Age 29 – Feeling my emotions and sexual arousal more normally

Started masturbating at around 13 yo if I remember correctly. Never had a girlfriend in highschool and the one attempt I had in junior high ended up in humiliation for me.

Started seriously overdoing PMO at 18 yo when I was still a virgin, couldn’t have relationships with girls, had huge social anxiety and was failing college. Am 29 now. Would sometimes binge for hours, 3-4 times/day. And if not binging, it was a very organized act, probably did it daily for some years.

At 20 yo or so I started going to escorts as I was too scared to actually try dating, my self esteem had been tanking for as long as I could remember. It was my way of getting confirmation I’m a man or something. Visited many, first 2 years were a mess and psychologically draining. It got better after that and I actually got more confident, I was lucky to meet some nice women.

However, with the exception of few cases in which I actually felt comfortable and secure (with older, and calmer and assertive women), most encounters followed the same pattern. I always put a lot of pressure on myself to perform, I was even calculating the time I had to visit them and I was masturbating in advance to last longer (stupid advice given by actual sex therapists too, wtf). Which thinking back at it, given the circumstances, is actually pretty backwards because I was also paying for it and trying to impress. Anyhow, I digress. With all the extra masturbation my sensitivity was very low but even with that, if i felt anxious (and I usually did), I would PE the first time. Sometimes ED. What gets even stupider is that I would either keep going for a bit or would switch condoms and keep going, desperate to impress, not because I felt like it or felt attraction.

I wasn’t feeling much the first round but the second was next to 0 feeling, almost painful and exhausting.

What motivated me to keep doing it was that they were getting pleasure and it was stroking my ego I was the one providing it (some were faking it but some weren’t and I was lucky to have been rather well endowed).

Fast forward to 25 yo, I got a girlfriend, stopped seeing escorts, but PMO didn’t stop. Was trying nofap and every time I stuck with it it helped me.

But I wasn’t getting that much pleasure with girlfriend either. I guess I’m a very good faker, a chameleon, just like I am in real life. Always have been.

Never had much sensitivity, probably because of masturbation. Stress, anxiety, depression being what usually triggered me to do it. It’s weird because i’ve been visiting /r/nofap for a long time, had read about it leading to ED, reduced sensitivity, etc but never thought it would apply in my case, which now, in retrospect appears to have applied perfectly in my case. Getting a blowjob never really meant much for me cause I wasn’t feeling much, the pleasure I was managing to derive from it was mostly psychologically. PiV the same, next to 0 sensation. The fact that I’ve always used condoms probably didn’t help either. It’s as if I had a huge blindspot.

I preferred PMO over actual sex I guess because in PMO I always get to control the pace and I don’t feel anxious. I always get to control the grip too. And I can’t feel anybody judging my performance. I can’t be scared of women like I am in real life. It’s just me, myself and I.

Another particularity is that I never came as good in sex as I did when PMO. Lower volume too. It was as if the handbrake was on when ejaculating. Only porn was gratifying. Only with porn I could go back at it in a couple of minutes. Sex no much so.

Thinking about it now, it almost feels natural to have chosen PMO over actual sex considering the basketcase of looniness I was and still am. Or maybe I was using PMO to unconsciously numb myself from actual relationships I was scared of and to control my PE and subsequent embarrassment i’ve carried about it for all this time. Who knows.

But on my latest streak PE was coming back with a vengeance ever since i’ve imposed very stict rules on what I was NOT going to do and I said “fuck it, what happens happens, if I’m a PEer, so be it”.

By strict rules I mean just doing what I was supposed to be doing, as opposed to what i was always doing – cheating one way or another. Always edging in some way. Either watching pics or gifs if I said I wasn’t going to watch porn (genius, right?), either rubbing my penis to the mattress or trousers if i said I wasn’t going to put my hand on it (except washing), either reading erotica as it meant I wasn’t watching pics or movies (some MENSA shit right here). You know, all the good addict stuff.

Interestingly enough just the other night I had a dream about a crab leaving it’s shell and being crushed by my father. I’ve always perceived my father as moody and domineering, sometimes malicious and intentionally embarrassing me always felt I was walking on eggshells around him, I hated him. The thing is the more i’ve gotten to understand and relate to my father in the recent years, I’ve come to understand him and his insecurities better, I’ve actually grown to like him and dare I say love him. I couldn’t hold much against him understanding that what he did was mostly unintentional and not malicious, it’s just what he thought was best or what he coulnd’t control himself (he had a rough childhood too). The more I understood and loved my father, which I so very much despised for a very long period of my life, the better I could understand and love myself. But I digress again.

Such insights, as this is not the first (had others about raven, a white animal and so on – each very meaningful at that time, but the first on this subject), meant leaps and bounds in relationship with understanding myself better. By far the strongest by magnitudes of order. I guess truly God works in mysterious ways. Jung used to call those synchronicities, Einstein said “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous”. So whatever your system of reference is, whether you’re a believer or not, i’m just saying i’m always baffled of such instances and the power they have. And these exclusively happened when I was in nofap streaks, btw.

So, PE is worse, but it’s for the first time in a long time I actually get to feel it instead of covering it and “correcting it” by masturbating (killing sensitivity) and getting emotionally detached when having sex. Basically being a robot. I could prevent PE with gf and go for a long time because I felt next to nothing.

I’m 29 now.

Anyway, that’s my story. Sorry for probably being incoherent, i’ve partly written it as an off-my-chest thing, partly as a contribution and appreciation to nofap as it had helped me a lot, party as a way to get more info in case others can relate. Also, English is not my 1st language and probably errors and passed through.

LINK – [insight/confession]Just realized I very rarely enjoyed sex

by WD40myjimmies