Hello everyone, this is my first post on this site. I've struggled with social anxiety for a long time and I'm currently seeing a therapist for it, but masturbating to hardcore porn has just made it worse. Over the past six months I've made progress, I've lost 45 lbs, I went back to school, and I work 30 hrs a week. But porn is still a problem for me. I'm mainly sick and tired of watching everybody my age date, hook up, and lose their virginity and have all these fun times with a bunch of friends while I'm lonely and depressed. I've felt like I'm worth less than a lot of people for a long time in my life. I can't even use social media, mainly because my mind is so negative and I always compare myself to other people and ultimately end up feeling worse, I don't exactly have a bae or spring break party photos with all my friends to post on instagram, lol. I was isolated during my teen years, I'm a decent looking guy I guess, but I'm just scared to be vulnerable or be myself around girls I'm interested in. It's pretty painful, I haven't kissed a girl or even been on a date, so yeah, pretty depressing, lol. I feel as if porn has messed up how I think about what real sex is like, and I'm just confused because I lack experience with the whole dating/hook up culture. The longest I've gone without porn is like a month, same with masturbation. I've stayed away from porn for the most part for the past 6 months, but I keep coming back when I'm lonely. I've been two weeks without watching porn, and I haven't masturbated in 9 days, after my 90 day reboot I'll probably do MO every other week to avoid getting strong urges to PMO again. Man, this is tough. Everything reminds me of sex and the pornographic images, I try to just let the fantasy and images pass through my mind, but it is very difficult. Anyways, thanks for the support and advice on this website, let's do this.
First post here, 20 year old virgin, social anxiety, currently rebooting
- Thread starter Jake323
- Start date
misc person 86
Active Member
Welcome to the club. Sounds familiar to probably everyone so don't worry too much.
Don't even masturbate at all for now. Save your body, mind and desires for real intercourse. You'll not regret it.
Don't even masturbate at all for now. Save your body, mind and desires for real intercourse. You'll not regret it.
willtochange
Active Member
Welcome to the forum, best of luck on your reboot. Add a tracker to keep you on track. =)
fapfreezone
Active Member
Jake323 said:
I hope you want a slightly geeky response. If not, perhaps read someone else's post...
... so you're still reading! Good. Now, consider a group of five slim, pretty girls your age. They are all pretty, but they likely don't all think so. The least pretty one is comparing herself to her friends and may think she isn't that pretty and become upset about it. But, I stated it was a group of five pretty girls, so she is pretty, she just doesn't realise it. So, what's she doing wrong?
She's using a relative scale. She's comparing herself only to her other, hotter friends. Therefore she sees herself negatively, even though you would see her positively. You're doing the same thing with your friends who are "all out having fun". Firstly, they aren't always out having fun, it's a social media effect that makes it seem this way - everyone posts positive stuff designed to make them look good, so to someone browsing it seems like everyone else is having a non-stop party when they aren't. They work and stuff too and there's no reason to assume they're all passionate about their jobs, for example.
Anyway, my point about comparisons is to compare yourself on an absolute scale. i.e. put everyone in the world on the scale. In fact, you could put animals on it if you want. What are all those billions of people in poor countries like Africa and India doing with their time? Are they constantly out partying? No. Many, many people have it worse than you so don't worry so much about your lot.
So you have social anxiety and it's not your fault. This is unfair, but it's commonly accepted that life isn't fair. All you need to worry about is whether you can live a happy life in the future. Social anxiety is treatable, which is excellent news for you. You may always have more anxiety than others, so perhaps you'll never enjoy parties the way they do, but you can still get into relationships and have sex.
I recently googled "How to date as a shy guy" and loads of advice for women trying to date shy guys came up. Why? Because google uses automated key word identification to search - in other words, it basically ignored the "as" and gave the same results as "How to date a shy guy". My point, though, is that there were plenty of posts about how to catch that shy guy if you're a woman. This shows that plenty of women do like shy guys, despite popular youth opinion that "you must be the alpha male and beat your chest to get any woman at all". Ok, I embellished it slightly, but you know what I mean!
Now, I can't really give you too much dating advice, because I am not doing that well myself right now (hence the search!) but I do think that becoming friends first is a great choice for a shy guy, because then she gets to know the likeable, friendly side of you rather than the first date insecure side, unlike a woman you meet online, for example. Thus, she'll already know your safe, trustworthy and friendly. Also, since you'll be more comfortable with her, you'll likely be funnier around her because you'll be more relaxed and anxiety can kill a sense of humour. If you do want to become friends first, my opinion would be not to worry too much about being in the friend zone. It may a disaster according to PUA's, but I think there are plenty of upsides, e.g. introduction to her acquaintances with a positive review, someone to introduce to females you meet in other ways that will win you brownie points (if you have female friends you are unlikely to be a creep or weirdo) and someone to give you an insight into the female mind on suitable topics, such as where a date went wrong or what women want. You don't need to be a smooth, hot, alpha male to be friends with a woman, you just need to be good company.
