Quitting digital porn use is a great idea, but semen retention may not be for you if you’re single – especially if you have OCD tendencies. If you don’t have a partner, find the right frequency of porn-free ejaculation for you. Do keep in mind that, generally speaking, the less you ejaculate, the more you will be motivated to pursue partners in real life. Here’s one man’s story.
Here’s some advice my sexologist gave me in order to masturbate without feeling any kind of negative emotions or physical repercussions. Before therapy, masturbation would put me in a specific state for 4 days. I was depressed, tired, empty, my brain was foggy. I was unmotivated and anxious. After 4 days of abstinence, those symptoms would disappear.
Each therapy is personal, but I found many people with the same symptoms here. I’m not saying it will work for you, maybe your issues are somewhere else. but still, I think it’s worth a try. I’m not saying that what I’m writing is the truth, but it healed me. She followed me for 3 years, so it’s a bit hard to resume everything about this subject but I’m going to try.
I’m aware of the danger of porn and I don’t advocate its use. PMO is damaging. even if it’s useless to feel bad about it, it’s good and important to reduce it. however, I’m totally for accepting masturbation without porn (MO) and this post is about how to use MO properly, not PMO. there are ways to PMO properly (who would have known!) but I didn’t explore this subject in this post. let’s first agree on the fact that porn is shit. I really want you to know that this post is not about accepting porn use, even if I consider that the debate around porn should be less binary. we can be stronger than porn. we can delete what porn taught us.
A quick word about me: I’m 22, I started porn at 12, started nofap at 15 and stopped at 19, started therapy 3 years ago. I consider that my sexual issues (porn use, pied, issue with masturbation) have been solved entirely since the therapy. I’m a totally different person, I don’t consider myself anymore as someone with sexual issues. OK so let’s dive in! (PS; I’m not a native English speaker so they may be mistakes)
- Understand that there is nothing wrong with masturbation. If masturbation is making you feel bad, even without porn, it’s because of the relation you have with it. This relation can evolve, and those emotions can disappear. If you consider that abstinence is giving you energy, it may be the case; However, it’s possible to achieve that same level of energy and adopting a masturbation routine.
Right now, masturbation may be putting you down. I won’t go into a debate about semen retention. But a man is supposed to function normally when he regularly loose semen, when he regularly masturbates or have sex. masturbation is not a handicap. However, when you get used to abstinence (I’m talking about masturbation abstinence, like with nofap) your body adapts and stop working on compensating the possible energy loss of masturbation. Also, when you’re doing a nofap streak, you’re accumulating so much sexual frustration that when you relapse, everything goes away and it feel like the world is upside down. Again, masturbation is not the issue, but rather your relationship with it. and if you’re used to do nofap all the time, it’s normal to feel such distress after relapse. your body is not supposed to live its sexuality like some kind of rollercoaster. In order to feel okay with sexual release, you must be in harmony with your sexual need. You must ‘find a balance’. You may think that it’s impossible for you to masturbate regularly, but you can. You’re not going to feel down every day. You’re going to adapt, then you’ll feel normal every day, and then you’ll feel awesome. And of course, you’ll never feel those specific emotion again. sex won’t be a burden anymore. Anyway, if you’re into nofap / semen retention, you should first be able to masturbate without negative consequence and then you can experiment with abstinence. abstinence is a delicate process and it’s important to have a healthy sexuality in order to dive into it.
2) masturbation is like sex. sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s shit. Masturbating on a chair while holding your breath, stressing your muscle, stroking your cock nervously and rushing to orgasm in front of a flat screen, is a shitty experience. your body is getting zero satisfaction from it. After this experience, all you’ve got is less sexual drive, and zero satisfaction. Masturbation must be a positive experience. it must bring you intense emotion, that will make your libido stronger. Here’s a quick masturbation 101:
- Wash your hand before
- take your time. Don’t rush anything. If you don’t have the time or the need to do it right now, you can do it later
- get into a comfortable position, so all your muscles are relaxed.
- don’t have a tight grip. Be gentle with it
- go slowly at first. Experiment how it feels to masturbate slowly. If your body is relaxed, the sensation will go everywhere (ideally) focus on the physical sensation you have in your penis and in your body.
- don’t hold your breath. Have deep and relaxed breath. You can also synchronize slow masturbating with your breathing.
- just focus on the present, don’t rush to orgasm. Try to escalate slowly to orgasm.
- try to move your hip and not your hand. the sensations are different and doing this can mimic sex positions. You can also use lube to mimic vaginal penetration.
and don’t use porn of course.
masturbating this way can be hard at first, because it’s more complicated to reach orgasm. just apply those techniques as much as you can but it’s okay if you don’t masturbate that way 100 percent of the time. you just have to transition and it will take some time. it’s all about experimenting true pleasure! also this will help with pied, because you are working being receptive to little stimulation. you’re also working on understanding how and why you have an erection.
