(Disclaimer – text may be a little bit NSFW/tmi-for-some in places) 100+ days ago, reading reports from other NoFappers about the progress they’d made really helped me find my footing, so I’m sharing this to hopefully give something back to the community for those who are just starting out now. I’ve been absent from NoFap for quite some time, quite honestly because life has been going so well for me right now,
and NoFap has just become a part of my everyday life. When I started out, I needed to check in here every day because every little thing that happened to me became some some of progress/detriment. And I think that’s important. So if you are starting out, do make sure that you share a lot on here. The communities, both here and over at r/pornfree, are fantastic at listening and sharing good advice.
NoFap for me & observations
So anyway, the point of my post. An extremely brief history of how I got to here was that I’d been a heavy porn user since I was at least 13 (I’m 23 now). I’d had pretty successful relationships during my teen years but from about 20 onwards I just became increasingly apathetic towards human contact. This culminated earlier this year when I went on a date with possibly the hottest guy I’d ever met. We went back to his, and I suffered from just complete and utter ED. Nothing stirred down there. It was humiliating; embarrassing and a really low point in my life. I had to do something about this.
After about a month of trying different things thinking I just had low libido (ridiculous, looking back), I discovered NoFap. The guy who I’d suffered ED with was – surprisingly – still interested in me, so I decided to give it a try.
Initially things were difficult. I broke a few early streaks by masturbating just to memories of porn, but managed to completely avoid porn for the duration of my attempts. For the first 40 or so days I kept a pretty detailed chronology of events which I won’t replicate here, but some of the more interesting things I noticed include:
- I had morning wood throughout my NoFap run (aside from flatlines) – right from when I was beginning and suffering from PIED through to nowardays when it’s gone. I’m not really sure it’s related to anything, but it’s certainly not a bad sign.
- During the hardmode section of my journey, wet dreams were pretty consistently 14 days apart. I got pretty bad aching pains in my balls at various points before the wet dreams too, which were fairly uncomfortable but not unbearably so.
- Flatline for me occurred on day 28 and lasted for a mere 4 days which ended with a wet dream. Initially I wondered whether this was too short a period for flatline (since I figured I needed a long one for my brain to heal), but it seemed to do the trick).
After the first 45 days of complete hardmode (i.e. no touching whatsoever); I went onto easymode where I begun hooking up with the guy who I’d suffered ED with and allowing him to get me off. Difference was like night and day – I didn’t actually have any major problems, which I found both surprising and incredibly pleasing. I continued on easy mode for the remaining 45 days until I reached 90 (i.e. no solo touching; but do allow it with someone else).
The one issue I did have, however, was maintaining myself. I was able to get it up like I hadn’t been able to in the past, but I would often “lose” it without stimulation. However, this is something that’s just been slowly improving more and more as I’ve gone on NoFap. It still isn’t “fixed” even now, but each day I go further it seems to be getting better. This week with my partner was much better than last week; which in turn was better than the week before that. Perhaps this is the part of the process that takes a lot more than 90 days.
Advice
I don’t have a lot of great advice to share honestly, other than the obvious which gets said around here a lot:
- Stopping porn should be your top priority. Perhaps the wrong place to be shouting the praises of r/pornfree, but I truly believe that it’s the porn which causes the biggest problems with ED, rather than masturbation. Cutting out the porn should be your main goal; doing it alongside NoFap being my preferable way of doing things.
- You have to want this; and to want it, you have to know why you’re doing this. Look at the information on YBOP as often as you can, because that’d often shock me into thinking “I need to get out of this cycle”. Remind yourself of why you started this in the first place.
- Keep a diary during the early days and post as much as you want on NoFap/PornFree. Writing down your progress is great and each step you take will make you realise how far you’ve come. The communities here are fantastic as support and I know I wouldn’t have made it through the early days without them.
- Figure out your triggers and stay away from them. Mine was days when I’m not in Uni/Work and I’d wake up late and spend the morning on the computer. I replaced this with doing other things.
- Start some physical activity. Aside from the health benefits which are incredible; physical activity made me feel more productive afterwards and less likely to masturbate. It also puts me in a good mood which increased my drive to want to succeed with this challenge. And it’s a great thing to do to pass the time if you’re feeling particularly tempted.
- Be harsh on yourself if you mess up, but don’t kick yourself so much when you’re down that you turn to fapping for relief. You need to be strict so that when you mess up, you realise it’s serious; but don’t go so far that you’re beating yourself up over it.
Signing off
I realise this is a massive wall of text that’s probably far too hard to digest (I tried breaking it up into paragraphs for that very reason :P), but even if just one person fleeting reading it gets some use out of it then I suppose it did its job. This may be my final chance to substantially contribute a thread about my own progress to NoFap, so I needed to make it a good one.
I’m incredibly grateful about what NoFap managed to do for me. I won’t hyperbolize it to say that I have gained superpowers and it turned my life around; but I also cannot deny that it has made me a completely different person who I am much, much happier with now.
Worrying about ED is now a thing of the past, and as my title says – this has lead to a healthy relationship which is something I can’t say I’ve had for a very long time (if ever, possibly). Ironically with the very guy who made me realise I had a massive problem in the first place. I don’t think I could’ve reached this stage while PMO’ing as I just wouldn’t have had the confidence for the sexual part of the relationship; nor the interest for the emotional part.
I’m also more productive, healthier and I daresay happier. None of them a direct result of not fapping, but all consequences of a change of lifestyle from beginning this.
If you’re on this subreddit (or reading this line), you can do this. It’ll have ups and downs but it’ll truly be worth it in the end.
LINK – 90 day report (and a bit of a life story) – from PIED to the best relationship of my life.
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