My story is pretty basic: got access to internet and internet porn at a fairly young age. Started masturbating at around 11 or 12. I never did it too regularly, never even thought it could be an addiction. I only got caught once, by my stepmother (I didn’t even live with my dad after they divorced, I was just visiting when it happened), she said it was common, everybody was doing it. And that was basically my view on masturbation. It’s healthy, you need release, it’s all right.
Then it came to the time I was trying to have sex for the first time. It was then that I noticed that I seem to be having some problems with getting and maintaining an erection. My girlfriend was understanding, and we were looking into every single reason what could be causing it. Weirdly enough, we didn’t find anything that I felt was the real reason, we could only determine that it had to be psychological, and we just agreed we’d keep trying and hoping to find a solution . A couple of weeks (or months?) later, she showed me an article, that was comparing porn with prostitution. Really, it made sense: both take advantage of women, both objectify women as just bodies that will cause you pleasure. It made sense. I felt upset, I was trying to protect porn. I thought it was healthy, it was natural, it had to be. For some reason, being a hypocrite is a big deal. I don’t like saying things and not keeping myself to it. I never thought I was taking advantage of women.
This was my first reaction. I felt upset, betrayed. I couldn’t believe that what I was doing was really that bad. Then from that article I got to some other ones, discussing negative effects of porn, and finally, to the TEDx talk that led me here. By that time, I realized that my ED could also be caused by this.
After staying up for hours reading YBOP, I deleted my stash of porn (Jesus it was over 20 gbytes. I felt ashamed when I was moving from my PC to my laptop, and had to copy it in 8 gig pieces because that’s how large my usb stick was…), and woved to start doing nofap.
I never thought at the beginning that it would be hard, but it was. The real urges came after the 2nd or 3rd day. Seeing pictures of girls on Facebook, running into nsfw posts on reddit, they all just made me want to leave it all to hell.
But making a promise to my girlfriend helped. I felt that I would not only make my situation worse, I would effectively lie to her. She was understanding, and helped me through most of it. By helping through, I meant talking about it. And I think that is important: you have to share it with someone. Don’t share it with too many people, that will give you a false feeling of accomplishment (as if you’d already done 90 days), but you have to share it with someone and talk about how you feel.
So yeah, three months have passed since that. I don’t know if I’m a better person now. I don’t even know if I’m a different person at all. I don’t have super powers. My ED is gone, having sex is no longer a source of frustration, there’s still an amount of PE I have to deal with, but I know I can fight it.
So even though I don’t really know what I should be feeling, what changes should have happened, I still believe this is a good thing. I don’t intend to watch porn or masturbate ever again. There’s the moral aspect of objectifying girls (the stories you can read about ex porn actresses…), and there’s the physical aspect of it, ED, and false sense of accomplishments and stuff. So those who are at the beginning of their journey: KEEP GOING. There’s really nothing to lose. You can only feel better after a while.
In the end, I’d like to address that post from the other day, that linked to that professor’s comment who was debunking the work of Gary Wilson:
He said how the two researchers who did researches in the topic were considered pariahs in the scientific community, and it is only their opinion, and other scientists of the field do not agree with it. I’d really like that professor to read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. As far as I know, this is the basis in every college, in every field of science. Every paradigm change starts with two or three researchers going in a different direction, and stating things that nobody agrees with it.
I’d like to thank you all. Having this community for the last 90 days meant a lot, even if I rarely commented, and never posted. It felt good reading about all the stories, all the ideas. So I guess I’ll be answering questions if you have any.
LINK – Now that I’ve come 90 days, I feel it’s time to share my story.
by warrenseth
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