What if I masturbate (edge) or watch porn without orgasm?

"Remember the first step is hard, but the second is actually the hardest."

For some men attempting the rebooting process, they believe that as long as they avoid ejaculation, it's not a relapse. Three common practices evolve from this faulty logic:

1) Watching porn without masturbating

2) Masturbating without ejaculating (sometimes called edging)

3) Masturbating while viewing porn, but not ejaculating (edging)

If you are still justifying watching porn, please understand that porn use is the addiction. Internet porn is the the stimulus that alters the brain, and in some users causes sexual dysfunction.

If you have porn-induced ED, really get that ejaculation did not cause your erectile dysfunction - porn use did.

If you sought out and watched porn, then you have repeated your addictive behavior. Don't beat yourself up for watching porn. Relapse is common with all addictions. You are not back to square one. All your hard earned gains and positive rewiring are not lost. Learn from the episode and get back on the no-porn horse.

Advice from two guys:

I learned many things during my relapses, such as even a small, minor edge is dangerous...not on that day, but the next day the urge is slightly stronger and by the 3rd day unbearable. So for now no touching myself. I am also now more in control of my fantasies that were getting me back into edging. I now switch thoughts from those persons as soon as they come into my head.

[Advice from one forum guy to another] No matter how innocent the image may be, in my book looking at vids/pics and then quickly turning them off is given a rating of 'high risk for relapse.' The acts of searching, looking and touching lead to strong urges for the ultimate rush which develops itself into a form of tunnel vision. This tunnel vision, in my experience, is characterized by a complete shut down of the 'new/logical brain.' The 'old/primitive brain' assumes dominance. Goals, consequences, and reasoning just aren't there, and its extremely difficult to not give in. Do yourself a favor and get away from your computer and occupy your time with something productive. Don't tease the lion, or it'll get you one of these days :-).

Your addict brain wants porn, so it will rationalize all sorts of scenarios, and watching without orgasming is one of its favorites. Since ejaculation is not the addiction, or the cause of ED, rationalizing porn use is truly bizarre. (Read "What if I recondition my brain by watching porn without masturbating?" below this page.) Your post-viewing neurochemical hangover may not be as severe as when you orgasm, but watching porn weakens your self-control brain pathways and strengthens your addiction neural pathways—wiring your arousal ever more tightly to Internet porn's extreme stimulation.

Another practice common to porn users is edging while viewing porn. This is masturbating up to the edge of orgasm, then stopping to cool things down, then revving up again. This is probably worse than simply having an orgasm and getting it over with. Edging keeps the dopamine levels near their peak, while at the same time reinforcing the addiction pathways associated with porn. Edging without porn, or an orgasm, is not a solution, because it keeps dopamine (and thus cravings for more) very high. Edging without orgasm leads to feelings of dissatisfaction, strong urges, and usually ends in a porn binge.

No porn addict successfully leaves this addiction behind by mixing in edging or 'just watching.' Here are 4 guy's discoveries:

• Important: Edging is not the right way to recover. Be careful with that! It's not only playing with matches. Just the touching and dopamine rushes to your brain are enough to slow recovery. I didn't quite get this at first, so now I've added a no edging counter - and it's already 4 days. Generally, I feel much calmer, much quieter on the inside. My morning erections are back. I feel slight discomfort - blue-balls - but it goes away quickly. What does help when urges arise is touching myself in a different, non-erotic way, cold showers or just dripping water softly on my penis and balls, breathing, and distraction (doing something different).

• [For a couple of weeks prior, this man was complaining that he was compulsively scratching his genitals.] Haven't touched my penis in a while. 5 weeks no M, 1 week no P. I feel soo mellow. In a good way. My OCD is gone. I think I had restless leg syndrome. I've stopped moving my legs all the time as well. I was unknowingly doing it to touch my penis. I am so chill right now. Everything is slowing down for me, and I'm more calm when I talk to people. I am sooooooooooooooooooo relaxed, and I don't need a substance to do it. Man, I'm on top of the world. I WANNA CALL my x-girl and tell her I still love her...haha...I do. We broke up cuz of porn. My passion is gone when I'm on it, but when I'm not, I am on top of the world. I'm still fearing relapse, cuz I just do. Always will. But this rebooting experience is finally paying off.

