I want the second chance for normal life

@Orbiter thank you for your words of encouragement, brother. Thank you for continuously supporting and being here for me. Yes, I had 98 days of PMO, and even though it was hard to keep going sometimes, in general, it was pretty awesome to feel getting closer to the goal.
I like round numbers, and I could have reached 100 days streak in the last year continuing into the new year, but, instead, I have just hit Day 2 of my new journey. It is a pity that one single chain of mistakes can ruin so much. Of course, even though I like round numbers and it is always pleasant to hit some milestones, I feel that the ultimate goal of this journey is much more important. Looking back at my journey of 98 days being clean, I can tell that I learnt that I can do even more and that it is possible to stop watching porn and break the addiction.
Also, I got some consistency in my two new habits (both are old habits which I had put on pause for good or bad some time ago) - video gaming (I reinitiated it approximately a half year ago) and doing sports (started while on my PMO abstinence journey). It would be great if I would break the first one during this year, too, but would continue with the second one. I feel good after my training sessions, and I am a bit sad that I stopped it earlier. Now I am skinny fat with the worst combination possible (almost no muscles but still a lot of fat, not enough though to be called simply fat), but I can see a very slight increase in muscle mass. It is still great taking into consideration my bad schedule, poor diet and absence of any equipment). My goal for 2025 will be to lose some or major part of this fat and get a bit more muscles. I don't plan to go to gym, so moderate goals still resonate well with me.
Also would be great to improve my sleep. I will keep diet improvement for 2026.
There is definitely a big work area to be achieved on my psychological state of mind.
First, I did not even want to break my streak, but was easily manipulated into it. So, I need to learn to always stay focused and cold-minded. I do not have any clue on how to do that but it is something to discover in the new year.
Second, my previous message about my failure tells a lot about my impulsive nature, my inability to accept mistakes and extreme self-criticism. I think that I took this failure very close to my heart, because I truly regarded this goal as one of the highest-priority goals for me and failing in it meant that I was thrown to the part of the journey, which was already covered by me. Even if it is not the starting point 98 days ago, but 5, 10, 20 or 50 days ago, yet it makes me more distant from my goal. And it is a shame. Nevertheless, I should not have reacted so furiously, and I have to learn to love myself even though sometimes I make silly mistakes. Instead, I need to find ways to avoid these mistakes in future and reward myself for achieving new milestones.

Happy New Year, everyone! I wish you success in your journey and to win the victory!
 
5 days down the road so far. Yesterday, I saw some provoking posts in Instagram, and thought about masturbating, especially justifying by short enough streak which is not so difficult to rebuild again. Somehow was able to withstand the pressure. So far so good. No serious changes in my feelings, still no MWs, no increase in libido. I think I am in a plateau.

Today, I accidentally saw a video in my phone gallery that I took a bit more than 1 year ago. If I remember correctly, I had my first sexual experience with my girlfriend, and even though I took a huge dose of viagra, it did not help. After that, my girlfriend started to ghost me and I became very frustrated as I was in love with her. The more I wrote to her, the more she ghosted me. Eventually, she started talking to me again, but at the time the video was recorded, I was all alone. In the video, I talk how miserable my life was, that I had have ED for the last 9 years and that it affected everything in my life negatively, from my relations with women, friends, family and colleagues to my desire to study or work. I became indiffirent to many things and felt like I was dead inside.
Sometimes, I watch photos or videos in the internet, and I see a person who is full of genuine emotions, is joyfull and everyone gets pleased just by observing him/her. And on the other side, you have me, who is depressed and not interested in anything except of video games because they help to avoid the real world.
In the end of the video, I finish with the phrase "I have not become who I wanted to become". It hit me hard because this is the truth. My biggest fear is that one day, I will say "I am already an old man, and I have not achieved what I wanted to achieve in life". And I would know that it would be already late. And I will have to continue living my miserable life. So far, I am not that old; however, there are some things that I already won't achieve due to my age. Still there is hope.
This video made me really sad. I understand that I lost my best years to porn and masturbation and ED. And because of it, I took some decisions which changed my life (or did not take decisions which could have changed it) completely.
I do not know how long I need to exclude PMO from my life before I would see any results, and if it would ever happen at all. And if it does, I am not sure whether or not I would be able to live to the full potential. The truth is that I am so accustomed to the way of life with ED, that I will have to learn to live again.
Maybe it is worth not waiting till the magic recovery occurs, and to try to live to your full potential today. And it will actually help you to recover because of new emotions, new spirit of life and the feeling of fulfillment. But I have no any single idea how to start doing it in my case.
 
