Stuck with PIED

[lpx]

Hello all,


I'm 33 years old, and have been with my first girlfriend for about 5 months now. I occasionally had other brief relationships before, but I always quickly returned to porn. All my life has been about porn. Here's my story in details: http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=296.0


I first tried abstaining in January 2013, had luck for a few months, then on and off. For two months  now I haven't even touched anything.
Having her, my life changed so much, I won't ever consider consuming or touching myself again, even though I have light occasional urges.


I have a severe PIED problem. In the first two months my failure rate was above 90% with her. Since then it has dropped to 50-60%, with increasing frustration. We try 2-3 times per week in average.
In the majority of the cases there is literally zero response.


The only way to make it work is by taking a blue pill. This is something I would really like to avoid since my online source is not necessarily reliable... Although I think that this is the only way currently to rewire the system. It doesn't even help all the time.


I noticed that my penis has lost a lot of sensitivity. Touching doesn't help much. I literally cannot feel, seems numb. I remember of times before, touching was always exciting.


I'm a bit worried, I'm in a total flatline for two months now.


What can I do? What could I expect on the long term? Will it ever work as it should?
Any thoughts I would really appreciate!

 

[savingmysoul]

Welcome to the nation.

I also am struggling with PIED, but i have chosen not to use medication.  Not judging, just my choice.  Several others have used and have had success, others have not used and have had success.  We are all different, and there is no universal recipe for success.

I am still with my wife, and we have had horrible success with my responding to her.  Right after she found out, we were able to be together for a short period of time and then nothing.  I stopped responding.  I am 169 days into my reboot and the success rate is better, but far from what it should be.  Frustration plays a significant role with me too.  Needless to say it is continuing to hurt my wife further.  The research i have done, reading and blogging, seems to point to abstaining for a while.  Does your girlfriend know the reason you are having issues?  I would think that while you are rebooting, you should abstain from O'ing for a period of time.  My wife and i have abstained for a short period (2 weeks - not long enough) and there were some better results with my responses.  Not 100% all the time, but they were natural.  I still have issues - half erections, getting a good erection only to lose it, and times nothing.  I do believe that the short abstinance period helped, but maybe longer would be better.  Also, my sensitivity has increase incredibly over the last 5-1/2 months - and yours will too.

Not everything works for everyone - you will have to gage and manage your own plan.  this can be overcome.  You can get through this!  We all can.  We can be better men, husbands, boyfriends, fathers, etc.  It truely is one day at a time - but find your strength and grab hold.  you can do this.  Stay with the nation, you can find all sorts of support here.

Stay strong!

SMS

 

[Bibbity]

Our stories are very similar.  During reboot my husbands erections were 50/50 and continued this way for a few months.  He read the book "great sex" by Michael Castleman and decided to try his ED method of abstaining for 8 weeks.  We had sex every day but we did not use his penis at all.  Basically the focus was on sensual pleasure and oral sex for me to orgasm.  My husband had no idea how to pleasure me without his penis prior to that so he gained a very important skill and became a better lover in the process.  After the 8 weeks his erections came back 100% and are still great nearly a year later.  He does find that if he orgasms too much he can have issues with erections and if that happens we go back to abstaining for him and pleasure for me for a day or two if needed.  Everyone is different.

As for sensitivity abstaining will help here as well.  Good luck

 

[lpx]

Thanks for the recommendations! I do think that abstaining would help... Although it's not too easy! My girlfriend is fairly young, I told her about the problem, she acknowledged, and since we never mentioned it again. She became more tolerant if problems occur, but planning is not really a possibility.


I can do a couple of days, up to one week with abstaining, which sometimes helps. Her needs are a bit higher than average, and I like to be with her too... We can't really resist each other. For these occasions a pill is a must.


Nowadays there is absolutely zero response without medication. It's a little frightening to me. No morning wood, no nothing at all. Literally, like my spine was broken, it's a body part I have no control over.


