Flatline due to recovery... or sexual deprivation?

[anhaedra]

Been rebooting since February, with the occasional relapse (mostly MO without the P). Last few months have been very successful, almost no relapses. It's become a "new way of life" if you will.

But I'm in doubt here... I've turned asexual. I've no interest in sex, and very little interest in women / dating. The only spontaneous boners I get are noctural / morning wood, quite consistently I must add, which is definitely an improvement over pre-reboot times.

Still, am I in a prolonged flatline? Or could it be, that cutting out all sexual input from my life -- I am single and currently not dating -- has just shut everything off? Am I still making progress this way, or is this more like a stalemate situation? I'm a bit troubled this "monk mode" is doing more harm than good.

Quick personal details: 33 years old, started watching porn around 15, have had multiple relationships, some of them sexually satisfying. Started suffering first from delayed ejaculation a few years back, then erectile dysfunction in February, which started my reboot. Last sexual encounter was around May... 100% erection yet no ejaculation.

Please tell me if I should go on rebooting... or what symptoms I should look for to know I'm still recovering.

 

[misc person 86]

Just keep rebooting man. You're in a better situation than a lot so that's good news. What I HATE about this recovery is that just because you don't feel totally horny, it doesn't mean your dick won't work. Similarly, when you feel totally horny you can be convinced you'll have successful sex, but it doesn't always work.

 

[summercicada90]

I'm going to paste a quote from my go-to page from YBOP. There is nothing but encouraging advice there from those who have gone before us, and for me, reading through the whole page gave me an idea of what stages and difficulties I can expect along the way to recovery, and ideas on how to battle the rough spots. You may have even read this, but if you haven't then it may help to at least read the post I'm quoting below.
The page: https://yourbrainonporn.com/what-about-fantasizing-during-reboot

The last week or so, as I have been purging sexual fantasy out of my mind and dealing with the grubby withdrawals from that, I have felt lost, lonely, confused, almost asexual, worried, anxious and depressed. The only thing that was keeping me going was faith in my creator, nature and in the reboot process. Getting fantasy out of your system starts out as a hard task. It starts to get easier after a while. Then you notice that your libido starts to completely depart from you, even in your mind. You start to lose all desire for sex. At that point, I started to panic, I tried to force fantasy with little to no results on the penis. Many times I would try to fantasize and I had a hard time constructing a fantasy at all. It was like a skill that I was losing the ability for.
At some point I just completely let go. I figured if fantasy was going to be that hard to conjure, I might as well just relax and let it truly pass away. This results in a flatline of the libido, both in the pants and in the brain (was scaring the SH*T out of me). But, as I said in my last post, the night is darkest before the dawn... Today was incredible! For the first time since I can remember, probably when I was 23 or so, I had spontaneous erections in public induced by nothing more than the presence of beautiful women. I felt like an animal! But in a good way! So I had a breakthrough today after having spent a great deal of effort over the last few weeks letting go of ALL sexual fantasies, even realistic ones.
I am 30 and I literally felt like I was 18 (horny as hell all day spontaneous erections from only visual female contact).I thought my fantasies were becoming less pornographic and more realistic, but I was a poor judge of that. Even a very realistic, first person perspective fantasy compulsively turns into porn in an instant for me. I just couldn't stop watching the video, so to speak. Even if it was me in it, I was still observing. Even if I started out as a participant in the fantasy, I couldn't keep it from morphing into a 3rd person porn viewing fantasy.
Its only a suggestion, but it is working for me. I'm no expert, but if you ask me, your reboot might be being prolonged by your clinging to fantasy. Fantasy takes you out of the moment and the moment is all you have!Fantasy is natural. I don't think anyone can totally lose it. Sexual fantasy is probably healthy for someone who isn't recovering from PMO addiction. But that's not you and it sure as hell is not me!

Have faith! Once your dopamine receptors get heightened again from a lack of stimulation in the form of P or fantasy, I believe that you'll see a similar breakthrough. It's natural to feel like your libido is completely gone, and it's natural to feel concerned about it. I suspect that nothing has actually changed from before the reboot, by which I mean, your body stopped having any real interest in sex/women/dating in real life at some point because P and fantasy (which we know at this point are the same thing) became the only way your brain knows to achieve the reward stimulus. And only when you stopped PMO did you realize the change had taken place.

But they cured stroke patients who had lost function in one hand, by duct taping an oven mitt over the working hand in order to force the brain, through a series of frustrating attempts, to rewire itself and create new pathways to other portions of the brain that would then command movement for the paralyzed hand. I'll bet the patient saw several days where he was completely unable to do anything with either of his hands, and felt a kind of despair at some point, like the experiment was hurting more than it was helping, before his hand reanimated itself. I'm not saying this for sure, but like the post above says, the night is darkest before the dawn.

I'm still way earlier on in my own reboot than you are, but this is just how I see it from what I've read.

 

[anhaedra]

Just keep rebooting man. You're in a better situation than a lot so that's good news. What I HATE about this recovery is that just because you don't feel totally horny, it doesn't mean your dick won't work. Similarly, when you feel totally horny you can be convinced you'll have successful sex, but it doesn't always work.

Reminds me of something I said earlier in my journal. It's not natural to think about sex all the time. But when you're into porn, there's always an opportunity for sex, as long as you have a few minutes and a little private space. So the body thinks it has access to sex anywhere, anytime. So you're used to being horny all the time, to some extent. The slightest trigger is enough.

That all changes when you let porn go. You have to... work... to get sex with women. And there will be times when there is no sex. So it's only natural for you to forget all about sex in the absence of a woman that could grant you the opportunity.

So, perhaps we shouldn't expect to ever return to the point of "random boners all day"... it's just not realistic.

To be honest, during my longest streak (over a month of no PMO) I felt like natural, social contact with women was doing something for me, more than it ever did. Maybe I just wanted it to be that way, but it felt like that for sure. Then I relapsed a few times and it really feels I'm back to square one in that regard. But ever since that time, including last night, I experience way more and better spontaneous social contact with women I meet. And this also includes women that I'm not into... but I just like their company. Not trying to sound too "noble" or anything... but maybe this is about treating women as people first, instead of sexual targets.

But I SO want to feel that sensation of getting hard in your pants from a woman... I miss it so much. But enjoying their company is a start, I guess.

I think meeting the right woman is all I need... but without any libido, that's pretty hard... Catch 22. When I was still dating regularly a while back, I got superhorny from the mere prospect of a date... and that was early in my reboot. With all this de-wiring from porn there has to be a re-wiring to women. Without the re-wiring, you're just... un-wired... you know. That's actually exactly how I feel. Unwired.

Somebody put the plug back in.