Natural male masturbation?

I fear you'll get very one-sided advice here as, although the site is explicitly not anti-masturbation, most people here believe that it is!

There are three ways of rebooting from porn: easy mode, normal mode, and hard mode. In hard mode you abstain from porn, masturbation, and any orgasms; in normal mode you abstain from porn and masturbation; and in easy mode you just abstain from porn. Easy mode may well work for you. My advice is to try it and see what happens.

My own experience though was that easy mode did not work. When I started trying to give up porn I assumed that masturbation was my ally. I assumed that getting some relief from feeling aroused would help me resist porn. I had some success in easy mode, my longest porn-free streak in easy mode was 22 months, but I always came crashing back into heavy porn use. After I found this site I decided to experiment with giving up masturbation. It has really helped. I have two potential explanations. One is my castle analogy: abstaining from masturbation forms the castle's curtain wall while abstaining from porn is the keep. The other is that although I hoped masturbating would relieve my sexual tension it never felt as good as masturbating with porn, so I was left disappointed and somehow much closer to caving in and using porn.

I think the most important word I have typed in this post so far is "experiment". That's where I see real strength in the community here: experiment, journal your experiences so that you and the rest of us can help you and learn from your experiences. Find what works for you.

Good luck.

 

My suggestion:

Try to experiment and see what it works.

Some go hardcore first - NO PMO. Others just wean it off slowly with no P, then finally no M then finally no O. There's no one right way and be sure to write down your clear objectives.

Why are you doing this? Why are you stopping porn?

Things like that will help you figure out what you want...

Experimentation safely is always good and figuring out what your body needs/wants. If you have hard time without porn, then you know you have addiction.

Document, document, document your experiences. Hope this helps

 

Masturbation is actually extremely uncommon in the wild in the first place and many monkey species (and monkeys are our closest relatives) don't ever masturbate. Also, masturbation is quite illogical to begin with, it's just a coping mechanism for frustration when you can't have sex. More so, there are remote tribes that don't even know how to masturbate, which proves that masturbation is not necessary at all.

I've already discussed this in many other posts and people usually jump at my throat for even mentioning masturbation is not natural/normal, so I won't be back here debating it as it's a waste of time. You can see those comments in the first pinned post of this section.

 

I believe that everything is good in moderation. When things become excessive, that's when they're not healthy.

 

Hi Gaygaz!
I also had trouble with masturbation for a while (join the club, right?). What I found that helped was very simple: stop watching porn, refrain from masturbating in order to gain understanding, and change fantasies to ones more conducive to positive, healthy relationships. That last one just means we develop boundaries for our fantasies focusing on the CREST model: Consent, Respect, Equal understanding of sex and current expectations, Same intelligence, and Trust. Don't get too caught up in this, it's just a guideline for the basic fantasy. Focus on what that means to you. Maybe you don't want your fantasies to necessarily be a means of just getting pleasure, but also a tool to demonstrate to yourself and others how you feel about them.
To do this, we need to understand why we masturbate (because we have sexual feelings) and why watching porn seems so attractive. The answer to that last one is different for everyone, but generally the answers go something like, "I can get exactly what I want." Well, the truth is, what you actually want depends entirely on what you fantasize about. I don't know if you've heard of conditioned stimulus and Pavlov's dogs, but basically you can train an animal to respond a certain way to a stimulus that otherwise would not trigger that response. In other words, what you masturbate to determines what you are attracted to because you are producing a reward for certain stimuli. If every time you thought something might be attractive when you saw it you instead changed your thoughts to it not being attractive, eventually, you would find it not attractive. But it takes work and lots of thought catching.
Once you get that down, try masturbating to something very simple and mundane, and no matter how hard it is, try to bring yourself to ejaculate (without hurting yourself, of course). You will be tempted to fall back into habit, but don't, focus on the good fantasy you created.
Once you got yourself pretty well drawn to this good fantasy, you can start deciding on your own what is and isn't appropriate, and what you can and cannot handle. Remember, you should spend less time masturbating than you do learning. Try to open up to lots of nonsexual experiences, as these will help to bring context to your sexual feelings that wasn't there before.
I sincerely hope the best for you,
nicename.

 

It's all about how you see things.

Edit: how you allow yourself to see things.

 

I blame porn, fast internet, smartphones and social media for the lack of real human interaction in the real world today. Maybe that's just a sign that I'm getting old though

 

On that journey, ofc if you will stick to it, one day you may discover that you are not even gay. That's how fucked up is porn addiction.

 

The problem with not leaving out the MO or M of PMO is that part of the habit is still maintained. It could work but part of your habit cycle will still be retained by your brain nerve center and this may hamper your recovery or may increase your risk of a reset.

Hard mode has some serious benefits in the long-run. It's hard but feels great after some time. But to each their own.

 

It's possible. Anything can happen. Sexuality is complex. That's one fact I learned from reading so many posts.

 

Only you know the answer

 

It's difficult to find a gay man who previously has been straight. Then maybe he would understand what it's like to be bi-sexually but still prefer a relationship with a woman vs a man. The sex it always more intense with the same sex because they know where your buttons are. What complicates all relationships is that we're all human with wants, needs, desires, fantasies, dreams and baggage.