I'm quite sure though that I don't have any medical issues. It's only the PIED, nothing else... My mind is wired in a wrong way, and I can't respond to situations even though I really would like to. All my life masturbating, it was a certain position, visual stimulation, alone - that's how I grew up. This new situation with her is completely different, and my body doesn't get turned on.
It's driving me crazy, and there's nothing I could do now.


I'm trying to be patient, I'm expecting several months to see some change... I can only hope it will improve.

 

[savingmysoul]

hey lpx,

patience is the key here.  It is going to take some time.  Everyone is different as to how long, of course depending on your history.  I would recommend you don't put dates to anything.  As I am learning that this may set you up for additional frustration - it has certainly caused my wife and I issues.  Bottom line is if you stay true to your committment to staying away from P & M, and concentrate on your GF, you will get through this.  Morning wood started for me about a month into the reboot, and subsided for a bit, but is back - some days pretty solid.  I am also seeing improvement with my PIED  - have been responding well to my wife and have even had a couple successes at night which for me was horrible (for some reason i responded better in the morning).  it has taken me close to 170 days with no P & no M to get here - small improvements with a lot of work to still be completed. 

There seems to be two components to this - the reboot and rewire.  You can't rewire without a solid reboot.  Those receptors need to reset, and then you will need to undo some fairly significant wiring you (like the rest of us) have developed. 

Point being, this can be overcome, you can get through this - we all can.  Stay strong.

 

[Bibbity]

I can do a couple of days, up to one week with abstaining, which sometimes helps. Her needs are a bit higher than average, and I like to be with her too... We can't really resist each other. For these occasions a pill is a must.

We had sex too.  Sex is not only about penetration.  Sex is about connection and pleasuring your GF.  If she has high needs then please her orally and manually.  We don't need a penis to get off!!  In fact 70% of women can't orgasm through penetration alone so you can still easily satisfy her.  The abstinence is 100% for YOU.  If you want to regain erectile health then it is a must.  Think of it as a training exercise to get in shape for future sexual encounters with your GF where you don't have to worry about whether or not your penis is erect.  Even if you have an off night after abstaining you have a bag of tricks to get her off without your penis.  It's win win for both of you and really takes the pressure off!!

 

[fugu]

Hey man! You came to the right place. The best advice I can give: try to take a period of total abstinence from all orgasm for awhile. 90 days is an arbitrary amount, but it's honestly a good amount of time to go before having an orgasm with your girlfriend. I've found that rewiring without orgasms is the fastest way to reboot, hands down. Spending time cuddling, kissing, and being close is breaks the connection between orgasms and pornography in your mind.

 

[Mart71]

Hi lpx,
I have been in a similar situation (42 years, not much sexual experience, got a horny girlfriend and discovered I have P.I.ED at the same time). My penis is also very much desensitized. In the very beginning my gf tried to give me a bj and when I closed my eyes, I could not tell if he was in her mouth or not. I was devastated and actually cried after that.

I am now in my ninth month of living without porn. I am still together with the same girlfriend and my sex life is ... better than I ever dreamed it could be.

Everyone is different, but here are some pointers that worked for me. Some of them are not what is part of what I call a "clean reboot". So think of it as an alternative opinion.

1) Use the ED drugs and don't worry about them. Worrying as in feeling you should not use them, feel guilty, have doubts. They are a crutch. The problem is in your brain, not (mostly) in your penis. They can help you a little bit, so take all the help you can get. The reasoning is, that your ED is caused by a combination of P.I.ED, anxiety (will it work now?) and stress (will I ever be okay, is the reboot actually working, what will my partner think?). Anxiety and stress can cause ED in healthy men on their own. Using the help of ED drugs can greatly reduce both anxiety and stress, as your confidence grows with repeated successful sex.

