Well one of my MAJOR goals has definitely been achieved. I can get hard to regular cute girls now when I MO! In addition to girl a few days ago, I was able to get hard just fine to another girl from work (name starts with Ch, again only mentioning this for my own memory) standing up of all things. Also a cute girl for sure, but no porn-star type body. I could NEVER have done this before my reboot
When I M, I'm also using fairly slow strokes which is awesome. There's no longer a need to press out super fast strokes for fear of losing my erection (which I constantly had to do when using porn). I can clearly tell I'm healing. First girl I M'd to maybe 40 days in or so was literally a 10/10. Today, I'm able to M to a girl who's a 7/10 using nothing but my imagination and using a perfectly normal fantasy (no crazy positions / situations / clothing / etc). Can't wait to keep progressing, when I can get hard just fine to girls who I feel are a 6/10 standing up I'll know that I'm just about healed -- though of course gotta finally test it with a real girl.
Honestly the MO has been a good journey for me net net. I've at least had sex with one girl so I have a sense of what sex feels like (vs having to imagine it from scratch, can't imagine how hard that must be), so the MO is really helping me rewire (though of course the best rewiring is done with a partner). Using slow strokes, imagining regular situations, using regular cute girls you see IRL (vs. 10/10 porn stars), trying standing up (which was a problem for me even while using porn!), no death grip -- and despite all that getting consistent strong erections! Honestly I'm so, so happy to have gotten this far. Gives me a lot of confidence I can make it the rest of the way
One last thing just to remind myself -- can't abuse MO. While still better than P by far, more than 1-2x a week of MO is NOT good. At some point might also take a longer break from MO but right now it's really improving my confidence & showing clear markers of improvement so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. Big believer in
@Blondie 's point that it's not black and white but there are some shades of grey. Porn is the true enemy, and I feel like I've really conquered it (though must always be vigilant!). Guess a lot of folks here have never really had problems MOing to fantasy so maybe it's harder to give up P as doing the former isn't as special / good for them. For me, in a ton of ways it feels like MOing to regular fantasy feels just as good (if not better sometimes) than regular porn esp I don't feel crappy afterwards. Anyway long blurbs but I felt I had to get this out & document it for future me