1. "Why does it smell, and can other people smell it?"
Fresh urine has very little smell. The smell comes later, once it has sat on fabric or skin and bacteria have had a few hours to work on it. That is why you can be fine at ten in the morning and aware of yourself by three in the afternoon.
Most of the time, other people cannot smell it. You can, because you know it is there and because your nose is six inches from your own collar all day. That gap between what you notice and what the room notices is wide.
The practical fixes are dull and they work. Change the pad before it is soaked rather than after. Rinse with plain water and dry properly when you change. Keep a spare pair of underwear in the car or the bag, because damp cotton holds smell far longer than a clean pad does. If there is a strong smell with no obvious cause, or it comes with stinging or cloudy urine, that is a conversation for your doctor, not something to deodorise.
2. "Why do I leak more on some days than others, with no reason at all?"
There is usually a reason. It is just not a dramatic one. Poor sleep, a heavy meal, a second coffee, a cold coming on, a day spent lifting boxes, constipation, a long stretch sitting in a car — any of these can shift a day from dry to damp.
Tiredness is the big one men underestimate. A pelvic floor at the end of a bad night does not hold the way it does on a Tuesday after eight hours. The muscle is not broken on those days. It is tired, like any other muscle.
Rather than hunting for a cause in the moment, look back over a week. Write down the wet days and what was different about them. Patterns show up at the weekly scale that are invisible at the daily one.
3. "Is it normal to dribble a few minutes after I've finished and zipped up?"
It is common, and it has a plain mechanical explanation. The tube that carries urine out runs in a curve underneath you. A small amount can sit in the low point of that curve after the main flow stops, then move when you walk away.
After prostate surgery it can be more noticeable, because the plumbing above has changed and the muscle that used to clamp off the last of it is still relearning its job.
The fix is not more shaking. Shaking moves the body, not the fluid. When you have finished, press gently upwards with your fingertips behind the scrotum, just in front of the back passage, and draw forward along the underside. Do it twice, unhurried. Then a brief, firm pelvic floor squeeze before you zip. That combination empties the curve far better than standing there waiting.
4. "Why does a small amount of urine feel like such a big wet patch?"
Because liquid spreads. A teaspoon on a shirt looks alarming; the same teaspoon absorbed into a pad disappears. Your sense of how much has come out is almost always an overestimate, and that overestimate is what drives the urge to leave the room.
This matters for more than reassurance. Men often jump to heavier protection than they need because the patch looked dramatic once. Heavier is not always better — bulk shows, it rubs, and it can keep you in a habit longer than necessary.
A more honest measure is how much you actually change in a day, and how heavy the used pad feels compared to a month ago. That tells you something. The size of the stain on a pair of chinos tells you mostly about the chinos.
Also worth reading: 6 Questions Men Don't Ask Out Loud, Answered Plainly · What You Do in the Bathroom Matters: 7 Toilet Habits That Work Against You
5. "Do I have to tell anyone — my GP, my wife, my mate at golf?"
Your doctor, yes. Not because leaking is an emergency, but because the reason behind it changes what helps, and some causes want checking rather than training. Blood in the urine, pain, fever, or a sudden change in control are reasons to go sooner rather than at the next routine appointment.
Your partner, probably. Most men who have had that conversation say the dread was heavier than the conversation. What usually surprises them is that their partner had already noticed something was wrong and had drawn worse conclusions in the silence.
Your mate at golf, only if you want to. There is no obligation to be open about a bladder. Telling one or two people removes the effort of hiding, which is its own tax on a day. Telling everyone is nobody's requirement.
6. "Am I too old for this to be worth starting?"
Muscle responds to training at seventy in the same way it does at forty — more slowly, and with less margin for skipping weeks, but it responds. The pelvic floor is not a special exception to that.
What changes with age is the expectation, not the mechanism. If you have had years of gradual decline, the first thing training tends to improve is not the number of leaks but the warning you get before one. Warning is worth a lot. It is the difference between making the door and not.
Start with checking you are squeezing the right thing, then build consistency before you build volume. A small amount most days beats a heroic week followed by nothing. Many men improve. Few of them improved in a straight line, and almost none of them improved by waiting to feel ready.