Yesterday it went as bad as it could have. I might use some triggering words in the description below, so beware.
In the evening, I played video games more than I should have played. I was already feeling very tired, but I continued playing. Then, I entered the shemale escort website. I looked through some profiles with the escort types I like, and, in the photos section, I watched some videos where they had sex with their clients. I did not feel anything at that time, neither arousal nor passion, but if we think a little, it is actually a porn watching.
Then, I re-discovered AI erotics writer. In these websites, you give a short scenario, and the bot continues on developing it. For some reason, I did not write anything normal. Instead, I wrote a scenario of a tall and strong futanari having affair with a normal girl. I do not know why, but this is my favorite porn category. After writing 20 paragraphs or so and letting my sick fantasy to adjust the initially provided plot and make corrections to already quite erotic scenes, I became really turned on. I was touching my instrument and felt how it became a bit harder.
I started convincing myself into masturbation, and made a compromise that it would be without porn watching. I read some journals on the website, where people did it, and while it can be a good compromise for some of the website users, it is definitely not a good one for me, as I had problems with remaining hard during a vaginal sex while I could remain hard during masturbation. I think, this problem can actually be present because of the habit of using a hand instead of a normal way of doing things.
Long story short, I opened the saved items in instagram, and masturbated while looking at the photos of half-naked instagram models.
Immediately after that, I had a pain in my testicles, which I think is normal considering 105 days of O avoidance.

I do not feel good after yesterday, especially because I went to sleep exteremely late and ruined my routine. Again, I did not keep my mind cold and let emotions to take over me.
I think I will delete Instagram for an indefinite period of time. Maybe it will help. Also, need to avoid to stay up till late nights. But of course, I need to find the real root causes and address them.
 

Orbiter

Well-Known Member
Sorry to hear of your recent troubles Iwant. Honestly sounds really rough and I feel your pain being very familiar with having done all those things myself at some point or another. I can't imagine how horrible that'd feel without an O for 105 days, yikes!

I think there is something to be said for searching for these root causes but I caution you moving forward that the knowledge alone might not help as much as you think it will...at least at this stage.

When we go searching for these answers, what are we really searching for at the core of it? An answer? Well then what do we hope to find from that answer? Understanding? Hope?

I think sometimes we have things the wrong way around with this. We look for hope so we can take action but I think more & more hope actually comes from action. Hope is something we can build from the things we do.

So with that working theory, let's just be purely practical for a moment and focus on that. The chain here was from what I can tell is

Video Games -- Not enough sleep or none at all --Acting out

If willpower is a finite resource, an energy that we expend during the day. We need sleep to replenish it right? So how about start with that? Getting a foundation of good regular sleep and build on from there? Just start with this one thing and then tackle the next challenge, one by one.
 
@Orbiter thank you, brother. It is a totally different perspective, which I was not thinking about before you mentioned it. And I think it might actually bring the quicker results!
With O, unfortunately, I think I need to go on even longer runs because I have not seen any significant signs of recovery even after 105 days.
I like to analyze things, to get to the core of the problem, but in my particular case, there are many things that I might forget, or interpret mistakenly, and I think that it might take a lot of time before actually getting to the root cause. The problem with this approach is that you can break down under the heavy burden of some unpleasant memories and negative thoughts. Especially now, when self-esteem and self-confidence are on such a low level. In the end, I can go in cycles again and again before actually getting any positive changes.
I will try to listen to your advice and improve my schedule which will have a positive effect on my life in general.

On Monday evening, I deleted my instagram profile, but kept the application on my phone. On Tuesday, I opened the application by habit at least 10 times after I was checking other social media. I understood how strong was a connection in my brain for this app and that deleting my account was the thing that I should have done much earlier. Additionally, deleting the account created some free time.
Also, since I had not been sleeping good earlier, I went to bed quite early on Tuesday and, even though I did not have enough sleep, I could see the difference with the usual days - I had more energy and my mind was clearer. Yesterday I went to sleep not too late, but not early either - as a result, I had hard time to wake up and to start my day productively.
I also reduced the gaming time in the last two days and it had a positive effect on my wellbeing.
Even though I am still not productive, at least I can see that I removed some of the clutter from my life. Even if I do not fill it in with productive tasks, I think it will be better like this to avoid overloading my brain.
With regards to PMO journey, as we described above, the trigger points were staying up till late night and playing the game longer than I should have. For the last two days, I avoided these behaviors, and it was very easy to sustain to the PMO route. So, I have 2 days of PMO journey now.
 

Orbiter

Well-Known Member
Love this! Lots of action & lots of good, sustainable steps in the right direction.

Re the sleep, it sounds like you've made a great start. Remember your body needs time to adjust to it but give it a few more days and it'll start to feel better. Heck just a couple of good sleeps and you already seem to be yielding some promising results which is awesome.

