"I can control the Zero. F*ck the Zero"

[jnv]

Hello everyone,

I'm jnv and I'm 30. I came upon this forum last year and realized for the first time one could be addicted to porn.

I createad this journal " http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=566.msg5714#msg5714 " which helped me immensely to achieve different goals. I'd like to thank this awesome community for the support and sharing of information. This literally changed my life.

I'll just quote myself from the other journal since my back story didn't change.

Hello there!

How could I start (sorry in advance for any mistake, English isn't my native language) ... Well, I came across this website this weekend after browsing from websites to websites.

I think the beginning of the story is quite basic and common so I'll try to keep it as short as possible. I started watching porn during my early teenage years when my family got high speed internet and I've been doing it every single day since that day. Sometimes only once per day, some other day 5,6,7 times.... I would do it whenever I was bored, horny, sad, etc for whatever reason.

I've always done lots of sports, I had friends etc, so I thought I was exactly the same as every other guy my age except for one thing, girls. For whatever reason, I didn't (even though it's a bit better now, it's not top notch) have the confidence required to get a gf. I had some "friends" who were girls and even though I was told that I was a quite handsome athletic guy I COULDN'T get any to be my gf by lack of confidence and I started to get trapped in a kind of vicious circle of frustration which led to more MPO (to the point I would only be able to get excited only to some sort of fetishes I'd be too ashamed to list.....).

So up until my mid 20s, my only experience with girls was porn and the reason why it happened is mainly because I didn't feel any need at all to get a gf since porn could give me unlimited pleasure in such a short amount of time that the thought of flirting and miking efforts to get a gf seemed too exhausting to me. I started to become really angry with myself because since my teenage years, I've been told by many girls that I was quite handsome, attractive, etc and that if I had some balls and tried something during parties, I could have many pretty girls but ALL I could do during parties was NOTHING AT ALL except watch other guys getting the girls and I start telling me there really was something wrong with me. Just so you can understand how shy I am with girls, 4 years ago, we were coming back from a party and we were around 15 people( 8-9 girls) in a van, I was sitting next to a smoking hot acquaintance who is a model etc. At the time, her relationship was really wobbly and uncertain and she told me something like: "MMhh you are very hot tonight, I feel strange.... I'm kind of horny but I don't know why..." while looking at me in the eyes (we all were a bit drunk but whatever) and all I managed to say to her on the spot was "you are really beautiful too.." because I freaked out... and then we all went to bed...

Well I decided to try and change all of this 3 years ago when I decided to work a lot on myself for a change about how to become more confident with women (PUA etc) so I did the common thing, googling, read a lot on the topic on internet etc and managed to date my first girl ever. It was a huge achievement in my life since it was a cute Asian girl, which was kind of a fantasy of mine (maybe a residue of porn fetishism...). It lasted like 6 month and it was the first time ever I realized no matter how bad or worthless/desperate you think you are, by hard work, you can change and achieve some goals.

During this first experience with that girl, I encountered my first sexual problem, which I first thought would be premature ejaculation but no, the  exact opposite  occured to me. The very first time we tried to make love, I just couldn't have an erection. I immediately made the link with porn and the fact that even though I found this girl extremely attractive and sexy, the stimuli didn't work on me the same way porn did. I then (without knowing all the theory about rebooting etc) improvised a reboot without knowing if it would eventually lead me to any success. After  2 weeks of no PMO and 3 failed attempt with the girl, I managed to keep and erection for a very long time. At that time, I was very satisfied with this improvement and everything went as good for the next 5 months during which I wouldn't PMO at all (this is not exactly correct. I did PMO but using a man masturbation toy simply to get rid of the death grip from classical masturbation, which I thought was a big part of the problem, and it worked quite well since I regained (although very light) some sensibility with the girl in question). Besides the 2 times in the week I would see her, I didn't allow myself to get sexually stimulated (by hands) only for the sake of my sexual health.
During that time, there was still a problem which remained and was the relative numbness of my penis. During the first successful attempt with that girl, even though I managed to keep an erection, I barely had sensations (with condom) and very little by little, by the end of the 6th month, I started to feel something pleasurable (I'd say I went from 5% of sensation to 10%) but the progresses were very slow. In term of sensibility, I was still to the point where seeing her body and her facial expression was what made me keep an erection and wihtout any visual stimuli I'd lose tit.
After that I had 2 quick experiences with other girls but then again, I fell into that vicous circle of low self esteem (it's been the case for the last 2 years) up until this weekend.

