I’ve been doing NoFap off and on, with and without the reddit community, for a few years, and this is what I think about it. All the positivity in this forum is great and I don’t in any way want to shit on it. That said this is my honest opinion of life without fapping:
Bads:
1. I spend so much more time and energy on NoFap than I do on porn. Thinking about and controlling an urge is so much more work than just giving in to it. And at least for me, once I fap, I’m done, I can move on and do other stuff. But trying to work and having my dick say “hey there” constantly is really much more distracting than porn ever was. I just don’t relate to the people who say they work harder/are more focused when not fapping. If anything, fapping keeps me isolated from a real world social life, and that makes me very productive! On balance that’s not worth the cost of being isolated, but it is a cost itself.
2. Relatedly, I feel desperate for real life relationships when I’m not watching porn. Of course again that’s not all horrible–real relationships are actually fulfilling and worth it in the long run. But I feel dependent on attention from girls in a way not totally unlike how I feel dependent on porn. You can say you should “do it for yourself,” but at the end of the day isolation and lack of motivation to form relationships were the problems I ran into with porn, and it’s hard for me to frame that as anything other than “doing it for others’ approval.” No one is completely independent; we all need other people. But it kind of erodes the feeling of autonomy/self-actualization/whatever that controlling yourself brings when ultimately the self-control is so that other people will like you.
Goods:
1. I am so much more confident around girls. When I’m watching porn, I can’t even look girls in the eye. Just girls walking down the street–I would completely avoid even looking at them. This isn’t something I even noticed until I stopped watching porn altogether, and I started to realize that I’m very interested in the girls around me. I haven’t worked up the courage to ask anyone out yet, but I at least kind of visualize it when I see a girl I’m really attracted to it. When I’m watching porn, I don’t even want to think about real relationships because of the shame. So this is a huge benefit.
2. You feel good about yourself for having the strength to overcome a passing desire. Even if I’m not sure about the ‘virtuous cycle’ reasoning that overcoming one bad habit means everything else falls into place (rather than draining willpower that you could use to achieve other goals), you always have to appreciate the moment of achievement when you made it through a period of really wanting to fap.
3. Another big problem I ran into with porn was desensitization: watching more and more extreme stuff to get the same level of arousal. Overcoming this is enormous, because that’s a downward spiral I don’t want to go down. The kind of stuff I was into (hardcore femdom) just doesn’t seem appealing to me at all now, and I know it’s because I’ve made a conscious effort to stop the porn.
LINK – An honest assessment of life without fapping
by ikambo
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