Alright, after struggling through the process of giving up porn for several years, I’m happy to say that the struggle has reached a resolution. Thinking upon how other peoples stories helped me have motivation to reach my goals, I figured I would add some of my story.
I somewhat started this lifestyle change 3 years ago and it grew more serious over time up until my last Porn session.
During the worst period I would watch several times per day and this would carry over to anxiety and lack of self-confidence socially. I was also in college and had never had real sex before. This further lowered my self-confidence.
The first time I was presented with the chance to have sex, I realized that all the years of watching porn had caused me to no longer become stimulated by real women. It was impossible for me to have an erection in a real life situation. I would say that this was the largest kick in the butt to get me serious about quitting porn. (However, on the positive side, having to deal with the shame of not being able to get an erection with a women forced me to face all my fears about getting intimate, as this was basically my worst case scenario. My confidence in intimate situations became much stronger because of the failure.)
I never felt quite right about watching porn. This added a guilt/weight over my shoulders that I was never able to rationalize and make go away.
Contributors to the reddit stream frequently mention ‘Superpowers’, and I always found that funny. However, what I can say is that since quitting porn, I have become more social, my social relationships have improved substantially, and this has led to a greater feeling of happiness in my life. This increased happiness in my life was capped off 2 weeks ago when I lost my virginity. After-effects of my years of porn use (7 or 8) are still lingering in the form of difficulty cumming during real sex and, for a while, the inability to reach a completely full erection. However, these side effects are more directly linked with the use my hand during masturbation than porn itself. I’ve found that the longer I abstain from masturbating altogether the more these symptoms improve.
My 2 pieces of advice to those still working through giving up porn: 1) Realize that you will likely have to fail a certain amount of times before succeeding, don’t dwell too much on the failure, but try to work on getting back on the horse quickly and preventing binge periods 2) I realize that not everyone will be happy about this one…but for me what helped me the most was praying. I have never considered myself religious, in the form of organized religions. But rather do believe that there must be a creator in general. For me, praying helped more than any other one thing in dealing with these issues. Not trying to convert anyone to anything, but that’s just how my experience went.
Also realize, if you have started a journey to give up porn. You’re already much farther along than many others.
LINK – Graduation
by NState
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