So here I am, I came upon this website and the NoFap section on reddit this week end and have started the NoFap thing.

I'm not sure yet (I still have a lot to read on the subject) but i still have hope that by resolving this issue, many other aspects of my life will get better. (better self-esteem, stick to my goal, having more energy, better concentration, behaving more like a man, etc) I don't want to live like this anymore because I really have the feeling that it is actually ruining my life and what could be the best years of it... I would say that my expectations are really huge because I look at this change as a potential rebirth.

Although day 1 and  2 were easy, today on day 3, it was quite difficult because I watched porn quite a few times keeping myself on the edge when I decided to put an end to this. So I decided to erase and empty all of my 750gb worth of porn I gathered on a external hard drive over years because I think I needed a meaningful act to really realize that I needed that change.

I wasn't sure about writing all of this in a journal (it's the first time I confess about that) but this site looks great so I hope I'll learn a lot from this community and that I'll be able to be of help as well!

I decided start a new journal for 2 main reasons:

1) Well, I turned 30 in the meanwhile.  8)
2) I achieved my main goal during this first year fighting pmo and I think it's time to take the next step.

What I learned during this past year is that my main focus has changed a bit. Reading back my first entry posts, I now realize that in the beginning of the process I was more concerned about the interaction with other people and how pmo could help me with that. I first thought that by solving the PMO issue, everything else would be easy. This changed partway. I just thought that if I wasn't proud of who I was and what I did I simply couldn't be confident around people and especially around women I like.

So this was a completely 180? for me and I decided to start a process of general self improvement focussing on different things.

1) Academics: I decided to start studying Law last year a bit after starting my noPMO journey.
2) Working-out: I set myself some fitness goals to be in the best shape possible. (3 years goal)
3) Getting better social skills in general.
4) Break free from PMO.
5) Break free from Video Gaming.

-I achieved number 1) two days ago being accepted in second Year. This is the most important one. I'm a language tutor and this is not what I've always dreamed of. I have a vision of what I want to do later and this step is compulsory. I can say that I literally put 100% of all my energy and effort into number 1) and staying away from PMO and video games paid off.

- Number 2) is in progress. I work-ou 6 times per week and I see great results.

- Number 3) needs some more work but it's improving little by little and I can feel that with each little victory in my life, I'm slowly becoming proud of myself and this has repercussions in my social life.

- Despite the fact that I'm still struggling with number 4) and still relapse now and again, in hindsight the amount of days during which I stayed "clean" is what made me improve in these areas a lot. It's like I've reduced my PMO habits by 99% and thus I gained more time, more energy, more motivation to get productive things done.

- I can say that Number 5) is now behind me. This is linked to number 4) and gave me time and nergy to do other things.



Thanks for reading and have an awesome day!  ;D

 

[jnv]

In my previous journal, I was using an "achievements list" to keep myself motivated and to keep track of improvements in my life so I'll just copy/paste it here and keep completing it.

Achievements:

PMO:

Getting healed from Delayed Ejaculation: UNLOCK
Being able to O through VP: UNLOCK
Getting my first Wet Dream ever: UNLOCK

7 days no Porn: DONE
30 days no Porn: DONE
45 days no Porn: UNLOCK
90 days no Porn: UNLOCK
120 days no Porn: UNLOCK
180 days no Porn: UNLOCK
365 days no Porn: UNLOCK

7 days Nofap: DONE
30 days Nofap: DONE
45 days Nofap: DONE
90 days Nofap: UNLOCK
120 days Nofap: UNLOCK
180 days Nofap: UNLOCK
365 days: Nofap: UNLOCK

Video Games:
30 days no Gaming: DONE
90 days no Gaming: DONE
180 days no Gaming: DONE
270 days no Gaming: DONE
365 days no Gaming: DONE
450 days no Gaming: DONE
540 days no Gaming: UNLOCK
630 days no Gaming: UNLOCK

