Dudewithaproblem
Member
Hi everyone. I'm 34 and I've been trying to reboot for almost 2 years, but this is my first journal.
I've been mostly off porn the past 2 years and it has helped get my erections back a bit.
However, I still use mild porn every 1-2 weeks, masturbate a few times per week, and occasionally go back to watching something more extreme. I think all this is stunting my recovery.
I never seriously tried to stop masturbating, because I see it as healthy. However, I still struggle to stay hard in partnered situations, and I wonder if cutting out masturbation will help.
So I am quitting porn and masturbation completely to see what happens.
I just started a new reboot. This is the 3rd day.
A bit about my history with this stuff:
I started watching porn in my late teens. I was a virgin until 23, so had a few years of porn before I was with a woman for real.
I also had a Christian upbringing, but am now an atheist. I believe Christianity's negative attitudes towards sex contributed to my sexual frustrations in the first place. It has been a long journey trying to build a healthy sexuality from there. My father also didn't let me date, so I was very late to the party. I only lost my virginity when I was finally able to move out on my own.
My first time having sex, I didn't climax and was able to go for a very long time, which made me think I was a stud. Little did I know it was actually a sign of dysfunction!
I had delayed ejaculation all through my 20s, without realising what it was. I just knew it took me a long time to orgasm during sex and often I would just get tired and stop. My symptoms gradually got worse and around age 30 I realised I had progressed to erectile dysfunction.
I spoke to a doctor, and he gave me Cialis. It helped but I didn't like walking around with flushed red skin for several days every time I took it.
I started to get tiny veins appearing on my nose and ears, and assumed it was the Cialis causing it, so I asked to switch to Viagra. I still got red skin but at least it only lasted a few hours instead of days.
Both these drugs worked sometimes, but sometimes I could be turning red from all the ED drugs in my system and still not get hard. I had also already mostly quit porn, so I went to a doctor again to see if I had low T or something.
I had a bunch of medical tests done, but no physiological cause for ED was found. The doctor concluded the problem must be psychological.
I started seeing a sexual psychotherapist, and she immediately assumed it was performance anxiety. But I knew myself well enough to know that although I now often felt anxiety around sex, the anxiety wasn't the cause of my ED. Before I developed ED, I had sex plenty of times and didn't feel anxious, or could perform even when feeling anxious. Now I was consistently struggling to stay hard, and it was causing anxiety. The anxiety wasn't causing the ED, it was caused by the ED.
After several months of psychotherapy with minimal improvement, I have now decided to try rebooting again.
I'm starting again because I want to try a bit harder than I have been and see where that takes me.
I think what I need to do is just cut out porn and masturbation completely, and only orgasm in partnered situations, so my brain learns to better recognise that sex is with a partner, not by myself. I can still get high quality erections if I use porn, so I know this is possible for me. I know I just need to rewire my brain to respond to real women instead of fake women on a screen.
Thanks for reading if you got this far, and good luck with your reboot!
I've been mostly off porn the past 2 years and it has helped get my erections back a bit.
However, I still use mild porn every 1-2 weeks, masturbate a few times per week, and occasionally go back to watching something more extreme. I think all this is stunting my recovery.
I never seriously tried to stop masturbating, because I see it as healthy. However, I still struggle to stay hard in partnered situations, and I wonder if cutting out masturbation will help.
So I am quitting porn and masturbation completely to see what happens.
I just started a new reboot. This is the 3rd day.
A bit about my history with this stuff:
I started watching porn in my late teens. I was a virgin until 23, so had a few years of porn before I was with a woman for real.
I also had a Christian upbringing, but am now an atheist. I believe Christianity's negative attitudes towards sex contributed to my sexual frustrations in the first place. It has been a long journey trying to build a healthy sexuality from there. My father also didn't let me date, so I was very late to the party. I only lost my virginity when I was finally able to move out on my own.
My first time having sex, I didn't climax and was able to go for a very long time, which made me think I was a stud. Little did I know it was actually a sign of dysfunction!
I had delayed ejaculation all through my 20s, without realising what it was. I just knew it took me a long time to orgasm during sex and often I would just get tired and stop. My symptoms gradually got worse and around age 30 I realised I had progressed to erectile dysfunction.
I spoke to a doctor, and he gave me Cialis. It helped but I didn't like walking around with flushed red skin for several days every time I took it.
I started to get tiny veins appearing on my nose and ears, and assumed it was the Cialis causing it, so I asked to switch to Viagra. I still got red skin but at least it only lasted a few hours instead of days.
Both these drugs worked sometimes, but sometimes I could be turning red from all the ED drugs in my system and still not get hard. I had also already mostly quit porn, so I went to a doctor again to see if I had low T or something.
I had a bunch of medical tests done, but no physiological cause for ED was found. The doctor concluded the problem must be psychological.
I started seeing a sexual psychotherapist, and she immediately assumed it was performance anxiety. But I knew myself well enough to know that although I now often felt anxiety around sex, the anxiety wasn't the cause of my ED. Before I developed ED, I had sex plenty of times and didn't feel anxious, or could perform even when feeling anxious. Now I was consistently struggling to stay hard, and it was causing anxiety. The anxiety wasn't causing the ED, it was caused by the ED.
After several months of psychotherapy with minimal improvement, I have now decided to try rebooting again.
I'm starting again because I want to try a bit harder than I have been and see where that takes me.
I think what I need to do is just cut out porn and masturbation completely, and only orgasm in partnered situations, so my brain learns to better recognise that sex is with a partner, not by myself. I can still get high quality erections if I use porn, so I know this is possible for me. I know I just need to rewire my brain to respond to real women instead of fake women on a screen.
Thanks for reading if you got this far, and good luck with your reboot!