3) In order to start to feel good about masturbation, you’ll have to change your routine. Now consider that you can masturbate whenever you want (not when you’re driving of course). you don’t have to ration it. You’ll see that If you apply the technics I explained previously, you won’t have to masturbate that much. You won’t come out of it frustrated. But if you feel like masturbating every day, or more, just do it. Do it and go on with your life. forget about nofap/abstinence and consider that from now on you’re going to have to adapt. don’t tempt yourself with period of abstinence. waiting for a specific amount of days before feeling fine is now totally obsolete, because when you’ll be recovered you won’t need to wait a single minute after masturbation in order to live your life. You’ve tied specific emotion to masturbation because you’ve used it incorrectly. Those emotions aren’t going to disappear directly, but they will reduce rapidly if you make the effort to masturbate in a healthy way as much as you can. There is no normal amount of masturbation. it depends on you, on your age and on your libido. Someone who masturbate more is not wasting his energy more. Wasting your energy would be forcing yourself to masturbate more, or less that what your body need.
4)Don’t be hard on yourself. if you relapse to porn, just do. watch a clip, ejaculate and do something else. don’t tempt yourself for hours. it’s not an obligation to obsess about it, whether you’re a strong addict or not. you’re going to succeed, believe in yourself.
I have an obsessive personality, so my sexologist strongly advised me to stop counting days and to delete my calendar. When I stopped counting days since my last relapsed, I started to feel good randomly. the days weren’t affecting me anymore. As long as you’re taking care of your sexuality, a relapse won’t kill you. it’s not nice, but It won’t reset your progress. You don’t have to feel bad. you’re working on having a healthy sexuality, you’re doing this for you and for your partner / future partner. Be proud of yourself. You looked at porn, it’s okay. don’t ruin your day because of it. Porn is shit, why should I obsess about it all day? who is stronger? me or the porn? when I obsess about my last porn relapse, who’s winning? porn. not me.
5) Sometimes it’s good to just listen to yourself and stay away from the internet. Your sexuality is unique. on pornfree, there are so many different personalities, different approach and reaction to pornography. There are people who found their balance by masturbating once a day, and other once a month. some people got rid of porn cold turkey, other quit gradually, some still watch porn from time to time but are okay with it. people’s addiction are different. You’re unique, and some question can only be answered by yourself.
6)masturbation is part of your sexuality and is here to help you. you can feel extreme positive emotion If you manage to have a good experience. The quality of masturbation will give you a feeling of peace, like after great sex. treat masturbation like sex and treat yourself with respect. listen to yourself, because during masturbation you are your own partner.
7) Those negative emotions are in you. Porn / masturbation is the trigger. There are significative to some issues in your life. You’ll stop feeling all those emotion at once, but they will remain and will come from time to time, individually. Maybe you actually are a bit depressed, lonely, or tired. But not because of masturbation or porn. PMO was a trigger. Now you have to understand why you feel like this from time to time. the answer may certainly be outside of your sexual life. Anyway, you’ll see that after healing you’ll have plenty of free time to work on those issues.
Now, there are other aspect of masturbation on which I was confused. she gave me those advice/info’s about fantasizing, edging, and erotization.
Masturbation is an erotization process. Erotization means “to transform into erotic feeling”. It means that when you are masturbating and looking at porn, you are erotizing porn. You are turning porn into something arousing. This is why our sexual taste evolve with porn. If I start to watch helicopter porn every day and ejaculate to helicopter every day, I will start to be aroused by helicopters. If I start to watch hardcore porn and then watch it every day, I will become aroused by hardcore sex. This is why we consider that porn is fucking up our brain. We watch something that is not real, that is totally fake. we trained our body to be aroused by stuff that don’t happen in real life. It’s normal that when you’re in a realistic situation you can’t have an erection. because you haven’t erotized realistic situations. In porn, cocks are huge. when you watch porn, you’re erotizing big cocks. If you don’t have one, it’s normal to have anxiety about it. If you start to erotize your own body, this anxiety will fade away. With porn, we also erotize sex without condoms, we erotize sub missed woman, unreal performance, unreal bodies. It’s normal to have difficulty with sex when 90 percent of your sex life is about erotizing pornography and unrealistic situations.
about PIED: You can use masturbation as a tool in order to erotize what you want, in your mind. I used to have a problem with condoms. so, during masturbation, I started to imagine myself putting a condom on. I was training my body to remain horny, even with a condom. I also do the same with my partners. I think about them, I erotize them. If you feel unattracted to your SO, think about her during masturbation. the erotization process will make you more attracted to her. erotization is a tool to fight PIED. when you’ll see yourself performing the way you want, you’ll erotize that situation and will get into a virtuous cycle. if you manage to get an erection just by thinking about your partner, you can have an erection with her/him. And if you have an erection with your partner, you can have it again. PIED also comes from the fear of performance. when you’ll stop relying on porn, that fear will go away. you just have to see yourself having sex, then keep erotizing that idea. also, there is a tip that works great: if you’re with your partner and you feel that you’re scared about not having an erection, focus entirely on your partner. stop thinking about you, you will have an erection at some point don’t worry. put all your attention on her and her body. your body will take care of the rest! but globally, all the info I wrote on this post will help you getting rid of pied.
