Support needed!

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BENBHAM

New Member
Hi Guys,

I began my journey on nofap on January 1st 2014. I had a girlfriend of 5 years and when we broke up i realised that i had PIED after unsuccessful sex attempts with 3 women.

The highest nofap run i have made was 34 days and i felt great, however i now cannot go past the 8 day mark. I feel i needed to document my progress to help me achieve the 90 day mark and would really appreciate any encouragement from you guys.

I am willing to help and support anyone in return, and share my thoughts etc.

Many thanks
 
Taka

Taka

Member
Hello BENBHAM. I was in the same place as you are. I have had some good streaks. Longest one was almost 40 days. But I did get to a point where I could not get past several days and was binging like hell. The thing is to remember the benefits you have got from the no fap streak. My latest relapse was caused by a lot of stress. Then one day I realized that PMO does not feel that good as the first day I relapsed. I have decided to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of my previous attempts and go hardcore mode. Not even sex is an option for me now. And guess what? It is actually is easier. I also deleted anything related to porn form my laptop and installed a web filter. I did not felt the urge to type adresses of those sites since the filter is there.

You can do it. Keep strong!
 
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BENBHAM

New Member
Taka thanks for your support. On the 34 day streak i felt that i was never going to relapse, then low and behold I relapsed and was back down to zero. I am too going to go hardmode, as what caused me to relapse the first time was through the well known 'chaser effect'. Its so frustrating as i go a 3-8 days and feel good, then suddenly i will get an urge and relapse. I relapsed this morning so i am starting today from zero. I note that you are currently on a 20 day streak.. do you have a set goal in mind?
 
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Twostroke

Member
Hi BENHAB, did you get the chaser effect after having real sex? I'm new to all this stuff and learning the vocabulary. I am 30 days no PMO and had sex with my girlfriend 2 days ago, so i'm a bit concerned about the chaser effect, so would be interested to know how it came about for you?
 
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BENBHAM

New Member
Hi Twostroke, as previously mentioned i went on a 34 day streak of no PMO. I had a girl stay come over around the 32nd/33rd evening and had two O's, which resulted in a chaser effect yes.
 
Taka

Taka

Member
BENBHAM said:
I relapsed this morning so i am starting today from zero. I note that you are currently on a 20 day streak.. do you have a set goal in mind?
Click to expand...
Well I do not have particular goal. I am just trying to make a day by day progress and report it if I feel like it. It can actually help to look at your progress and it can help you decide not to do it. I have also started a journal here. I am lucky to get my mind pre-occupied with other things right now. I get you on the chaser effect. I think I did have kind of retarded chaser effect at my longest streak because I did have sex on day 30 and few days after that I felt so horny and could not take it. So that is what was behind my decision to go hardcore mode. I mean you can try this...if you really think you cannot take it and you have to masturbate then turn off your PC immediately and try to do it without porn or try to cool down. That may be the impulse to get back on track with the reboot.
 
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Twostroke

Member
I'm coming to think that the no MO route may make things more difficult because it leads to a huge build up sexual frustration that is then going to surely make you more sensitive to triggers and cravings. Would masturbating not be a way to relieve that sexual frustration and therefore reduce cravings. The thing is just never M to porn. after a while won't your brain get used to the fact that you don't need porn? You can masturbate 'clean' when you need to to relieve the urges.

After all it's porn we're trying to quit. I'm coming round to thinking that quitting masturbation is just an unnecessary 'punishment'. We are all human and all have sexual urges, that is natural and there's nothing wrong with that. Trying to suppress it all just leads to huge pressure building inside and nowhere for it to go!

I don't see anything wrong with masturbating on occasion ease the transition away from porn, and get your brain used to healthy masturbation without porn. I know the argument that P and M can be so closely associated that initially it can be impossible not to think of P when doing M. So maybe there does need to be an initial period of no MO to reduce that association.

I'm in a long distance relationship which means i see my girlfriend about every 2 weeks. I was using porn and phone sex in the times between seeing her, and it did get to the stage where i was more turned on by then fantasy stuff than her. I didn't have any PIED problems but i did have DE problems.

I have been phone sex free for nearly 4 months, and Porn free for 1 month. In that 1 month i have MO once, which was after 2 weeks
of PMO. I mainly focused on the sensations with some thoughts about my girlfriend and i was surprised how quickly i got hard and came just with gentle masturbation. Before i found it difficult to cum without porn even giving a good go with the death grip! so i feel i have definitely made progress. Also this weekend i had sex with my girlfriend twice and found it much easier to cum. Before i often had to think about P when i was with her to be able to cum.

