I’ve been a lurker for the past 5 months and thought I would contribute since things seemed to have worked out for me, at least so far, and reading success stories played a huge role in getting me through some pretty tough times.
I’ll give you some background but not too many details to preserve my anonymity. I’m 37, was raised an Evangelical Christian with all the baggage that comes with it, lost my virginity in my mid-20s with a girl that was awesome, but I knew I probably wasn’t going to marry. We dated for year and had amazing sexual chemistry, no issues at all with PIED or DE (had never even heard of such things), only had sex with a condom, couldn’t even imagine how quickly I would come if I didn’t, and things were fine.
I figured I lost my virginity late, but no worries, I could play catch up. Well, things didn’t quite work out that way, had lots of issues with guilt from the break up, struggles with my faith, not being great with girls, a lot of the stuff posted by other folks. In any event, porn was a steady companion and in the Christian world, even though porn is bad, premarital sex is worse, so I figured things were still net positive right?
Well, fast forward 10 years later, I had sex with two women in that span, both were one night stands (one was probably a prostitute), was able to penetrate, but couldn’t finish with either, messed around with a few other women but with mixed results and I always had excuses (nerves, alcohol, etc.).
Anyway, I finally get in a long term relationship with someone I love and want to marry, I’m able to get off with oral sex and manually (with difficulty), but when it came to PIV, the first time, I couldn’t feel anything and then things basically came off the wheels after that, i.e., pretty severe PIED every time thereafter.
Of course I freak out, sought out help from the Internet and came across the entire nofap universe. All these stories were so similar to my situation. Although I didn’t have the Internet growing up or through college even (I went to college right as it was being rolled out, thank God), for at least the past 10 years I was PMOing heavily, some weeks every single day, 1-3 hour long sessions, multiple tabs, increasingly bizarre and shocking stuff, and all the while, not really dating much and virtually no sexual activity with real women. Reading the nofap stuff and the stories on this website and others was like having my mind blown, I could relate with so many of the stories I was reading.
Not to brag, but I’m a pretty successful guy, from the outside, I have everything together, but PIED devastated me. I felt completely emasculated, felt like a loser, thought maybe I was gay, felt betrayed by God, you guys know the drill. The one thing that I do have going for me though, is that once I make up my mind to do something, I’m committed 100%, I don’t half-ass anything. Literally the day I read this stuff, I stopped all PMO. Just a few days in, I experienced the infamous flatline, on schedule and exactly as everyone described, shrinking lifeless penis, zero libido, lethargy, depression. But it totally helped to know what it was and that it would eventually pass. And it did, after about 2 months.
So it has been almost 5 months now since I have seen any Internet porn. Over this period of time, I have masturbated to orgasm a total of 3 times, with lube and as light a touch as I could. I also tried to reboot with my partner, which was probably the most painful part. Initially, she was totally confused, but after talking it through with her, she was very understanding. So we just tried and tried and kept trying, usually about once a week, sometimes I was so dejected that we didn’t try again for several weeks. I would always make sure to service her, but after 3 months, I still didn’t exhibit any improvement at all and inside I was really close to losing it.
But here’s the thing, about a month and a half ago, things just started working again. I was able to get an erection pretty much every time we tried, which was averaging once a week. But now my problem was DE. Once in a while, things would work, but only in a specific position, and still very rarely. Finally, I bought the Man1 Man Oil, I can’t tell if it was that or just more time passing, but the past 4 times we had sex, I was able to maintain my erection and come with no issues. In fact, the last time was after half a bottle of wine and two beers, and traditionally, any alcohol in my system would cause ED or at least DE. I wasn’t able to get off even watching porn after having a few drinks. That was a milestone in my book.
So that’s where I’m at, I wanted to post this so that people could read it and know that there is hope if you stick to the program, and at a minimum, you really need to wait at least 3-6 months. Even if you think you aren’t making any progress, the reality is, your brain is making changes, and one day, things are are just going to work.
Now, I’ll just caveat this with saying that I think there probably are folks on here that need special help, either medical or psychological, and of course you should get checked out for those kinds of things. But if you are otherwise physically healthy, relatively social, consume a lot of porn and happen to have PIED or DE, well, it’s a no brainer right. Good luck to everyone, I’ll hang around for a bit in case anyone has any questions for me.
LINK - PIED and DE Cured (hopefully) After 5 Months.
by Mr. Power
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