First things first: NoFap is one of the best things you can do. I’ve been addicted to porn ever since we got Internet in ’96 and to masturbation even longer than that. Like anyone with a commonly accepted addiction I thought it was normal.
I wanted it to be normal because who wants to be abnormal? There were times where it consumed most of my day and days were rare when I didn’t fap. I didn’t have a lot of friends and I had no job or plans for the future. There were times when I thought “Is this normal” or “Is this healthy”, which lead to Google searches like “Masturbation is healthy” and “Watching porn isn’t bad” stuff like that. Of course those searches would give me the right answers, the ones I wanted to hear.
The 1st 2 relationship I didn’t didn’t go smoothly, mainly because I had warped expectations. My first relationship only lasted a month, I only wanted to make out and she wanted to go places. Which doesn’t work and I got dumped. The 2nd girlfriend was a control freak and got jealous of tiniest things. She walked over me like she owned me and I didn’t care because she gave me sex. That was 2 years of hell and we broke up I was glad to return to my life of faping.
But then one day I met my current girlfriend. Someone I actually fell in love with and didn’t want to be with just only of the sex. Shes sweet, funny, smart and she looks great. She made me think “I want to marry here.” So after a few months of dating I asked her to marry me and she said “Yes.” Man I was the happiest guy alive.
But then my addiction struck again and I started to fap when she was away or when she was sleeping. I tried to use every single moment to feed my addiction. It made me forget that I loved her and was only thinking about “When is she going to leave, sleep, etc. so I can fap”. I had headache, was tired all the time and my mood was mostly grumpy. I had a feeling that I shouldn’t be with her anymore because she took my freedom to fap.
So one day, while randomly browsing reddit, I stumbled onto NoFap. It made me think of the times when I searched for clues that fapping is healthy and porn isn’t bad. It showed me what I unconscionably knew all along; I was addicted to porn and faping. So I thought “Let’s try this, how hard can it be?” Well the first try was harder than building a card castle in a hurricane. I managed 2 weeks and relapsed because of edging. After I relapsed I still had strong urges, it was driving me nuts.
Luckily someone posted this TedX talk on NoFap: Why I stopped watching porn: Ran Gavrieli at TEDxJaffa 2013 – This opened my eyes. I didn’t look at them as persons, they were things to me. It made me realize that I could only get it up for some extreme stuff. What I thought was normal was actually sick and twisted. It made me realize I was contributing to the degradation of women. It made me realize that someones daughter, sister, wife was being used as something less than a person. That gave me the strength to make it to a month.
But I made the biggest mistake of all addictions; I didn’t block off the way to satisfy my urges. So the first chance I had I began the same old ritual, finding the right porn video…. But when I relapsed it didn’t feel what I thought it would feel like. I didn’t feel anything and I thought “Is this it, did I relapse because of this”. I just couldn’t believe I threw away a months worth of fighting this addiction for nothing. At that point I knew that I needed to block all access to porn. The first few days were hard but I learned a lot on how to deal with urges thanks to this subreddit. Stop the urges from surfacing by doing something else. And here I am 90 days later.
So how do I feel now and what has changed? I feel more confident, it’s easier to talk with other people. I learned what my weaknesses are and I still work on them every day. I’ve become less lazy, and actually finish what I start. I want to do all kinds of exciting things and it seems like I’m swimming in a sea of possibilities and enjoying every minute of it. This might sound sappy but the most important thing of all is that I recaptured the love for my girlfriend, I even love her more than ever. And I’m excited again to get married to her in a few months.
This is only the beginning. 🙂
Some tips my fellow fapstronauts which helped me a lot: Don’t think about never faping again, but think about not faping today. You can deal with tomorrow when it comes. Get up and do something different, don’t keep yourself in the same cycle.
“Shake that rug from underneath you. Disruption makes things new again, it makes ideas fresh”
LINK – 90 days and heres on to 90 more.
by GrayValken
UPDATE
The biggest stumbling block and why I’m back at the start. 333 days down the toilet.
It was going all hunky-dory, I was over 332 days and there wasn’t a speck in the air. Nothing could go wrong, sure I had my downs and struggled with some huge urges which it seems I got passed.
Somewhere in my journey it crossed my mind that 333 would be a great achievement. I should celebrate that. But I’m so close to 1 year, I should make it passed that. But on day 333 some how the stars aligned and I mean the shitty kind. I tricked myself into searching for “It’s bad to not masturbate”, which gave a shit load of hits all agreeing with my search and then I noticed my day count and that was the straw that broke the camels back. “I relapsed…. It wasn’t to porn… So how could it be bad… I could do it once every 3 months… Yeah that would be OK…” But after half an hour I relapsed again (if you can call it that).
Some how it was all good. “Maybe I should do it once a month, that would be good” and after a few days “Maybe once a week, yeah that’s normal right” and then porn crept into my mind again. “Just go look at that one video, the one with you know who… It will be all good after that” So the old searching started again. “All good, just one time” “I’m only looking” and then I relapsed again…..
A whole house of cards, it was a beautiful house but so easily to take down. Maybe I placed some cards in the wrong place or wrong way and maybe I was too careless around it, but there is nothing left of it at the moment.
I’m back at 0 again, it’s time to pick up all the pieces and throw away the bad once. Because this time I will defeat it with no set end date in sight.
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