That was two days ago and i can feel the sexual tension building, ie the chaser effect. Do i struggle with it and suppress the urges it causes or just have a nice gentle wank without any porn to relieve the tension?
 
Taka

Taka

Member
Yes Twostroke, I also think masturbating from time to time during reboot is not that harmful but I think first few weeks or mb even first few month you should not touch your penis. It is because you are so used to masturbation with porn that it becomes a slippery slope. You may try to do it without porn but it might backfire to start using porn again. Again, everybody is different and our own mistakes usually teach us why we have failed the rebooting process. I think every single one of us can feel when they are really ready to start occasional MO without P. For example I do not think it is an option for me right now to quit MO for longer than 3 or 4 months since I do not have a girlfriend at the time. Some people might stop masturbationg alltogether but as you said everybody has urges that are only natural.
 
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Twostroke

Member
Thanks for the reply Taka, i think i'm going to try occasional MO and see what happens. At the moment i don't think it can be any worse than trying to deal with so much sexual frustration that i feel like i'm going to burst, and i feel that is more likely to cause me to relapse than MO.
I hope i don't end up eating my words. but i guess we all must try different things out and see what works for each of us.
I admire your intention to quit MO for 3-4 months, that seems like an age to me, but if you think that's what is right for you then i wish you well in that endeavour.
 
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PhoenixRevival

Member
TwoStroke, I thought same as you 3 days ago, why stop that natural masturbation? only stopping porn is not enough?
I am on day3, and somehow no masturbation is helping me recover faster since I have more energy. I am more alert, more concentrated. Maybe my sperms have started
swimming to my head is the cause :)

MAsturbation was draining life out of me.
I can't fathom to masturbate and somehow not having to think of porn at the last instant. Can you really do that?
I mean you ejaculating without any pressure, what's the use?

 
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Twostroke

Member
Well i did MO today, and i can honestly say that i didn't think about porn at all, i just didn't need to. I just focused on the sensations and some memories of the sex i had with my girlfriend at the weekend. It felt great, almost life affirming and i've had no hangover effect today.

Maybe i have got to the stage in my recovery where i can masturbate without associating it with porn. It certainly felt like that today, and i hope that is the case. I'm thinking now that i just don't need porn to get off, whereas before i couldn't masturbate to O without porn. Now i know that i can, it has made me more relaxed that i genuinely don't need porn anymore, i can get relief without it. 

So far MO doesn't seem to have increased any cravings for porn either, in fact at the moment it's done the opposite as it's like my brain now realises i don't actually need porn to function normally sexually. Whereas i saw porn before as something to help me achieve orgasm, now i understand that for me it had a negative effect on my sexual functioning.

It's early days and i'll see how it goes, but so far so good and i hope i have unwired that masturbation=porn connection!
 
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PhoenixRevival

Member
I read somewhere that.. Well to put it in context, say if you masturbate thinking of your girlfriend,
you may end up have unrealistic expectations from her. When you have sex with her, you might get
frustrated if the sex is not up to what you fantasized about. The danger I believe is to fantasize within limits,
but is that really possible? Because right now, I want to MO thinking about my wife. But am scared this distorts
my reality. Am i dramatising?
 
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Twostroke

Member
I don't know Phoenix, i can only speak for myself. When i thought about my girlfriend i was using memories of things we'd actually done, so i wasn't fantasising about things i'd like her to do, and i can honestly say i didn't feel that there was any porn influence on my thoughts. I was concerned about that before hand and wasn't sure if when i masturbated that i'd automatically think porn. I was pleased and relieved that wasn't the case.

At this moment in time i do feel it was a positive experience, and it feels more right for me than complete abstinence from M, but as i've said before that maybe i'm at a stage of recovery that means it is ok for me. I'm certainly not advocating it for everyone. We're all different and our problems and requirements for recovery will all have differences.

For me for now i'm going to allow occasional MO, with the hope that i get increasingly accustomed to M with no need for P. I want to see  if my brain accepts that if i don't need porn to achieve O then the desire for porn will fade.

I would say that if you can't M without your thoughts being porn influenced then maybe it isn't the right time to try. The dilemma i guess is that you won't know until you do try, but that has to be your call based on where you feel you are in your recovery, and how likely you feel it may trigger a PMO relapse. If it feels too risky at the moment, then maybe give it more time.
 
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