Two years – Advice: Be yourself

Despite my badge, I’ve been doing this for over two years. Here are my weird insights and validation of points. – I’d been watching porn for 6 years prior to starting nofap, and honestly [quitting porn] was the last thing I tried in a long, weird line of self help material. I tried everything from natural grounding, to focusing on the power of now, reading pickup books, and overhauling my life to be a productive guy. You know what I learned? I am not a spiritual person, I hate meditation, I don’t like focusing on the now, and I do not care about being this super interesting guy. The only thing that worked was not watching porn, and the way it worked was in reverse. 

It didn’t deviate me, it polished me. So first point:

Transform, do NOT deviate. Be who you are, with pride. For example, there’s been a lot of attacks on video games. If you like video games after doing no fap, then play faking video games. I personally cut back because I WANTED TO. Don’t start taking up a whole bunch of out of character pastimes and post about how interesting your life is now unless you truly like those things. Be real. There are way too many people on this earth to be trying to impress the ones who don’t like you for who you are. Everyone is beautiful. When you really love yourself, you won’t need anyone’s approval to be yourself, and that’s when you can really… Well you’ve all probably heard all this self esteem stuff. You’ll get there with no fap I believe. When you stop trying to satisfy your body, your body will satisfy itself. For example, this is gonna sound weird but Arnold was fckin right. I get mini orgasms from working out now, and they last for hours. Nuts blown? Zero. Fucks given? Zerooooooo.

Point number two I want to emphasize: this is all cumulative. The badge is just for show. Two years ago when I started doing this, I was somewhat miserable and afraid to be ambitious. I would look to relationships as a means to save myself. I always needed to be around friends, and I always thought some beautiful woman would save me from myself and make me a bad ass. I did become fucking awesome after like 56 days away from porn, and when I relapsed, I came down hard on myself thinking about how awesome I was and how good life was before I failed. Wanna know a secret? Each and every time I thought those thoughts, I went on to create even better times, even better versions of myself, and meet even better people. Relapse does not put you at day one in terms of progress. The good times I have now are way better than the good times I had before. What’s funny also is that now if I do relapse, it doesn’t change me… I’m more confident than I’ve been on any of my streaks before. Understand that not everyone needs the same time to see great results.

Next point is somewhat different from what I normally see: know what counts as a relapse for you. I had a bad habit of feeling guilty if I ever had any urges. I always attributed it to the fact that I watch girls generation a lot and that I made myself have those urges. It’s kinda obvious, but when you set a clear line of what you know to be a relapse, things get a whole lot less tricky psychologically. For example, I consider watching porn on two separate days within a month a relapse. Anything else in terms of watching porn is a slip. Defining relapse in terms of the sexual is hard because its a basic need according to Gary (paraphrasing), so expect urges and don’t get guilty and allow worse behavior over something that probably had little to no effect on you.

last but not least, do NOT get addicted to this cycle… This is not your greatest achievement, nor is it something to brag about IMO. If you get through this, try your best not to reset. If you get wings to fly away from the nest, don’t come back to the nest!(unless you relapse and need support or something) use the boat to get you across the river, but don’t carry the boat forever. Let it go. That was a big problem for me, after beating this the challenges got bigger and better and I freaked out. That’s when you realize that this is really just a way to open doors. You will still need the gall to go through said doors.

And for anyone who cares about the women side of things well. It gets better. I’ve had many times to experiment with this whole not watching porn thing making men more sexy to women. Funny things ill point out: each and every time I’ve slipped, my girlfriend and I broke up… The thing about watching porn is that it does warp your perception for a few days usually, and you’re not yourself.(seen those snickers commercials?) you become irrational and over emotional. This one girl really wanted my cock, like she would buy me things, give me hugs a lot and flirt like crazy knowing I had a gf. One slip with porn and she became cold and distant. She even became a bitch. I hate to say it but that’s how it’s been.

Don’t watch porn guys. Now, I’m talking to girls everywhere, flirting effortlessly, hanging out with my preferred type of girls, and I’m not needy towards my gf like I used to be on a previous streak. Now I really love her because I don’t need her. See how that works? Now, girls who used to ignore me mostly, are texting me more and wanting to hang out.

Placebo? You decide.