• Last night I experimented by watching porn without touching myself (I'm rebooting right now). I felt as though I was in control. I was competently doing other tasks while watching, which is impossible for me when I'm working up to orgasm. However, this morning I feel some brain fog (my indicator that my brain chemistry is not right). It's not as bad as when I'd MO to P, but it's there. And I expect the next few days (at least) to be hell, as I have these fresh images to deal with. I will not be doing this again. For what it's worth.

• I tried an experiment a couple months ago wherein I watched a lot of porn and edged without orgasm for 21 days. When I finally released it was without porn. For the next couple weeks I had TERRIBLE withdrawal. So there's a lesson for you.

Remember, today's porn isn't just addictive because it leads to the pay-off of orgasm; it's addictive because users can employ it to raise dopamine continuously in their brain's primitive reward circuitry. In fact, we know of one man who developed ED by just watching Internet porn. His schedule was to watch porn every day, but to masturbate only only once every ten days.

Years of heavy porn use can numb the brain so that users can no longer have intercourse with real partners —a result known as "copulatory impotence." This result calls to mind the earliest experiments on the reward circuitry of the brain in which animals would stimulate themselves over and over, braving electrical shocks and ignoring willing mates. A chronic masturbator explains:

I find that the sexual gratification of masturbation aided by pornography far exceeds pleasures of copulation (or other practices) with a partner. I have reason to believe that this conclusion is widespread among the sub-population of self-identified chronic masturbators. I am an active participant in several masturbation-focused Internet groups, and moderator of one. Masturbators frequently report a strong preference for masturbatory practices, even when continuing in an active relationship with sexual partners. Many go so far as to abandon partner sex even while the partner remains available and willing.

Far from just “rubbing off,” chronic masturbators generally engage in a practice we call “edging”: bringing ourselves to the brink of orgasm repeatedly, without ejaculation. We can sustain extremely high levels of sexual arousal literally for hours, and freely explore our most intimate and personal sexual fantasies. These gratifications might be possible with a highly compatible and supportive partner, but I think most partners either tire of the activity or diverge into their own sexual fantasies long before the chronic masturbator is fully satiated. So edging-masturbation provides arousal difficult to obtain otherwise. The potentially addictive nature of edging should be obvious. It is highly significant to hear chronic masturbators openly acknowledge their addiction and at the same time express willingness and desire to become “more addicted.”

Edging combines naturally high dopamine levels of masturbation with the dopamine raising abilities of 1) exciting, novel visuals 2) searching the net for porn 3) finding surprising or shocking genres, 4) multiple tabs. Unlike real sex, edging can keep dopamine levels high for hours, and train the brain to require constant visual stimulation, and rapid fire novelty.

Long-term, you're likely to find more satisfaction from an occasional ejaculation without porn or porn fantasy, than you are from looking at porn, with or without climax. Paradoxically, this is because Internet porn is hyperstimulating. It is like nothing your ancestors ever confronted (unless they owned a very kinky harem). Because excessive dopamine can numb the brain, the stimulation of Internet porn can increase dissatisfaction—even though "looking" always gives you a rush. The evolutionary reason for this seemingly paradoxical result is explained in Has Evolution Trained Our Brains to Gorge on Food and Sex?

Worse yet, your brain did not evolve to cope with unrestricted access to so much neurochemical stimulation (spurts of dopamine). It still evaluates the worth of stimuli based on which release the most dopamine—rather than on which actually contribute to your well-being. In the past, "exciting" things tended to benefit you—or at least your genes. No longer. Your brain still reacts to synthetic stimuli as if they were high-value stimuli.

Orgasm itself can bring on a desire to binge too, especially if it's really intense. In contrast, a gentle, sensual session of self-love doesn't seem to kick off the same cycle (and is good practice for your love life ;-) ).

Be aware that, at first, you may not find a single climax without porn satisfying, or find masturbation without porn stimulating enough to climax. This is because your brain is not feeling rewards normally. More than one recovering user has commented that once he stopped viewing porn, the urge to masturbate eased a lot, because "without porn, masturbation was not that interesting." No need to force yourself to climax. Be patient.

The good news is that a month or two without any porn will make sex of any kind much more satisfying.