• Introduction. This going to be long, a beast of a wall of text, but I’m not apologising, so settle in or move along. About me, 34 M, been checking out porn since I was about ten, grew up in the hard copy magazine era, then moved into Internet porn as it gradually became the monster it now is. My issues pre nofap were, PE, lack of sexual confidence, depression, anxiety, and misanthropy, virtually the whole gamut of social issues which are common in this sub-reddit. I never understood why I had these issues, I’m basically a normal guy. I knew there was a reason, then finally clicked about September 2012 that porn was really fucking with my brain. A few Internet searches led me to ybop.com and then onto nofap. I made a conscious decision to quit porn at this point and committed to trying nofap in October. The period that followed was undoubtedly the most difficult, happy, angry and sad period of my life to date. This is because my nofap phase was aligned with two major traumatic occurrences.
• Nofap and serious illness diagnosis
In mid November I was diagnosed with Aortic Abdominal Aneurysm. This is extremely rare in fit, 34 yo, non-smoking, healthy BMI, competitive running types. But, I got it because of a rare connective tissue disorder. This condition means I essentially have a growth in my aorta, which will continue to grow until I have open heart surgery in x amount of years time. It could potentially rupture at any time, at which point I have an hour at best to get to a hospital, or I die. However, the real kicker is; because of the location of the AAA the surgery has the potential side effect of causing impotence. This really really fucked me up, I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, I still don’t sometimes. I’ve faced my own individual and sexual mortality. Initially I relapsed (MO), eventually I got my head around it and realised I needed to become sexually healthy and get as much sex as possible before I possibly lose the ability to have sex, at all, ever again. So I eventually got my streak going on January 6 this year.
• Nofap and long term relationship break up.
my girlfriend and I decided to break up in about September 2012, this was an 8 year relationship. We broke up for a lot of reasons, we just kind of reverted to being ‘friends” like we were in the beginning. PMO was probably a contributing factor, it definitely affected our sex life, or lack thereof. This has been a difficult thing to face, particularly severing the most significant social connection in my life to date. However as I was moving through nofap during this time I feel like I dealt with it quite well, I’ve experienced very real emotion but moved relatively easily through the grieving process. I’m just not sure this would have been the case if I’d had the predisposition towards depression that had accompanied me throughout my life of fapping. Because of the LTR break up I’ve been forced to establish new friendships, I’ve become hugely social, at times the thought of being alone has been nearly physically painful.
• Nofap and how I completed nofap
• Triggers. I spent the first few months learning my triggers, creating a conscious inventory of these situations and basically facing them head on. I failed many times but learned not to chastise myself over it, I believe that by beating yourself up over a relapse you create a good vs bad binary in which you are more likely to fail again when the triggers re-appear.
• Support. The second method was support and accountability from my check-in buddy cloakedmagnum. He appeared on a post I made on day 16 and suggested we check in together. I couldn’t have done this without the situation of support and accountability we created with each other, we’ve been there for each other through good and bad and will hopefully remain friends beyond nofap. There isn’t enough emphasis on the buddy system here, but it is a powerful weapon. Cloakedmagnum, I love you man! • Routine. I’m a runner, have been for over four years so it was a no-brainer for me that this would be extremely useful during nofap. I never experienced much of a mental flatline and I attribute this to a regular running routine. This might be contentious but my view is that cardio is more useful to nofap than other types of exercise, it has the effect of raising the heart rate for a period of time and this really helps to clear the mind and burn energy. Also, as is commonly noted, do something else, read, cook, socialise, just don’t fap!
• Benefits. Nofap and sex.
Around day 50 I shifted focus away from nofap and onto self-improvement. This has been with the goal of having a lot of good sex with beautiful women, I’ve never been that bad with the ladies, but could’ve done a lot better. Now I intend to. I’ve read up on a lot of seduction stuff, most of which I find laughable, and have concluded that it all boils down to your so-called “inner game”. PMO destroys your inner game in my opinion, nofap returns you to where you should be. Day 80 I was at a party and easily pulled a hot girl ten years my junior, we had great sex and it just amazing to feel everything working normally again, being mindful and enjoying the shit out of the sex. We’ve established a fuck buddy relationship, so I look forward to seeing her again.
• Benefits. Nofap and career
I got a new job, I’ve been trying to do this for 4 years. I’m not attributing this nofap, I worked my arse off to get this job. I sure did own the interview (whiteboards, diagrams and shit!) though and it was nice to have the social confidence to do this. [See http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1arzfi/i_scare_myself_sometimes/]
• Conclusion
I’m a different man, the man I should be. This has been the most unusual time in my life as so much of it has changed. I’m single for the first time in 8 years, I have a life threatening disease, a new home, a new job, a new social circle. But I’m sexually and socially healthy for the first time in my life, I love being around people, I’m confident, and funny, I look everyone in the eye. There’s a new fire burning within me. However, I want to point out though, that nofap has been a factor in all this, it isn’t a magic bullet, if there’s one lesson I can take away it is that nofap gets you back to your baseline, it’s up to you how you build on it. Life is short my friends, live the shit out of it!
LINK – i scare myself sometimes
by unknsldr
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