My issue is i struggle to beleive the average is 5-6" (cira) because how can I be the smallest if im allegadly over average and still be the smallest of that many people - the odds just dont stack up? either that or im super unlucky!
I had my best friends take a look at your thread and we talked it over and came up with the following.
1) Your exes are misremembering just how big their exes really were. A couple of years ago I ran into a guy and a girl I went to high school with. They are married now, but I was intimate with each of them separately back then. We ended up having a threesome and during it I realized just how distorted my memory was about them. I could have sworn both his dick and her tits were a couple of sizes bigger than what they actually are. I don't know why I remember them as being bigger, but I do.
2) Your body type hides some of your length and so your dick appears smaller than it really is. This is the case with one of my best friends. He's not fat by any means, but he has a very solid, thick build from top to bottom (the rest of us say he's just one giant muscle). As a result, his penis appears to be sub-5", and for most of his life he actually thought he was that small. But once we read how you are supposed to measure penis length, we remeasured him and it turns out he's really just over 6".
3) Your exes are lying to you. I know you say that you are on good terms with most of them, and that may be true overall. But my friends and I suspect at least some of them are intentionally lying to you for one reason or another. Either they are lying to you about just how big their past partners were, or they are lying to you about just how big they like their partner's penis to be. As someone who is on the longer side the spectrum, I've lost track of the number of times I've had to settle for a partial blow job and/or a hand job because they can't take my cock in their pussy/anus/mouth. Even worse are they times they've completely stopped what we were doing, refusing to even hand job me to completion. And I know one guy who is about my size whose marriage ended less than a year after they were married because she couldn't handle his dick size (they weren't intimate until after they were married so she had no clue).
4) My friends and I do believe the averages are correct. My other two friends are your size (7 to 7.5 inches). They tell me that the vast majority of guys they've been with have been smaller than they are. Even the friend who is just over 6" says at least 50% of the guys he's been with have been smaller than he is. But we also realize where and how the pickup occurs seems to make a difference. When we go out of a bar, club, or party, the guys tend to be on the bigger side. But most of the guys we pick up during the course of our daily lives tend to be on the smaller side.
5) Please, please, please don't let what other people tell you about your penis size affect your confidence. I know firsthand how difficult this can be. Despite being 9" hard, I have the smallest flaccid cock of anyone I know. It's barely two inches. In fact, the head of my penis completely retreats inside the rest of the skin of my penis when flaccid, and that's even with being circumcised. In Junior High, the other P.E. students would tease me in the showers that my penis was really an outie pussy (like an outie belly button, just a pussy in this case). The teasing got so bad that when I would get intimate with someone, I wouldn't allow them to take off my pants until I was at least half-hard. And the moment I came? My pants went back on before my penis could retreat inside my body. I became so very self-conscious of my flaccid cock that I started refusing to get naked around my best friends despite the fact that they already knew just how much bigger I was erect than they were. Even today I'll occasionally have a partner comment about how small my penis gets after sex. Thankfully I learned that my flaccid outie pussy is a part of who I am. There's nothing I can do about it. So if someone I just had sex with wants to make a comment about it, then I'll happily ensure they don't ever have to see it again.
I really hope that some of what my friends and I have said here helps you, Craig. You are not abnormal. You are not small. Even if 7 - 7.5 inches is truly average, then you are still as big or bigger that the majority of people in the world. Stop asking your present and past partners about it. If a partner says they aren't feeling fully satisfied in bed, work with him or her on ways the two of you can make things better. And if someone you're intimate with puts your penis size down? Dump them. They don't deserve you.