Work Out:
20 Push Ups straight: DONE
30 Push Ups straight: DONE
40 Push Ups straight: DONE
50 Push Ups straight: UNLOCK

10 Dips straight: DONE
15 Dips straight: DONE
20 Dips straight: UNLOCK
25 Dips straight: UNLOCK
30 Dips straight: UNLOCK

10 Pull Ups straight: DONE
15 Pull Ups straight: DONE
20 Pull Ups straight: UNLOCK
25 Pull Ups straight: UNLOCK
30 Pull Ups straight: UNLOCK

1 One hand Push Up: UNLOCK
5 One hand Push Ups straight: UNLOCK
Mastering the human flag: UNLOCK

Academics:
Law 1st year: DONE
Law 2nd year: UNLOCK
Law 3rd year: UNLOCK
Getting an official B2 level in Dutch: UNLOCK
Getting an official B2 level in Spanish: UNLOCK

 

[pinkerton]

Hey jnv, your story and goals are inspiring. Can I ask what the journal title means? What is it from?

 

[jnv]

Hey pinkerton. Thanks for your kind words.

The title comes from the American series House of Cards. At some point one of the characters explains that he's been counting every single day of sobriety (11 or 12+ years if my memory serves me well) and he decided to stop drinking alcohol mostly for long-term prospects and because he wanted to reach the top. He then said somehting along the lines of: "I'm an alcoholic. I can't control who I am but I can control the zero. Fuck the zero". It  really rang a bell when I watched it a year ago because I had just started my  journal for long-term prospects as well.

 

[sicksecret]

This taught me many stories. I feel that when I finished reading. It makes me very wise up

 

[Ka-Kui]

Hey jnv!

I liked your journal! Loved that list of objectives with the "Done" and "Unlock" things. Very good!

I was away from posting here, but in same way your journal made me came back and try to start a second journal again!

I hope all the best for you and congratulations for your scucess on college.

Let's do this!

 

[jnv]

Hey jnv!

I liked your journal! Loved that list of objectives with the "Done" and "Unlock" things. Very good!

I was away from posting here, but in same way your journal made me came back and try to start a second journal again!

I hope all the best for you and congratulations for your scucess on college.

Let's do this!

Hey there Ka-Kui. Thanks for all the kind words.

I'm happy that my journal could somehow motivate you!

Regarding my "Done" and "Unlock" list, I think that's a remnant of my past as a gamer hehe

I'll try to follow your new journal.

Good luck with your reboot.

This taught me many stories. I feel that when I finished reading. It makes me very wise up

Glad it could help!

 

[jnv]

Day 3:

Doing well so far. I've decided to klamp down on internet and social media for the first time. I just thought that after stopping video gaming, it was time to get a step further and reduce this as well. I found myself surfing the net aimlessly and it has to stop. Insead I try doing productive things.

 

[transform]

Hey Jnv.

I am very inspired by your post.

Could i ask how old you were when you written your first post?

I am 24 and I totally relate to your first post. all my life forget about having a girlfriend, i never kissed a girl yet. my current goal is same as you had on your 20's more or less. Im Learning PUA stuff etc.

''What I learned during this past year is that my main focus has changed a bit. Reading back my first entry posts, I now realize that in the beginning of the process I was more concerned about the interaction with other people and how pmo could help me with that. I first thought that by solving the PMO issue, everything else would be easy. This changed partway. I just thought that if I wasn't proud of who I was and what I did I simply couldn't be confident around people and especially around women I like.[/s][/s]

So this was a completely 180? for me and I decided to start a process of general self improvement focussing on different things''


What you said above is exactly what my belief are currently.  what do you mean by the fact that your focus has changed?

your input will be much appreciated.

 

[jnv]

Hey Jnv.

I am very inspired by your post.

Could i ask how old you were when you written your first post?

I am 24 and I totally relate to your first post. all my life forget about having a girlfriend, i never kissed a girl yet. my current goal is same as you had on your 20's more or less. Im Learning PUA stuff etc.

