mousemat1 said:
Hi malando.
malando said:
You've built up your problems so much in your head, you've made them into monuments you can't knock down. Believe it or not, there are men in their 30s who do take girls home with them. Don't blame your circumstances, do the work on yourself to break through these limiting beliefs and intimacy concerns.
We have no idea of how debilitating these problems are for DAO. It might be true that DAO has focused so much on the issues that they now seem insurmountable. I'm sure he knows that he has to
do the work on himself to break through these limiting beliefs, but sometimes it seems so simple for somebody looking in on the problem from the outside when the reality for the sufferer is much different. I think a little more empathy is required by us all.
DepressedAndOut, the rest of malando's points are 100% valid. If you are a recovering porn addict, going to strip joints really is a very bad idea. Of course, couples indulge in all sorts of
pornified actions. However, they act out these scenarios
together. In this way it's not artificial stimulation. It might lead to desensitisation to vanilla sex, but that's another topic.
Well said. I was thinking about this a lot after I made my last post. It feels a lot like my own reboot. We all have an emotional trigger that keeps us going back to porn, and often after we master the physical, physiological and environmental triggers, the emotional ones are still stubbornly holding on. In DAO's case, he has a demon on his shoulder whispering in his ear: "you're worthless, you haven't even gotten laid, you live with your parents... the only way you can get out of this and find comfort is porn and masturbation... what, you don't do that anymore? How about some strippers?". For me it was not too different. It was a frustration of loneliness, seeing life go on to beautiful milestones without me, and constant rejection in social circles. You know how many of those problems were being solved by my porn addiction? Yeah, I don't even need to say, rhetorically or not. I don't say this to tear you down, but to say that I've been there, even if our experiences aren't identical. It is best not to let that little wienie on your shoulder tell you what to do. You went away from it for a long time, so you definitely have a good toolbox, but my guess is your toolbox is full of the physical, physiological and environmental tools, and not enough of the emotional ones.
It is really hard to understand what to do with sexual frustration without a clear idea of what our sexuality is supposed to be. I'm sorry DAO, I don't agree. I don't think we're evolutionarily built for "sleeping around", whether for a period of time before marriage, in lieu of marriage, during, after, or whatever. That is why I linked the youtube video above, and bear in mind the guy talking is an evolutionary scientist. Part of breaking up with porn and masturbation is realizing how much porn has lied to us in our lives. It is an expert at lying. Women love objectification and benefit from it? Lie. We need to ejaculate regularly to be healthy? Lie. We are most emotionally healthy when we have multiple sex partners and meaningless sex? Lie. Any and all talk about controlling sexual/porn urges is just puritanism and unhealthy? Lie. We need to hit a fixed threshold of sexual stimulation to be emotionally healthy? Lie. We need to have lots of sex to understand our own sexuality? Lie. That last one is pretty similar to the one about how we need to watch lots of porn to learn what arouses us. That lies to us in a big way... ask any guy who is hooked on tranny porn. I see regular posts from those guys on these boards, and my heart breaks each time. They're told all these weird things about their sexuality and who they are as men, and the arousal process is so real to them, that they don't know what else to make of it.
Porn, masturbation, strippers, one night stands, they are all the junk food of sex. Little or no nutrition, lots of stuff that is kinda toxic, messes with our bodies, destroys our organs, addictive, only makes us feel good in the moment (if we even get that much), and causes serious long term issues. We can respectfully disagree as adults whether this "junk food" has an acceptable upper limit of use. I have a pretty healthy diet, but just got a cookie at Starbucks that I will have this evening with a nice alcoholic drink (which I also moderate) and I don't feel it hurts my health. Personally I think, especially in this day and age of so much sexual confusion and saturation, there is no acceptable upper limit and we just need to flush all it down the toilet. I also think that goes double for those of us who are trying to reform and re-Form our lives into something better. My evening cookie and beer would be different if I was trying to be a body builder, was diabetic, or was trying to lose weight. But, we shouldn't let the discussion of an acceptable upper limit distract us from the overwhelming consensus that it is junk food plain and simple.
To mousemat1's point, I will say that I CONSISTENTLY hear data and surveys that say that the most sexually satisfied people are the ones in monogamous (usually married) relationships, don't kink it up, and have full lives together as a family, not just as sex partners. This is worth remembering every day during a reboot. Want the best sex you'll ever have in your life? Well, it isn't what they're selling at the strip club.
Lastly (sorry, this is long) I want to say that I don't get onto these boards several times a week to shame people, to push my beliefs on them, to troll, to inflate my own ego, or anything else. I come because I'm a recovering porn addict and I know first hand how awful it is. I come because my heart goes out to everyone who is struggling. I know how true some of these lies can seem. I spent years stuck in my own reboot because I thought "I'd only be able to get out of this if I had
this kind of sexual satisfaction, or if
this was different in my life..." and it held me back in a big way.
DAO - have you tried doing some research to figure out what your sexual philosophy is? It can be religious, but it doesn't have to be. A lot of men in their 20s and 30s are finding a lot of useful stuff from Jordan Peterson, for example. Getting some real life philosophies can help with motivation and focus.
