My penis looks smaller compared to other guys I’ve seen in the locker room. Will my penis be too small to please a partner? I’ve heard you can buy things to make your penis bigger. Do they work?

The size of your penis as a teen could change, because you’re still growing. Penises come in different sizes and different shapes. Your penis will continue to grow until you’ve finished puberty. While there’s a lot of talk about penis size, the truth is that the average adult penis is between five and seven inches long when erect and a lot smaller when flaccid or limp. Some penises are wide and some are thin.

Some guys will try anything to enlarge their penis. Save your money! Creams, pills and “penis pumps” might make your penis a little bigger for a little while, but the change won’t last. In fact, penis pumps can actually damage the tissue and nerves in the penis, if used often. So a guy could end up being unable to get an erection or lose feeling in his penis. Don’t believe those pictures you see either. They’ve been altered to make the penises look like they’re really pumped up.

A lot of guys grow up learning to measure their masculinity by the size of their penis because they believe penis size is important. For guys who are attracted to women: The truth is that the vagina is elastic. This means that the vagina can accommodate a big or a small penis. In fact, it can tightly accommodate something as small as a finger. Also, most of the nerve endings in the vagina are concentrated at the entrance. So, extra penis length won’t necessarily do that much in terms of giving a woman pleasure. And even more importantly, the most important cluster of nerve endings for women are in the clitoris, and you don’t need a penis to stimulate the clitoris.

For guys who are attracted to guys, the truth is that giving pleasure to a man doesn’t require a large penis either. If guys are having anal sex, a large penis isn’t necessary to reach the “male g-spot,” the prostate. The prostate lies within a finger’s reach inside the anus. In addition, some guys prefer oral sex or mutual masturbation to anal sex, and penis size really doesn’t matter there either.

But maybe most important—sex isn’t about competition (who’s bigger, who’s better); sex is about sharing, communicating, intimacy and pleasure. So the best partner is not the guy who has the biggest penis. The best partner is the guy who is best at communicating with his partner. He finds out what his partner’s feelings are and shares his feelings. He learns how his partner likes to be touched (and what he or she doesn’t like) and tells his partner what he likes and doesn’t.

It’s not the size of your penis that makes you a “real man” or a good or bad partner; it’s how you think and how you act.