Hope this helps
FapFreeZone said:
Thanks, I think my main problem is that I don't really know how to actually get close to people, I can small talk just fine, but as far as actually getting to know someone or being friends with someone, I really just have no idea what they want. I find it extremely hard finding places to meet people as well. I'm in school, but there are thousands of people there, and I still live at home. I've tried this app called meet up where I go to groups and they have activities, but there aren't a lot in my area, and the ones that are in my area only meet rarely or don't really have a ton of people my age. I've tried tinder too, I swipe like crazy, I try not to be picky either, but still, just no results. I find it hard to find people that have similar interests too. I joined a powerlifting gym, and I love to do that, but a lot of people there are older than me too or have lives of their own, I don't know, it just feels impossible to find a woman at the moment. I also feel as if most people on those dating sites just hook up anyways. Which is even more stressful than dating for someone with SA. I've accepted that I'll always have a harder time socializing and getting friends/women and that I'll always be more anxious in social situations than most people, which sucks, but it is what it is I guess. I guess I'm just confused because I lack experience with this stuff and it's just like learning to ride a bike I suppose. I just gotta keep moving forward and I'll get there eventually, ugh it's so tough.
fapfreezone
Active Member
Jake323 said:
So figure it out. Here's what I figured:
Step one: Find place in which it's normal to make small talk
Step two: Make small talk
Step three: If they seem to get along with you, make small talk again
Step four: Repeat step three until you notice they are either keen on you or clearly not keen on you
Step five: If they weren't keen, repeat step two with someone else. If they were keen, invite them to something, e.g. "By the way, i'm a huge patriots fan and they're playing on Sunday and I've got the sports channel. Do you wanna come over and watch the game? There'll be beers in the fridge...". Exchange numbers at this stage, once they accept.
Step six: Be their friend
Hardest part, IMO, is where do you go to meet people. I think at work is fine, as long as you get along with them well, but most places of work have a wide age range, so you typically don't meet many people you might actually hang out with. I think it's tricky, but the above is how I think it's done.
Jake323 said:
Social media is all fake, people only post the happiest 1% of their lives to social media, it's no indication of how they're really doing. Don't worry, there are virgins at way higher ages than you. You sound like quite a mess, but you can fix this within a few years easily. Try to mentally compare yourself to worse situations, not better ones. Just make stuff up, such as being in a wheelchair, poor, in a war, being in the hospital with leukemia, etc. Just force yourself to keep thinking these thoughts like a robot and you will feel better. Meditate and get a website filter.
secret_100
Member
Brother I m from India 25 years old and my situation is same as you or may be even worse than you in fact my social anxiety is the underlying cause of my sexual addiction (fantasies, porn, masturbation etc.). Social anxiety is really a frustrating thing for men's because men's can not live inside his house he have to come out but think if you are social anxious???
I see how some guys around me treating with girls fearlessly (teasing girls/women's, say things carelessly, talking for hours) and at the end of the day girls like them and want to die for them...even these guys are not good looking, don't have a good job, and not a nice people...
I only have sex when i was 9-10 years old after that i got addicted to artificial sex because i don't feel the courage and confidence to approach any girl because of my social anxiety...
I don't have good experience with girls 2-3 girls came in my life during 18-25(present) years age but they left me very easily...Girls don't like me and not feel secure and caring with me just because i can't express my feelings because of my social anxiety...
But the biggest problem with me nobody understands/love/care me, not even my parents...my father caught me 10-15 years ago doing masturbation...but no advise, no punishment, did not talked to me about this nothing now my habit became my need...I tried very hard to stop PMO but at start it was very difficult for me and followed by several relapses then i got a good control on it for about 1.5 years then coming close to my old gf drowned me again to this addiction now again i can't get rid of this...my brain plays several tricks on me....
Brother when we are single we can't fight and win over something but together we can...
Do you wanna to be my friend? Here is my email [email protected]
I see how some guys around me treating with girls fearlessly (teasing girls/women's, say things carelessly, talking for hours) and at the end of the day girls like them and want to die for them...even these guys are not good looking, don't have a good job, and not a nice people...
I only have sex when i was 9-10 years old after that i got addicted to artificial sex because i don't feel the courage and confidence to approach any girl because of my social anxiety...
I don't have good experience with girls 2-3 girls came in my life during 18-25(present) years age but they left me very easily...Girls don't like me and not feel secure and caring with me just because i can't express my feelings because of my social anxiety...
But the biggest problem with me nobody understands/love/care me, not even my parents...my father caught me 10-15 years ago doing masturbation...but no advise, no punishment, did not talked to me about this nothing now my habit became my need...I tried very hard to stop PMO but at start it was very difficult for me and followed by several relapses then i got a good control on it for about 1.5 years then coming close to my old gf drowned me again to this addiction now again i can't get rid of this...my brain plays several tricks on me....
Brother when we are single we can't fight and win over something but together we can...
Do you wanna to be my friend? Here is my email [email protected]