2) Alternate sex attempts with resting. For me, this was very important. I'd go with lots of sex (attempts) and lots of rewiring, but then I would also go several weeks with complete abstinence. I am in a long distance relationship and the abstinence came with being apart from my girlfriend. Every time I was together with her again, I had improved and there was progress. This happens still to this day, I just wrote about it in my journal. Many people recommend long abstinence and no sex and then start with gentle sex. For me, having sex on ED drugs after just one month and then progressing as fast as I could worked as well, though I did have all these several week long breaks between the times of everyday sex, that soon also got rougher.

3) Limit your orgasms. Orgasms killed my libido. It was really extreme in the beginning. I would see my gf after several weeks of being apart. I was horny as hell. We'd just jump right into bed, I'd orgasm with PE - and my libido died. I learned to have sex without orgasm for a few days, so I could still have lots of sex, but not completely kill my libido. Orgasm frequency is something you need to keep an eye on.

4) Low sensitivity. As I said, I have this as well and it may have been caused by years of death grip masturbation. And it is likely, that there is an actual physical damage to both skin and nerves of your penis. So it may not just be in your brain. My actual skin is changing from a rough, darker skin to a softer, brighter skin. It goes in patches, so it is very visible. That means: no touching except cleaning or sex, no masturbation without lube, no edging. Avoid masturbation if possible, that includes dry handjobs. Good BJ's have great healing power (once you feel them, it is a good way to keep an erection going without the "stress" of penetration), but your gf must like them.

You can also use lotion to keep the skin smooth.

Use sex positions, that work for you and give you the best stimulation and/or the easiest way to enter. You don't need a 100% percent erection in some positions. Find them and use them, if your partner agrees. For me, that was a combination of using positions where my erections tend to be the strongest (example: I always lose my erection lying down, but standing up or doing "doggy" I last much longer) and finding positions with the right "angle" of my partner's vagina. If she is properly aroused and in the correct position, I can enter with hardly any erection (thankfully those times are behind us). But in the beginning, this is important. Also don't shy away from getting properly aroused yourself during foreplay.

4a) Low sensitivity and ED drugs. Yes, at first they hardly do anything for you. I used 5mg Cialis in the beginning and it had no effect whatsoever. But that gets better with time and at some point you will gain confidence that yes, you can have sex whenever you want. This will push you forward a lot, see point 1)

5) Give it time and be consistant. Start with one year and just accept it will take as long as it takes. Be cool about it and don't stress about it, give it as much time as it needs. The way it is going for me, it will take more than a year, since I keep seeing progress every month. My biggest improvements came in months four to six, but there was progress before and after as well.

6) The time to end ED drugs. By now, I have reduced my ED drugs a lot. My erections using them are so strong, that I can clearly have sex without them. I actually had sex without them a few times and I plan to reduce them even further. However both my libido and my sensitivity are sometimes only mediocre, so I will still keep using them on those days, when we want to have sex anyway. But it is not like when you start using ED drugs now, you will never be able to get rid of them in the future.

Good luck!

 

[lpx]

Dear all,


first, I am sorry for neglecting this thread for months... Second, thank you very much for the valuable comments. They have meant a lot to me. Every single one of you has been a huge help.


Mart71, your post has been of highest value for me. Thank you for sharing your situation, it changed many things in me. I hope you get this. There are many things in parallel.


Since my last post, I had occasional relapses, roughly once per month. I still cannot have control over this.


There are periods, when sex is working perfectly. These normally last 3-4 days. I reach orgasm, all is fine, performace is completely ok. Sometimes I don't even use medication.
Following this peak, I typically have a one week offtime. Nothing works... 7-10 days pass, and I get back to the high peak again.


This is how it has been for me recently. We managed to work around this. Some sensitivity has returned, and the amount of medication I use is decreasing too in the peak periods.


As I'm relapsing more, the off times are getting longer of course... I need to get a better grab on myself.


In the fact that I can be cured, I have hope. Only the relapses I need to have control over. My brain still wants the porn too much, the real life sex does not seem to be enough... I'm in love, I'm happy, sex is great if it works, but I still end up doing it. I'm not sure how to handle this. The urges for porn are incredibly strong... stronger than the ones for real sex. What could I do with my brain?