounts of penis captivus taking place within a marriage, including two unsensational case studies from 19th Century German gynaecologists.
Perhaps the best verified example of the phenomenon also occurred during marriage. After the Kraupl Taylor review was published, the British Medical Journal received a letter from Dr Brendan Musgrave, recalling an incident in 1947, from his days as a house doctor at the Royal Isle of Wight County Hospital. "I can distinctly remember the ambulance drawing up and two young people, a honeymoon couple I believe, being carried on a single stretcher into the casualty department," he wrote. This account was corroborated by another doctor who had been on duty at the time.
Dr John Dean says that he can't explain this "very unusual" story, since people experiencing captivus generally have trouble disengaging for only a few seconds.
But he adds: "If you're in that position that probably that feels like an eternity."
Dr Aristomenis Exadaktylos and Dr John Dean spoke to Health Check on the BBC World Service. Listen to Dr Exadaktylosor Dr Dean again on iPlayer, or get the Health Check Podcast.
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