So here’s my 120 day report. I’m going to try and make this post helpful and give my advice for tackling no fap. But first, I’ll give you my backstory and reasons for no fap. I’m not very good at articulating myself so sling me your questions and I’ll answer them the best I can. I also need to interject that from 120 days no fap, I had the first wet dream of my life last night… it was a little exciting.
Backstory
I began fapping before I was 10 and fapped regularly to porn from the age of 12 onwards. I got my first girlfriend at 16 and had ED problems from the get go. It took about 8 different attempts until one day when I was lucky enough to get it up and have sex for the first time. The good thing is that after I had sex, I didn’t have any problem getting it up with that girlfriend again. I continued my porn usage while I was with her and all was well.
When it came to the next girlfriend however, I had the exact same problem. It took ages. And then the next sexual partner, and the next girlfriend, and the next casual girl etc. etc. To this day I haven’t encountered anybody with the same problem. I have ED at the start, but after I’ve been able to have sex with the person then it all seems to be fine. It takes me ages though and definitely doesn’t happen on the first night. Generally the first time I’m having sex with someone too I’m not horny at all and am not getting that endorphin rush that I’d otherwise get with porn. So far I’ve had about 10 sexual partners – I’m 23.
When I was with my last girlfriend of 2 years though, that’s when things really ramped up. My really attractive girlfriend had some big issues of her own, and even though I could get hard for her at the drop of a hat, we didn’t have sex once in 2 years (why is another irrelevant story that I won’t go into here). I was so sexually frustrated that I abused porn every day, even if I wasn’t horny and wasn’t hard.
Towards the end of our relationship we decided I needed to start sleeping with people for the health of our relationship, so I joined tinder and met with a few people. For each of these people I took either Cialis or Viagra and still had problems and couldn’t get it up for them.
I still see some of these people, even though I’m doing no fap as my entire reason for doing no fap is to rewire myself to natural, physical women.
I hate this problem so much because it prevents me from having any sort of casual relationship with anyone. It’s like, I can be horny before going to meet someone but as soon as I’m in their company, my libido falls out of the sky dead and I’m not interested in the slightest. I can feel that all of this porn addiction has rewired my brain completely off women. But when I managed to have sex with someone and form an emotional relationship, my brain fortunately seems to wire itself just to them… It’s weird. I feel like my emotional connection to the person also makes things a easier. So, I found no fap and started the challenge.
Advice
If you need to rewire your brain or if you’re having troubles with motivation and depression, I cannot recommend no fap enough. My first bit of advice is this: even if you’re unconvinced that fapping is the definite cause of your problems, do nofap anyway. Why? Because even if it’s not the cause of your issue, not fapping will still allow you to eliminate fapping if it’s not the problem plus it will also give you clarity of mind and free you from distraction to explore your problem. You won’t know what the problem is either way until you’ve done no fap. So, you don’t have any excuse not to do the challenge!
As I’ve read in other posts before, the aim of nofap is to make it to the end of the day. Just get to the next day. Baby steps. And after a while you’ll be a nofap king. I promise you. If you’re heavily addicted to porn like I am, you’ll find it especially difficult in the first couple of weeks. That’s where my second advice comes in:
Addiction is a spiralling process. If you want to beat the addiction, you have to get really familiar with what causes you to snowball and what situations cause you to relapse. After my first 1 month streak, I felt good until one day I relapsed bad… The next few days I was really depressed. It was horrible. My self-worth went out the window and I was miserable indoors. I knew that, while I loved PMOing, I didn’t want to feel like that ever again after fapping.
I found that my biggest problem was that I would snowball. I actually missed porn, so after a week I would take a peek telling myself just to satisfy that urge of missing porn. But then it would snowball over about 10 minutes until I was so close that my conscience would kick in and go “agh fuck it, you’re already this close you may as well”. Once you start snowballing, chances are you’ve already lost. You need to readjust your thinking, remember that you’re likely to lose if you entertain the thoughts of looking at porn. But also don’t adjust you’re thinking so that you think you’ve lost if you start snowballing – because if you have this mentality then you won’t try and fight the urges, you’ll just conclude that you lost by looking at porn. You won’t hold yourself back from fapping if a trigger sets you off.