''What I learned during this past year is that my main focus has changed a bit. Reading back my first entry posts, I now realize that in the beginning of the process I was more concerned about the interaction with other people and how pmo could help me with that. I first thought that by solving the PMO issue, everything else would be easy. This changed partway. I just thought that if I wasn't proud of who I was and what I did I simply couldn't be confident around people and especially around women I like.[/s][/s]

So this was a completely 180? for me and I decided to start a process of general self improvement focussing on different things''


What you said above is exactly what my belief are currently.  what do you mean by the fact that your focus has changed?

your input will be much appreciated.

Hey there Transform and welcome on this forum.

Thank you for your kind words and I'm glad some of my post could be useful to you.

What I meant saying that my focus had changed is this:

As  I wrote, I first thought that I had to work of the PMO/video gaming addiction together with working on my social skills and especially the ones regarding women. I thought I could simply use the confidence boost I would gain from doing away with these addiction to build my skills using PUA stuff etc but I was wrong. Even though applying what PUA sites/forum explain allowed me to kiss and fuck some girls this is not what I am looking for.

I need to use a metaphore to explain this properly. By doing so, I had the impression that I was building a shell around me. A shell of assertiveness, cockyness, full of toolsand tricks that could make me have a wanted reaction from a girl, but it is just a shell at the end of the day. I realised that this shell was useless if I was empty in the inside and the reason why I found myself empty was because I was never really proud of who I was. I could probably fake assurance, but it wasn't me. The problem with that shell is that it works when everything works accordingly to your plans, but as soon as there is a problem, you are powerless.

So I decided a year ago that I had to leave the building of the shell  and instead, I had to work on my core so that I would be truly proud of who I am becoming.

I started this process last year a bit after I started my journal using 3 main axes:
1) Academics
2) Working-out
3) Self-help stuff (meditation, positive thinking, visualization, doing productive things, reading PUA stuff (I still do it since there are many interesting things to learn), reading, learning languages, etc)


By GREATLY improving these 3 areas, there is bound to be a process of self acceptance which will reflec in my interactions with people. My theory is that by being proud of myself, I will build a shell around me that 100% reflects who I am in the inside, unlike the first shell I described earlier. This has only been a year since I started but I already can feel many changes in how I view myself.

Just to give an example of where I am at right now. Even though in the past I managed to successfully have gf and to have sex , I'm still not very at ease with the flirting part of seduction. I'm working a lot on this at the moment with a girl I met this year during the evening lessons. I kind of like her, she likes me too but I don't plan on getting anything more from her than a kiss. I want to use this opportunity to practice my flirting skills with this beautiful lady. I'm learning how to give her genuine compliments, how to sexualize my conversations with her, how to touch her in an assertive manner, how to maintain strong eye contacts, etc... I've had 3 dates with her in the past 30 days so far during which I managed to talk about our past sexual experiences in a confident way and my next "goal" for the next one is to get to the next step. This might sound very trifling for many guys, but these are things I didn't have the confidence and courage to do when I was a teenager because I just didn't believe in myself. So now, I'm using this opportunity together with all this newly acquired energy, motivation, assertiveness to make up for lost time.


btw: I was 29 when I wrote my first post.

 

[transform]

Hey Jnv!

Trust you are doing well!

I have been learning the PUA stuff and ive done approaches and so on  so, but i always thought of the shell i had to put on me! i am not congruent to myself when im doing these stuff and in fact when i do this i feel anxiety because i always feel like im not being true to my self.

I was in the dilemma on weather i should be spending so much time trying to learn these PUA stuff and weather it will be worth it? and is it something i want to do?

Well the answer you have given me!

well done on achieving a lot of the stuff you had set out to do! that's truly an accomplishments! these are the things i'm currently working on to achieve. hopefully i can achieve them soon

I'm so glad i have found your post! you have saved myself at least a year i think! Now i will focus on mainly developing my core self and improve my self image and discover who i! I've been already working on myself but i thought my priority was getting good with girls! Now i know where to focus on!

I appreciate your Reply! Thanks a lot man! i will read it few times to internalize what  you said!

lets do this man we can truly become the best version of our self!

I hope you are doing well!

 

[jnv]

Keep in mine that I have no proof that what I'm trying to will eventually bear fruit so take all of what I said with a grain of salt! But I do believe that it is still the best way to become the best version of ourselves and push our limites!

