Merry Christmas, everybody! I really can’t believe I made it this far. I suppose it now becomes my duty to give you guys what I’ve learned from this experience:
1. Porn is a bigger problem than you think
Like a lot of guys, I got into NoFap because I wanted to get girls (more on that later). What I discovered, especially over the last few weeks, is that when you want an orgasm (and who doesn’t?) and your only way to do so is to actually talk to the people you meet out in the real world, you’re going to get, by sheer necessity, better at talking to people. Women, men, everybody. I’ve always had trouble being social and I considered myself an introvert. Now I’m not so sure anymore, because I crave social interaction in a way that I never used to. I think this is because I’ve stopped viewing conversations as transactions. It’s not about getting something out of someone else anymore. I’ve actually started finding mundane talk and hanging out with no real goal enjoyable.
2. Porn is not your only problem I went through a rough patch about a month ago and I started going in for counseling sessions. As a result of this, I started looking towards the root of the problem and of what started me fapping in the first place. I won’t go into too much detail here, as I’ve already written extensively on this point, but I think that identifying the root of the problem is important for anyone trying to quit pornography. What I discovered was that I had a lot of things in my past that were weighing me down that I’d been trying deal with by fapping instead of confronting them. By acknowledging them, I was able to start putting them to rest and to begin to move on. This gave me a greater feeling of passion and a healthy pride in myself that I never had. When I used to get up in the morning and look in the mirror, it was rare that I liked the guy I saw. Now, I won’t say I never think that, but it’s definitely a minority of time. For the most part, I’m happy with who am and who I’m working to become.
3. Sometimes things are terrible and that is okay I would compare excessive masturbation and porn consumption to walking around wearing a suit of armor. Sure, you’ve got protection from the bad things, but you’re also removed from the good things that surround you. Having this barrier removed makes us cognizant and more willing to participate in the good things, an effect some people refer to as superpowers. However, it also makes you vulnerable to stings and slights you didn’t feel before. This, I think, is one of the main hurdles that you have to get over. We’re used to having everything at a gray medium and, yeah, having to deal with a whole spectrum is jarring and even upsetting at first, but in the long-run, it’s definitely better. It forces you to actually deal with the things that are bothering you instead of just flooding your brain with dopamine until you forget.
4. There comes a time where you can’t just be not fapping Let me talk about girls for a second, since I said I would. I’m still single. I don’t feel cheated or let down by that fact, but it is still a fact. I think that guys who are in this for the girls, once they’ve started to get a bit of a streak going, really ought to consider that girls tend to be attracted to guys who have something going on. The reason why chronic masturbators tend to not have success with women, aside from the lack of genuine motivation I talked about earlier, is that so much of their time and energy goes into flogging the sausage that they don’t take time to devote to other, self-bettering hobbies. I, myself, will admit that for a large part of my reboot I spent more time not masturbating than I did actually doing anything else, if that makes sense. If you want to really reboot yourself, there must come a point where the focus shifts from what you’re not doing to what you are doing.
Which brings me to why I’m taking a break from this sub. I’m not going back to PMO. Honestly, though I obviously still get sexual urges, I find that these urges are not really linked to masturbation anymore. I’m triggered a lot more by memories of my past sexual encounters than I am by memories of the porn I’ve seen. I crave actual sex now, not masturbation. I do still get the urge to look at porn occasionally, but the urge to complete the cycle is pretty much gone. While not fapping has done a great deal for me, I recognize that I still have a ways to go before I’m the person I want to be. I feel like NoFap has gotten me to the baseline I need to move forward, but just not masturbating is not enough for me anymore. So, I’m going to take a break and try to move ahead. I’m going to try and concentrate on improving myself physically, which is another major barrier to happiness that I’ve had throughout my life. If I fall back into my old ways, then I’ll definitely be back here, and maybe I’ll pop back around now and again just to see what’s going on. But otherwise I think I need to concentrate on building upon the foundation I’ve laid.
TL;DR NoFap is great, but for me it’s the start of the journey. It’s time to take the next step.
LINK - My 90+ Day Report: What I’ve learned and why I’m taking a break from this sub
by bdh009
My SO and I have been together for five months now. We’re in a long-distance situation until at least the end of the summer. I love her very much and the separation has been hard on both of us. We talk pretty much constantly over facebook chat. Anyway, last night we had a serious conversation about our sex life and why I felt the need to do NoFap, which resulted in my finally putting into words what the issues are that I’m looking to address. So I thought I’d share my exact words with you guys. I’m not sure why, just seemed like something others might find interesting:
“I have a tendency to fixate on sex, to use it to escape my problems, or as a salve for when something else is bothering me. Makes it difficult for me to tell, when I’m turned on, whether I’m just having healthy sexual urges or just trying to get some pleasure to avoid or bounce back from something bad, the same way one might treat oneself to a nice meal after a hard day at work, except the thing I’m usually running from is either fear or loneliness. When I have a partner, in the past this has led to me eventually only interacting with her as an outlet for these tendencies, which sounds more cruel than it really was, but there’s no real other way to put it. When I’m alone, it manifests itself as a pretty frequent masturbation habit unless I’m on a NoFap kick.”
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