If you have fetishes that you’re ashamed of, it’s probably because of porn. Quitting porn will definitely be a tremendous way to understand what you truly enjoy with sex. The problem with fetishes is that we’re constantly feeding them with more porn. When porn goes away, those fetishes won’t be obsessive. it’s okay to have fetishes when they don’t obsess you all day. you don’t have to feel bad about fantasizing on your fetishes, as long as you also work on erotizing realistic situation during other masturbations. You can sometime give yourself the pleasure to fantasize on stuff that will never happen. It’s in your mind, you’re not hurting anyone. You don’t have to fight them. You’ll think about them from time to time, also sometimes you’ll think about porn. Accept it. as long as you stay away from porn, your fantasies will be replaced by deeper, “natural” fantasies, as if your reproduction instinct is taking control on your mind. Explore which fantasies truly makes you feel good inside. Also, there is nothing wrong about erotizing your friend or your entourage (it can be seen as immoral, but still it’s not affecting the recovery process). I don’t see why it’s unrespectable to imagine myself having romantic sex with someone. and anyway, no one knows, and no one cares! it’s important to feel okay about what you feel. if there are stuff that turns you on, but inside you don’t agree with them, they will fade away if you don’t obsess about them. HOCD is a good example. you don’t cure HOCD by turning straight and manly. you cure HOCD by stopping the obsession about the fact that you may be bisexual or homosexual. when you stop obsessing about that idea, it’s just a thought that comes from time to time but you don’t really care about it.
Erotization and masturbation are tools to be better at sex. During masturbation, erotize having sex at the same speed as masturbation. this will help you understand when and why you ejaculate. you can also work on controlling your ejaculation during masturbation with the use of edging. If you manage to edge during masturbation, you’d probably be able to edge during sex, and therefore have longer sex. However, you don’t have to edge during masturbation. you can have a slow build up that just goes up and up till orgasm. Edging can actually alter the masturbation process and make the experience less fulfilling. In my experience, a constant build-up is the key to a 100 percent satisfying orgasm. When you master the slow build up, you can start experiencing with edging.
Here are some other topics and questions I had with my therapist.
-for my sexologist, porn is a plague. It’s destroying the young generation. She doesn’t believe that artificial stimulation is wrong, but she considers that what we learn in porn is dangerous. She considers that staying away from porn is a huge quality and is a simple way to be a better partner than any guy around. But she told me several time to stop obsessing about relapse. obsessing about it make the problem bigger.
– masturbation is here to help you stop porn. If you abstain during reboot, you’re accumulating sexual frustration that will make you want to watch porn. I know that MO can lead to PMO, but you can make the choice to simply MO and not escalate to PMO. it’s not because you MO that you’ll PMO later; it’s not a fatality. If you MO all you want, you’ll remain sexually satisfied therefore not attracted to porn. But if you MO incorrectly, this can let you with some sexual frustration that can lead to a PMO relapse. also, staying sexually satisfied will prevent from binging. If I watch porn, I just do and go on with my day. Next time I’ll just MO and work on having a healthy sexuality. It’s ok to be tempted and fail from time to time! it’s not the end of the world! the goal is to make MO more appealing than PMO, which is manageable. your mind is more powerful and more personal than what you see in pornography. With PMO, you’re submitted to what you’re seeing. With MO, it’s you that decide. you’re more in control!
– why do I feel good during a nofap streak? why do I feel better and better during the streak?
The reasons for this a various and sometime personal. Here are different possible reasons:
- If you’re dealing with shame about masturbation/ porn, the simple fact that you’re not doing one of those activities is giving you a better opinion about yourself. Your mind is not obsessed with the relapse, so you can focus on the “good side” of yourself.
- There is a correlation between the libido and general wellbeing. During a nofap streak, you’re accumulating more and more sexual drive (you’re hornier) which can lead to an increased happiness. Sorry I don’t have read any scientific studies about this. There are studies on this subject though. but I used to be a nofapper, and I know that my libido was controlling a part of my happiness. During the flatline for example, I had no libido and I was feeling like shit. From all the experiences I read about nofap, it’s clear for me that nofap make us dependent to our sexual drive, as if our sexual drive would choose for us our happiness.
