I’m 38 have been looking at internet photography since 1999. Since 2005 I got into chatrooms, it was more intense for me….I was spending longer on the computer. I noticed at this time a slight reduction in hardness, did not think too much of it.
However my libido slowly edged off. I do remember in 2008 if my girlfriend was in her underwear I would chase her around my apartment – by 2009, our relationship had problems and I was watching hardcore porn, if she approached me she just looked unattractive to me. I ended the relationship….a really nice girl who wanted to get married, and I wanted to be on my own. I then wasted whole weekends looking at porn or chatting on dating websites with Russian girls (!)…….
Since I was a teen I was also a prone mastabator, I did not know this was bad.
So since 2010 I have met three nice girls….and had ED with all of them…I have since stayed away from relationships, but I am 38 and feel like I want to settle down, but this problem – well its more serious than I thought. Now I could not get an erection if I wanted to. However I also have no interest in looking at porn or mastabation… so I guess I am flatlining…
Positive news, I feel more alert, more cheerful, I’m more productive, and I feel like I am more ‘myself’, more outgoing… Down side, it has been 14 days, before if I did not mastabate for two days I would simply have to afterwards, well now my body just feels tired, empty and I feel in some paranoid way that I have given myself serious damage. I do wonder whether I have damaged myself with nerve damage from prone mastabation or have I just blown something in my brain from watching harder and harder porn.
I did out of curiousity see a escort….I did get 70% hard…but when she suggested we have sex my erection totally left me and there was no way (and I could feel this) that I would ever be able to get an erection. Something has clicked in my brain that I just want to do this now… alongside this I was binge drinking and put weight on… so I have also cut out the booze during my reboot….
As I write this out, it all just seems like a mess…. and no one would guess it of me, I am the most responsible, hard working guy, a business owner and someone people go to, to ask advice. It was like porn was just a way of switching off and avoiding my responsibilities. Final thought I am tempted to apologise to the girl I split with back in 2009, I know it was the porn which made me so disinterested in her…..
My target, to avoid porn totally, I have no interest in it now, something has clicked in my mind. I also want to avoid mastabation for the rest of this month and see how I feel. This is such an important issue, I see a psychologist but I don’t feel I can tell her about this, so that is why I am here.
Good luck to you all.
by hotspur
Link to post – Took a year in total but got there…
May 14, 2013
I started my journal in April 2012... after numerous attempts to deal with my porn addiction all of which had failed, I carried out some internet research and found this site. It was a big relief. Once I kept a journal I managed to keep this going, there were ups and downs… but essentially what I suffered from consisted off:
38 years old, last relationship was when I was 35, relationship ended largely due to my losing all my libido after intense (hours and hours) use of porn.
Since then had huge nostalgia and sadness for lost relationship – drinking very heavily. Had various relationships that lasted a very short time, I drifted away because I just did not find real sex a particularly erotic experience.
Tested myself by hiring an escort…nothing… I was left cold. With all of these experiences I had ED, and DE at different times…after the ED I did not want to go near a girl again. Felt depressed, and had little or no concentration, old hobbies like reading novels were not viable anymore. Felt very depressed about my future – and depressed that I could not stop watching porn by willpower alone
Benefits of reboot
- felt like I had more time, mind felt clearer, started exercising almost daily
- complexion improved, found it easier to look people in the eye, everyone began commenting on the fact that I was “looking well”
- This could be in my head! I felt I started to get smiles from girls I didn’t know in coffee shops and so in, I felt more attractive (strange this one but this really did happen)
- regained morning wood
So where am I now?
I have a beautiful girlfriend, and she has moved in with me now, we’re really happy – but all accounts she is ‘out of my league’ but I feel like I have this superpower that marks me out from 90% of men, I don’t look at porn!
I look better…I’m more productive
But…… this is all true, but we have to remember that life is superficial, hard and once we get this out of our life the onus is on us to make a new life for ourselves. This takes hard work and effort, but at least we can meet life head on being the best version of ourselves. Porn for me was a medication to provide release from stress, depression and anxiety… I see now it was actually making all of those problems much worse.
I have recovered physical function, and to some extent broke out of porn addiction – BUT I still face the challenge that my mentality is highly sensitive to fantasy, and if I peek at porn, I will binge… I hope to slowly get this toxin out of me. I just write that so that people understand the addiction is still there, it is just you are not in the thrall of it.
I thought maybe it might be useful for me to leave a checklist of what worked for me
- I made google chrome my only browser and downloaded extensions to block porn, yes I can get round them but they are a extra barrier
- I started leaving my laptop at work and stopped using the internet as my hobby – when I was home surfing the net I would eventually get bored and go to first a dating site, and then a porn site.
- I found this reduced stress and I had more time to go to the gym, read and socialise in the evenings
- I started doing light exercise 5 times a week, sometimes just 20-25mins but I lost weight – best was swimming… often after swimming the next morning I started to wake up with erections
- (I might as well tell everything), I started using a hand cream on my penis, (not cheap stuff!), I found this improved sensitivity
- I started drinking pomegrante juice (pure) expensive but really did work
- A trip to a urologist (you see I thought it might be my prostate when I initially had ED) meant they told me I was fine and I had to really reduce caffeine and drink more water
- ate more fruit and vegetables.. there was no doubt this had benefits for me in terms of weight loss and stronger erections
- I took various vitamin supplements like cod liver oil and so on, a good one was pumpkin seed oil
The main thing is you keep trying to beat this and keep giving in is to remove internet access from the home… and this broke my dependency on spending time on the internet to kill time. Do this, keep a journal, and if you can get rid of stress by mild exercise I think you can beat this… all the best, Hotspur
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