My background: started nofap in January of 2012. I did it because of ED issues which I realized were due to my long-term, excessive PMO. Basically, I could not get an erection unless I was staring at a computer screen in my hunched over fap posture. I started PMO when I was 11 and made it an almost daily habit for the next 12 years or so. During this time I had few sexual experiences outside of PMO and remained a forever alone virgin due to the insidious effects PMO had on my brain. Recognizing the huge problem that PMO was for me, I went 142 days before voluntarily calling it quits in June 2012. This was the most transformative, life-changing, period of insane personal growth that I have ever experienced. The ways in which my mind and body changed during this period are just too profound to describe here. I could write a whole book about it. But the relevant piece for this post are that I got my first real GF and lost my virginity to her. And I’m quite certain that nofap had everything to do with it.
I called it quits because at the time I felt like I was “cured enough”. I was able to get it hard enough to stick it in someone, so whats the point of continuing with this, I thought. I no longer had strong urges to sit alone and fap in the dark on a daily basis. My fap sessions started out spaced apart by about a month, then a week, then a few days before, eventually, doing it every day again. And the ED had come back. Not as strong as it was originally, but I could absolutely feel the sickness still present in my brain. See this post I made last November for more on that.
I actually wasn’t able to start my current streak until last January, which is now at 78 days. And I feel great. I started having regular sex with someone I met recently, a coworker. It’s casual, as per her request, which is okay by me, even though I’d like to be in a more serious relationship with someone. (Sidenote: the ED hasn’t completely gone away yet. Part of it is the lingering PMO addiction, and part of it is performance anxiety. This is a consequence of my fucked up sexual history, and the only way it’s going away is with more experience. I was honest with her about my PMO addiction and how it affects my erections and made sure that she knows that it has nothing to do with her. I think she appreciated that and seems to be okay with it. It certainly hasn’t turned her away. So gentlemen, be honest and upfront about your issues. She will likely admire you for your honesty.) But the wonderful thing here, for me, is that I actively made moves in order to make this relationship happen. If this were me pre-nofap, I would have sat back and waited for her to show interest in me, filing her away in my spankbank and being momentarily content with myself. But that’s not what happened. I made up my mind that I wanted her, and when the opportunity presented itself, I put myself out there, manned up, and took her. And I got what I wanted. Huge. I thought with my balls and not with my head for once, which I had previously been doing my whole life. And I realized, that this is the way it is supposed to be. I was designed to do this. I am a machine, bones, muscles, blood, organs, skin, who possesses a particular ability to seek out sexual relationships with other machines of the opposite sex in order to make more little machines that do the same thing.
As mechanical as that last sentence may seem, coming to this realization forces me to appreciate my body in a new way. If I am to honor my physical body in the same way that I honor my intellect, or I honor my spirit, then I must not fap. And I’ve learned to truly, truly love my body.
So I’m letting go of my desire to fap and transforming that into a desire to honor my body by using it the way it was meant to be used. Some of you may be reading this and thinking “What the hell man, it’s just masturbation, you’re taking this too seriously”. Well, for some people that may be true. But, for those of us unlucky enough to have unlimited, instant access to internet porn when we were teenagers, it is that serious. My sexuality was permanently damaged, and, in the same way that an alcoholic is an alcoholic for life even if he’s been sober for years, I am a PMO addict for the rest of my life. And as much of a blow that period of time was to my self, I am slowly but surely recovering, and I know that I’m gonna come out on top, stronger than ever for what this experience has made me fight for
by dontwannafap
Comments: Contrast this self-report, aspects of which are becoming more and more common, with the self-report of a guy, 8 years older (which means fewer years on highspeed porn), who recovered in 2010: “How I Recovered from Porn-related Erectile Dysfunction”
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