Also remember, it's not just willpower & focus but we need sleep for our body to adequately replenish testosterone - something that is important for our libido, our exercise, our mood, many of our goals etc.


Good job getting rid of the Instagram. Unless you're marketing a business or some kind of venture on it, it's a Plato's Cave of harmful stimulus, unhealthy distractions & distortions of reality. It's also a never-ending thirst trap which is the last temptation we need lying around. I fully believe once we're in a better position we can engage more healthily with it but I think now might not be our time.

Great stuff Iwant, keep it up!
 
@Orbiter thank you for your unwavering support!

With regards to sleep, it is inconsistent yet, so need to make it a habit to go to sleep earlier. I can definitely see benefits of going to bed before 12:00 AM, which are waking up earlier and having full day ahead, clearer mind and more energy. Probably this was the habit I had to start with. Sometimes there are external factors not allowing to go to bed early as well, but still I think it is possible to make this habit more consistent than it is now.

About instagram, sometimes I miss it and want to re-activate my account, but then I think that the only thing I did there was sending reels to my friends or simply watching some reels in the feed. And I would spend at least 1 hour a day on this. As you said, I did not use it for a business development purpose, so, there is no need to re-activate it at all.
Previously, maybe 10 years ago, I was writing to girls there and asked them for a date. Now I do not see any reason to do that because a) my profile is not cool, I do not have good pictures or interesting content b) my appearance is lower than the average so I will not attract many girls c) even if I get connected to someone, I do not have money to invite her to a date d) even if I go to a date, there is no continuation of the date to a romance or smth like that because of my current sexual problems.
So, I will have to address these problems in reverse order (from d to a) and logically speaking maybe then there will be any use of it for me. As of now, it makes more harm than good.

After removing instagram, and taking into consideration that I am almost always in my room and have minimum interaction with other people, there are not many triggers left. If I go to bed early, it will be easy to control my urges and continue my journey.
After 3 days of PMO avoidance, I feel relatively relaxed and I have low interest in porn or any stimulating activities at the moment.
Let us see how it goes, I will write here from time to time.
 
I still struggle with normalizing my sleep. This night, I went to sleep at 3:30 AM because of the game again. I met there a girl who is 21 years old, and she lives in another part of the world. We exchanged our numbers and started chatting by messaging. She was telling me about her life and her problems.
I was not interested in the conversation at all and was understanding more and more that we were completely different people who shared different values. Yet I continued talking to her and even flirting. Even though I do not find her attractive.
Then, she went to sleep and I continued on playing. After each game, looking at the clock and seeing how late it was, I had a dilemma - to go to sleep or play one more game, and, each time, I chose to play. Only in the end, when I was absolutely exhausted, I decided to go to bed.
I woke up in the morning because my neighbour was going to work and made noise. Yet I spent in my bed two hours because I could not get up. And once I got up, I had a terrible headache.
I want to cry because of my attitude to my precious time, but I think that I left all my power and emotions in the game and now I want to simply sit and recharge slowly.

On the positive side, I was so exhausted after gaming and talking to that girl, that even though I had a thought to masturbate and ruin my day completely, I let it go away immediately.

4 days of PMO avoidance completed.
Energy level 10/100.
 
Hi. The last three days were filled with more action than probably the last three weeks. Without going to further details, I had a lot of interactions with different people. Each day, after I was going home, I was doing nothing for the rest of the day because my energy was drained, but anyway I was involved in more activity than usually. Every of these three days, I woke up quite early, and had a full day ahead which was great! Even though today I was tired and spent one or two hours in the morning doing nothing, I can call it a productive day.
The problem is that I did not have a lot of sleep as even though I tried to go to bed early, I could not fall asleep because of my habit to go to bed at 3:00 AM. So, I did not have a lot of energy. Yet it was easier to get up than usual, probably because I was encouraged by the new conversations that I was going to have the same day.
Unfortunately, this activity is over, so tomorrow I will be back to my usual life in my room. Speaking of which, yesterday, I had a doctor visit, and when I was asked to weigh myself, to my surprise, I discovered that I added 22 pounds in the last 4 months! It is certainly because of my passive schedule and being in my room all the time.
I did not play the game the last two days, and I hope that I won't play tonight as well.

I woke up yesterday morning because of a very strong erection which disappeared as I rolled on the other side. And I was surprised to have it since yesterday I slept particularly bad. Today, just an hour ago, I started touching my penis and it became erected again, and even remained erected (although not to the same level) for a minute after I stood up. I think that these erections can be explained by going to bed earlier, and maybe by new emotions coming to my monotonous life.
Of course, I had some bad things happening at the same time (bad news always find their way at my bay). Nevertheless, this latest activity gave me a lot of good vibes.

