If You Want to Pee With a Boner, You Have to Warm Up Your Bladder First

Ah yes, the male morning conundrum: You desperately need to pee, but your morning wood makes it impossible.

There’s legitimate science as to why. “It’s difficult to urinate with an erection because the chambers within the penis that engorge with blood during an erection — the corpora cavernosa and the corpora spongiosum — compress the urethra,” explains Ajay Nangia, professor and vice chair of urology at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

“As a result,” adds urologist Alex Shteynshlyuger, “the pressure your bladder must generate to push urine through the urethra while experiencing an erection is much greater than it would be otherwise.”

So what do you do next?

Give in to Mother Nature?

Spray all over the walls?

Push through the pain?

It’s actually none of the above. To pee with a boner, you need to generate enough pressure to push the urine through your narrower-than-usual urethra. One way to do so is to massage or place light pressure over the bladder, which sits just below the belly button and just above the pubic bone. Emphasis on light — even sitting down on the toilet or bending over is normally enough to have the desired effect.

For those with a really persistent erection, a more complicated approach may be required. Applying heat of some kind over the bladder — say a hot water bottle or a heating pad — can relax the muscles and encourage urination.

For those with an even more persistent erection, Shteynshlyuger points to tips oftentimes given to those who struggle to pee as the result of an enlarged prostate — namely, practicing “double voiding” by urinating as much as possible, relaxing for a few seconds, then urinating again, or turning on a faucet, which for some men, helps get the urine flowing (or at least takes their mind off their boner).

Just be wary: A high-pressure stream combined with a pinched urethra can result in deflection, according to Nangia, which can result in that very messy bathroom floor (or ceiling, depending on how hard your hard-on actually is).

As for how best to aim it at the bowl (or, perhaps, sink)? You’ll just have to figure that part out for yourself.