- You’ve installed a “religion” about yourself. This religion tells you: “if I’m horny and I don’t fap, I’m feeling good, I’m at 100 percent. However, If I relapse, I’m supposed to feel like shit, because I feel good when I don’t” this concept of religion is a psychological concept that we sometime see in specific personalities (obsessive, ocd, introspective people, etc.)
- Being horny makes you more confident about talking to girls/guys. As sex is one of the ultimate goals of society, you’re feeling better since you’re getting closer to that goal, as you’re getting out of your comfort zone.
–why do I feel like shit after relapse?
- sudden change of sexual drive. you’ve attached specific emotion to this chemical change.
- shame about porn use, about escalation and fetishes
- masturbating obsessively, because you have to, not because you want. Feeling vulnerable to your sexual need, feeling different, perverted because of it. You’re living a situation that not a lot of guy live extreme sexual frustration.
- obsession about days, about nofap, obsessing about reaching 90 days
- binging, to cope with the excess of libido, which create an even more difference (from a high/saturated libido to an almost non-existent one)
- the inability of your body to cope with sexual release (because you’ve got used to abstinence)
This is why finding a balance is important. If you have a healthy masturbation/sex life, you won’t be affected by it. It’s nice to get power with abstinence. but you can get the same effect with a healthy sex life. You won’t be horny all the time though. You’ll be in control. You don’t need abstinence to be happy. work on being happy without it first, work on having a healthy sexuality, and then you can work on sublimating your sexual energy through abstinence. but it’s a delicate process, not suited for porn addict or people who are discovering their sexuality. my sexologist is totally against the nofap movement, but agree on some advantage of abstinence. there is indeed the possibility to sublimate your sexual energy, but you can achieve this even if you don’t abstain. because your sexual energy is not finite, you can regenerate your libido through sex. abstinence is saving your energy, but you don’t have any process that create more sexual energy. she finds the idea of solving your sexual issues with abstinence counterproductive. of course, that abstinence makes you feel good when sexuality makes you feel bad. it’s just an escape mechanism, that work temporally until the next relapse.
I did nofap religiously for 5 years. I totally believed it because I was feeling bad when I fapped and good when I didn’t. during this period of my life, I could have never imagined that one day I’d be masturbating several times a week and be at my fullest capacity. it’s the case right now, I’ve never felt better. I took time to adapt to masturbating again (I’d say 1 year of up and downs) but it was totally worth it. it’s been two years now that I can masturbate, I don’t need a single day of nofap in order to be the best of myself. this is truly something awesome and I remember having tears in my eyes when I started to realise that I was getting free of this burden. nofap was really turning me insane
– Is temporary abstinence useful for recovery?
My sexologist didn’t advise me to abstain in order to recover from porn addiction. For her, this is only escaping the problem. if porn use made you unable to masturbate correctly, you should work on that issue instead of trying to cut out masturbation. on top of it, it harder to fight porn when you’re constantly horny. The goal is to make masturbation without more appreciable and fulfilling than masturbation with porn. At this point, porn doesn’t look as addictive.
and overall, she believes in all those positive aspects of masturbation so she doesn’t see why we should stop. Again, I’m only telling what she told me. I’m not saying it’s the truth, I’m just sharing her point of view
– Why do Taoist believe in semen retention? (not from my therapist, but from my own research on the subject – taken from a book by john blofeld about Taoism)
Taoist believe in semen retention, but they also consider that practicing semen retention without all the meditation techniques that come with it is useless. If you don’t work on sublimating this energy, the energy goes away. You must work on the microcosmic orbit, a technique that is supposed to be practiced with the help of a Taoist master. For Taoist, semen retention is one of the ultimate steps in order to reach immortality. It’s not an obligatory step in order to reach quietude.
If you’re interested in Taoism, check testicular breathing. it a practice that help being in harmony with your sexual side. I used to do it once in a while during recovery and It was a big help .and of course meditation can also help a lot during recovery. (you can try meditating before or after masturbation to accept the unwanted thought you have toward it)
Conclusion:
If you read it all, thank you. I’m only writing what I learned through therapy, research and experience. I didn’t want to write this post like if I wasn’t sure about my opinions. I strongly believe in the importance of a healthy sex life, I’m definitely pro-sex as of today. If you believe that masturbation is not for you, I understand your opinion. But I advise to differentiate masturbation itself and the effect you’ve attributed to it. It’s a question of choice: either you fight masturbation, or you work on it. Either way, the need for sex won’t disappear from your life. we’re made to have sex, deleting this need is much more complicated than it seems. this is why we should first be in phase with our sexuality, and then, if we like, explore abstinence and sublimation. But you can be at 100 percent even if you have sex. masturbation is supposed to regenerate your libido, not to kill it. Both are possible, the choice is in your hand!
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