I prolonged the number of MO to 8 days, but I do not know how to count P because I entered the transgender escort once again, and saw some videos of them having encounter with their clients for a few seconds.
Now I have less desire to have an encounter with a transgender, and I hope that it will only diminish with time and will be replaced by a natural desire to be with women. Which I still have, but I am afraid of it as I think that I won't be successful due to my ED problems in line with low stamina and strength levels.
 
I have some exciting news: in the beginning of the last week, I noticed some improvement in my erection - I started touching my penis while I was lying on my bed, and it became hard quickly and remained hard for some time. Plus, one time I woke up in the middle of the night because my penis was really hard and it was not comfortable to sleep.
After that, my erections reduced, and I have a plateau, but hopeful to see the new signs of becoming cured. I try to sleep at least 6 hours a day, but I had to stop exercising because I have had a lot of pain in my joints. For now, I will make a pause for some time in my workouts, but will try to prioritize sleep.
Additionally, I noticed that I became lazy and not as ambitious as before - I try to be satisfied with what I have. While it can be good in some cases, I find that my case is not relevant because I am already at the bottom and that I need to work on myself more and not let laziness to take over me.

I still visit the transgender escort website, and it does not make me happy as it acts like an additional barrier between me and normal life.
 
I would like to write a beautiful story about my new achievements, success and few small steps which I was able to do toward the totally cured version of myself. But, unfortunately, it is not the truth. The truth is that I became distant from yesterday's promising signs of treatment and I am in a situation much worse than before. My psychological situation is out of control, even though I have been without MO since the last time I wrote the post. I do not know whether or not I should count the P because of my "new hobby". Anyway, this thought gets deeper and deeper in my mind and I think that I will try intimacy with a transgender even if I regret it later. I understand very well that it is not right and I should not do it considering my beliefs and life rules, but paradoxically enough I cannot let that thought go away. I think about it all my free time, and it drives me crazy.
I already looked at hundreds of escorts and made a shortlist of 5 of who I want to see, and I know their parameters better than the birthday dates of my family members. Instead of building new good habits, developing skills and becoming better, I spend my time on this unhealthy behaviour. I am so weak!
This thought already penetrated so deep in my brain that I am the point now that if my ED is totally cured and I have a fully erected penis and a choice between a beautiful woman and a feminine transgender, I would probably choose a transgender.

I do not know whether I am a bisexual or it is just a strong influence of all kinds of porn throughout all these years plus ED for already more than ten years, but I think I get excited about a thought of being with a transgender more than from a thought of having affair with a woman.
Today and a couple of days ago I was flirting with two women. While they are not completely my type, they are quite nice and I find a woman who I interacted with today hot. When I was flirting with her, I already imagined how we kiss and have intimacy, and it made me excited. But this level of excitement is substantially lower than the excitement I get from the thought of having affair with a transgender.
I do not know anything about my sexuality, because I started watching porn since I was 12, and the first ever porn video I watched was quite abnormal even though it had only women in it. I just know that I have never been attracted to men, I never watched a gay porn and when I tried, I felt disgusting, and I do not want to have any intimacy with men. However, transgender, even feminine, is not a woman because it has mens' attributes. So I do not know who I am sexually. I have never even had a good sex with a woman because I lost my virginity quite late and already was seeing some effects of developping ED at that time.

Maybe I should not post comments like this because they are diminishing my reputation and also can affect badly some people who read it, but I think that the major desert if not the only desert of getting these thoughts comes from porn.
 
The unhealthy thoughts experienced recently were nourished by long late hours spent in the internet on different websites. In parallel, I installed new games on my phone and spent all days playing. As a result, I was tired both physically and psychologically and it led to unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. Two days ago, I masturbated watching an erotic video of an american photomodel in youtube. Yesterday night, before going to bed, I masturbated to the same video.
So, PMO is at 0 days today.

Just 30 minutes ago, I thought about masturbating the third time because the day is already ruined (I masturbated after midnight). I do not plan to do it now, and I hope that I will be able to get out of this crazy turn in my life.

Anyway, I need to reflect what made me so weak lately because before that I had more than 3 months streak, doing sports regularly and at least trying. However, I have to admit that I was also cultivating bad habits at the same time - gaming and escort site visiting.
Do I need to exclude these significant bad habits completely before addressing my porn-related addiction or I can start while working on it at the same time?
 

Orbiter

Well-Known Member
I think a good practice here is firstly, to imagine this life, this you that you're working towards and then look at these habits and really, and I mean really, honestly ask whether they can be a part of this new life, this new you? The answer to this, whether you like the answer or not, should answer everything you're unsure about above.

Keep at it though. You've done great and now that you've proven to yourself you can live without porn and all these habits, you know for sure you can do it!
 
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