My third piece of advice is stay busy. I was lucky enough to have exams in the first month of my no fap so i was way to stressed and tired when I went to bed each night. But I know from a fact, it’s being alone in a room with a computer for a while that can really set you off. You need to work out a plan for that first month that’ll keep you busy and see you through. I imagine different things will work for different people but maybe try doing all your study at uni or going to the gym at night. I found that if I kept myself busy (with say gym) right up until bedtime, that the thought wouldn’t cross my mind. Stay out of the house during the day if possible – or stick close to other people.
The 4th piece of advice is something I majorly struggled with and only know from my experience of nofap – I didn’t read about this beforehand, but I’m sure many NoFappers have talked about it. The urge for the endorphin rush won’t stick around forever… The biggest thing I struggled with was that I loved PMO’ing to porn so much that it affected my dedication to NoFap. Every time I declared I wouldn’t fap again, I felt like I was majorly missing out. That feeling and that rush is something I loved and didn’t want to give up. As I perservered through the first few weeks of nofap, I kept longing for that feeling again and was worried that if I was successful with nofap, I would be missing out on the best thing ever. The truth is though, that this is temporary. After 6 weeks, these urges and feelings of missing out on fapping to porn disappeared – these feelings are synthetic, they are temporary. If you can somehow think it through and convince yourself that you won’t have feelings of missing out in porn in a couple of months, it’ll make your nofap a lot easier. It’s just like when you break up with your girlfriend – you feel hurt and miss the person so much, but you’ve just got to pull yourself out of bed each day knowing that these feelings of needing the person will disappear… even though it doesn’t feel like it at that point in time.
5th piece of advice: don’t stress about the flatline thing. I felt flatline effects right up to 90 days and still feel them, but the last month I can definitely feel that natural horniness getting better… the fact that I had my first wet dream last night is testament to that. So yeah, don’t worry your mind about the flatline thing, it’s not important and it’ll pass. Plus, if you worry about it you’ll use it as an excuse to convince yourself to relapse with, which leads me to my next advice.
6th: Eliminate as many excuses/arguments for you to fap as possible. That means, when your head is clear, address all the real reasons that you might find for needing to tap. e.g. you should fap to test flatline, you should fap because your week has been the worst of your life etc. Address any reasons you have for fapping and make sure you convince yourself why the reasons are wrong. The reason I say this is because when you’re addicted and close to relapsing, in that moment of conflict your brain will look for any excuse to convince you to relapse and it doesn’t have to be a good reason. if you can’t find an excuse, it’ll make aborting the situation so much easier. The big one is to convince yourself of the fact that you’ve only completely lost when you ejaculate. You don’t want to get to the point of edging, but if you do you definitely don’t want your brain telling you that “you’ve come this far so just go through with it, it’ll feel great”.
7th and final advice for now: one you’ve gotten past the first month or two, continue on the straight path applying what you’ve learnt from before. Now that you no longer have these urges, don’t think you’re super human and can do nofap like a renegade. Stay focused. The few times I’ve seen porn, I’ve felt nothing but I’ve also had some really weak moments where I’ve come so close to fapping. It’s important to keep this focus. Also, now that you’ve made it to this point, use your counter as your deterrent. When I’ve come close, I’ve reminded myself that my counter is up to x amount of days and it would be devastating if I had to reset that. It’s like a high score. If I reset my counter right now, I would have to nofap for another 121 days just to get back to the same point… if I don’t relapse, in 121 days I’ll be 242 days in!
Progress
Overall, nofap has been a godsend. I’ve still got a long way to go with my problem because I’ve abused porn so badly. But i want this change in my life, and that’s the most important thing. That’s what you need to get through it; you need to want the change. The side effects of nofap, like the elevated mood, motivation and confidence are a massive benefit too and will help you to keep going. If you have PIED, they’ll also help massively when it comes to trying to meet people.
Hope that all made sense and you could gain some benefit from this insanely long post! Post any questions you have. Massive thanks to NoFap! See you at the 200 mark.
LINK – 120 day report of a PIED No Fapper… Broke the addiction and had the first wet dream of my life
by rokeisland
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