Newbie. Wife of rebooter.

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voidorange

New Member
Hello,
My husband began his journey of abstaining from porn a month ago. At first, things seemed great. We were emotionally closer and he said sex felt better than before. Recently, he’s been unable to maintain an erection or reach orgasm the past few times. I’m completely new to this whole thing and apologize if I sound ignorant. I was hoping to get some suggestions and also hear stories of anyone else who has experienced this. Is this common when rebooting? He never had this problem while he was watching porn, which is very confusing because I thought it was the other way around. Thank you in advance.
 
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canguro

Active Member
Hey voidorange, I would advice you both to read the book "your brain on porn" to understand the mechanics of porn addiction snd recovery! I was very useful for many people here =)
Like truthseeker said, the flatline is a pretty common occurence among rebooters, the most important thing is, that your partner sticks to abstaining and doesn't try to masturbate to porn to test "if everything still works".
 
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otanerferguson

Active Member
It's a mechanism called allostasis. People here call it "The Flatline" and I showed my wife this video to know what to expect. It works when you step away from any kind of addictive/compulsive behavior. It is designed as a survival mechanism that makes you feel shitty for not procuring yourself "the drug", whatever that is, because it mistakens it for something critical (food/shelter/sex) that you need to go back to. Every drug has its withdrawal symptoms and timeline. What happens is that, while you are getting overstimulated with porn (and your body is thinking that it's having sex with all these pornstars), your pleasure thresholds adjusts to cope with the overwhelming stimulus not to fry your circuits (you become desensitized a bit, which you compensate with more stimulation: tabs, weird genres, edging...). Once that stimulus is gone, normal interaction isn't enough to trigger a pleasure response and you become numb. Dead inside, unable to feel pleasure (or get it up). You have to understand that, as cliché as it sounds, it really is not your fault and there's nothing wrong with you or how you look. It can last from a few weeks to years, depending on the severity of the case and resetting mechanisms. Since your hubby didn't suffer from PIED, it might go away quickly in his case. I go over it here in my process. Later I realized that there's really nothing that you can do but wait it out, and enjoy life while things return to normal. However, lately I've been thinking that a Vagus nerve reset to release trauma stored in the body might have done the trick back then. I recuperated in 185 days as I recount here, but everyone is different. You could ask him to do these vagus nerve exercises regularly and see if they work. Congrats on your reboot, it will be shitty for some time, but it will be wonderful for both of you in the long run.
 
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