I’m a private, quiet person by nature, and I never felt the need to speak up. But now, roughly 500 days into my journey on NoFap, I wanted to write this-to say thank you to r/NoFap, to all the people who helped me along on my journey.
I didn’t think it was fair to leave behind the community of fapstronauts without acknowledging their part in changing my life.
My story isn’t all that different from most of you other Fapstronauts out there-I’m a 17 yr male who began masturbating habitually about three years ago, until one Summer I was averaging about 1.5 faps a day. That was too much.
I hated myself for continuing to masturbate day after day, hated myself for the time I wasted and risks of exposure I took, hated myself for the terrible guilty feelings and hazy “mind-fog” I put myself through every time I fapped. Every damn time.
Then I discovered NoFap, and my journey progressed pretty linearly from there- or at least it feels that way now. It’s difficult to remember exactly what I was going through-I feel so removed from those struggles now, a year and a half later- but I haven’t forgotten how trapped, how weak, how pathetic and powerless I felt. My success was by no means assured-it could have easily gone the other way, and I’m proud of myself for pushing through and doing the hard thing-quitting, once and for all. It took about a month of minor successes (2-10 days) before I finally broke through, and I haven’t fapped since. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the best thing I’ve ever done.
I don’t know if I got “superpowers”, but I felt more confident, energetic, motivated, and most importantly,happier. It changed my life, and I am proud of myself for finding the strength to leave fapping behind. As an aside, I don’t think masturbation itself is necessarily unhealthy-but porn definitely is. And when it’s all said and done, masturbation seemed pretty pathetic too-I’d rather just take the energy and put it towards being with a real girl, instead of closing my eyes and worshiping some figure out of my imagination.
NoFap gave me the strength to become a better athlete, the unthinkable courage to kiss a girl for the first time (she dumped me later, but that’s besides the point), and the mental peace to just be happy once again. But NoFap is not the end.
I didn’t drop my 5k time 3 minutes because I stopped beating off. I did it because I set a goal, because I wanted it, because I found the strength to do what I set myself to. I didn’t get my first kiss because I abstained from rubbing my churro. I got it because I had the self-confidence to make a move, to take a real risk for the first time in forever. Admittedly, NoFap taught me to stop worshiping girls as sex idols, and start paying attention to them as regular fucking people. But the will to ask her out, to admit my feelings for her, did not come from NoFap alone. It came from me, from the person I’ve become in the past few years. I am far from perfect, but I’m trying. And I’m getting better.
NoFap is, at it’s most basic, an expression of an idea. The idea that there is a difference between the right action, and the easy action. Short term pleasure is never worth the sacrifice of real joy. The idea that true happiness comes not from gratifying short-term desires, but from keeping keeping focused on the things you really want, the big things that you dream about. And while NoFap is a huge step in that direction, it is not the whole journey. You can be succeeding in NoFap and give in to doing the easy thing, the gratifying thing, in other aspects of your life. You don’t become this angel of willpower and success the second you quit polishing your knob. It’s up to you to change those other things-and its a hell of a lot tougher than you expect. Whether its harder than NoFap, though, I’m not sure. You have to find that out for yourself.
NoFap is not the end. But it’s a damn good place to start.
TL DR: Sorry it’s so long, but I had a lot to say. Thank you to every Fapstronaut out there. Keep moving forward in your journey.
LINK – A Thank You Letter
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