I had a really bad time motivation-wise these last 2 weeks after my slip. I would have many negative thoughts and would doubt about myself but I think I'm finally back on track.


I wish you the best of luck!

 

[transform]

Hey Man!


Yeah i know what you mean but it feels congruent to myself to work on the core levels so fingers crossed ..im very positive about the future!

Good to hear you are back on it!

To be honest getting back up after a slip is my biggest challenge. I think the key is learning to minimize time between slip and than getting back and our success will be much quicker. so hopefully when i end up slipping i can get straight back in  to this!

wish you all the best! we can do this!

 

[jnv]

Hey Man!


Yeah i know what you mean but it feels congruent to myself to work on the core levels so fingers crossed ..im very positive about the future!

Good to hear you are back on it!

To be honest getting back up after a slip is my biggest challenge. I think the key is learning to minimize time between slip and than getting back and our success will be much quicker. so hopefully when i end up slipping i can get straight back in  to this!

wish you all the best! we can do this!

Yeah, that's what I'm struggling with right now basically. After my 35days Hard Mode a month ago, I haven't been able to do 1 week again and I kind of binged a bit as well....

Other than that, I've decided it was time I start working more on myself and take the next step. I've read a lot of stuff regarding increasing confidence, social skills, etc but now I have to put all of this into practice and gain ground experience.

So Last week, I subcribed to an outing website (no idea if this sounds English at all, basically, that's a website where there are several events organized by members and then you meet strangers at the cinema, restaurant, at a pub, at a paintball club, etc...).

I'm quite at ease when talking to my long time friends, but when it comes to interacting with total strangers, that's a whole different story. So my first event was  first watching a movie and then having a drink. I was together with 2 women my age and it was quite pleasant. We spent 2 hours talking about everything and nothing. I felt a bit of anxiety right before we meet (and I could tell they both were at least as anxious as I was), but as we were talking, it slowly dispersed and this is what I want to improve with. I will use these opportunities to work on my conversation and social skills and track my progress and weaknesses in a notebook until I get 100% confident talking to total strangers in every situation. Practice makes perfect and that trial and error approach is the fastest way to improve IMO.

 

[ArgieRebooter]

JNV,

I'm also after the goal of getting rid of both videogames and porn.
Your achievement list is a nice idea, so I'll borrow it

BTW, if you need help with Spanish, let me know. It's my mother lang.

IMO how many times you relapse is not important. As long as every try was sincere and came from the heart, it was a good investment.

Stay strong and greetings from Argentina.

 

[jnv]

@ ArgieRebooter: Hey that's great. Both of them have a very bad effect on you if it gets out of hand.
Thanks for your support and for the Spanish proposition. 



Day 5:
I'm doing alright at the moment. I'm looking forward to finishing the first week because I haven't been able to do so since the last "big streak" I had.

Yesterday I was feeling like shit. I was feeling very weak and my workout session was really pathetic.

Little urges a times but they are manageable.

 

[jnv]

Day 6:
Motivation is pretty low right now although I have no urge to watch/check porn.

One more day and I'm 1 week free. First time in a long while.

 

[jnv]

Day 7:

I spent the whole day outside, visiting very interesting places.
I'm literally checking girls whenever they wear skirts or shorts and I can't help it.

 

[jnv]

Soon after reaching 7 days, I relapsed again.

I came to a realisation. As time passed, I became too complacent and laidback regarding all of this in my everyday life.

I need to get myself into the same circumstances and mindset I was when I managed to do 40+ days in Hard Core mode.

I need to implement boundaries again.
I need daily visits on this forum.
I need to implement the "positive auto-pilot mode" whenever I encounter triggers or when I start fantasizing.
I need to remind myself of why I do all of this. I must have a clear vision of this every morning.
I have to stop banalising this whole process and I have to make this my priority again.

 

[Philgood63]

That's very true, jnv, banalising this process is the enemy. Me too, it led me almost to relapse today and I would have feeled very sad if I had done this... So you're right : let's make it a priority again. If we can control the zero, we can beat this laidback behaviour ! Take care.