Porn doesn't just reveal fetishes, it creates them.

Not exactly. It doesn't create them out of nowhere, it DOES bring out your "natural" fetishes, but it does that in a way that isn't natural and healthy at all. If it wasn't for porn, you wouldn't even know you had those, and that's how it's supposed to go.

 

Very well said. Bravo !

 

I can only speak for myself. I have always been romantically attracted to women not men. I have never had a desire to kiss a man for example. When I first started watching porn as a kid it was regular straight porn as that is all I had access to at first. Then as I would find more risque videos my fetishes would follow. For me at first it was women doing guys with a strap on at first.

To make matters worse it was ALWAYS easier and free to get sex from another man. I could have it whenever I wanted. Women required a bit more effort or $$. This led me to wonder, am I gay, am I bi? What am I?

Only after a long time and learning that I have no interest in men when I have easy access to quality women have I finally concluded I am a heterosexual who has had bisexual experiences.

YMMV

 

I agree that porn creates fetishes. You get used to one thing and find something else a little naughtier. There are so many things I've seen that I wish I could wipe clean from my memory. I'd love to be able to reset to my 13-year-old mind, when just the sight--or even the thought--of a woman without her top was about the most exciting thing imaginable.

If I can't unsee things, then at least I can try to forget them by giving up porn and not reactivating the circuits again and again. Still, it seems to me that calling it a "reboot" is a bit optimistic, because you can't literally erase the memories, you can just stop reinforcing them. If I relapse after a good streak of abstinence, I certainly am turned on by more vanilla things, but sometimes even then there's almost a reflex to push farther and go into the old fetishes. That's the thing that depresses me the most about this whole situation--the idea that I can't really totally reverse all the damage I've done. I mean, I've had pretty good regular sex recently and hope to have a lot of it in the future, but in the past I've had plenty of dysfunction in my sex life, and there's always a lingering fear that that could come back.

 

This is a very interesting discussion, mainly because all the advice out there is confusing.

When you read cases/anecdotes here on nofap, seriously you begin to wonder. For example, when I guy says he started with straight porn but then escalated to gay porn and has had real life gay experiences, my doubting sensors are on high alert.

The question I have, don't all men gay or straight men START with watching normal vanilla straight porn? Because society/religion conditions us to begin with this. Could their escalation be just their normal progression of what they actually like?

On the other hand, when you watch youtube you have many gay/bi youtubers talking about gender fluidity and not KNOWING who you are attracted to. Or being on both side of the spectrum and having to figure it out.

This plays into the idea that gay/bi people really might not know they are gay.

To me, this idea is crazed. If you're fapping to girls fantasising to girls in your class/work place surely you're straight. Why would you need to figure this out?

 

Also just take a look at some of the posts in the emptyclosets forums, which somebody here has mentioned.

https://forum.emptyclosets.com/index.php?forums/sexual-orientation.139/

I mean if the header read nofap, you wouldn't know the difference. They talk mostly about the same things I read here, the only difference is their advice is different.

 

Indeed. Just "watching" porn is an unnatural fetish. Subtract the anonymity of technology and you have a really warped man looking at other people mate. Everyday. For hours. Unnatural!

 

This is what I wonder too, but the thing is we didn't need porn to tell us that girls were attractive, we just always felt it. I think it would be a lot simpler if we were attracted to guys irl, but that's rarely the case. I could fap to gay porn all night, but once I step outside its like reality just kicks in and only girls are attractive.

 

This is interesting as this is what 90% of guys here say when they admit to using gay porn. My question however, is how do I KNOW that when you step out into reality the only reason you're not attracted to guys is because you are worried of the real life repercussions, telling your family/friends as opposed to actually being attracted to a guy.

 

Simple, I don't give a fuck. I mean sure being openly gay would present a unique set of problems, but you'd be a fool to repress it when guys are so much easier than girls. An endless buffet of 6-8/10 guys you could easily bang and have relationships with, pfft sign me up. Itsa hell of a lot better than dealing with hypergamy and woman's insane standards for men.

If you have HOCD you should do some soul searching and determine how you would handle being gay. Would you hide it, repress it, or just do what you want? Knowing me, I'd do what I want regardless of what people think. But it is scary to think you could have some attraction that's buried somewhere deep inside, but that seems unlikely. Its not as if I walk outside and activate my attraction to woman, if I could turn it off I would because its sad seeing so many attractive woman I can't have, but it just hits me like a ton of bricks. I don't see how anyone can bury an attraction to guys if its anywhere close to how I feel about woman.

 

Something I found quite bizarre over time is that types of porn that initially would disgust me later became my strongest cravings. This happened with several different fetishes. At first I thought nothing of it, but then I began to notice and I could actually track the moment when I went from disgust to intrigued to having a strong craving for a particular fetish.

 

This is a good point. I have been doing a lot of thinking myself and I realised that away from porn I have never looked at nor wanted to have sex with any man ever yet I watched gay porn repeatedly and when I came to the site I genuinely thought myself as gay. Now I would say I am straight with the possibility of being open to same-sex attraction down the line although I don't feel it fits who I am at all. I have no issue with being into guys, it's just not who I'm discovering myself to be. It's as if porn has thrown up all these needless layers and bit by bit I am peeling them away as I venture further into recovery. I hit 100+ days recently and although I masturbated I didn't feel the need to view porn because even by then I saw it as a fake window on the world.

Spoiler: This may contain triggers so caution advised. Thanks.

The odd thing about my fantasies throughout my porn use was that a) they never mirrored what I felt in real life at all and b) it was less and less about thinking about having sex and more about being an observer, so fapping to an image of a woman and a vagina as opposed to actually imagining being involved with her. Everything was reduced to holes and looking at someone and playing with myself, as if from a distance like I was in a bubble or something. Porn has completely distorted my mind. I actually reached a point whereby a great looking woman would make it clear she wanted to go to bed with me and I would decline then later when at home by myself I would trawl through her Facebook pages and fap over her likeness instead.

I mean, how crazy is that? I preferred the fantasy over reality.

I met up with someone I hadn't seen for years and porn use has completely corrupted him.

Spoiler: This content may be triggering, please read with caution.

He's also into women peeing and he regaled me with a tale of a woman who came to stay with him and he put a camera into a laundry basket and put it by the side of the bath so he could see and hear her taking a leak on the adjacent toilet. He also told me how he's put adverts on online forums to meet women he can rectally fist.

He's actually done it, one was a school teacher. It beggars belief. He was not like this when I knew him at all. He did view porn but it was standard vanilla stuff.

Spoiler: More triggers

like women fingering themselves and girl-on-girl action

Now he's just become a sicko as we all do the more we expose ourselves to this stuff. What struck me about our conversation was that the usual PIV stuff and connecting with the other person was completely missing from what he was saying. It was all about upping the ante and doing more and more shocking things to the other person rather than being with them. That's what porn does, makes the real seem artificial and vice versa.

 

As a heterosexual man who has been with another man I think this is 100% correct. I only slept with a man because it was so much easier than dealing with women. Think of it like being in prison. All of a sudden in prison all sorts of hetero men become gay because it is all they have.

That said, now that I have the confidence and wisdom of the ages (and probably a slightly lower libido) and I can score with women on a reliable basis I have no desire to sleep with a man at all.

 

I strongly considered it myself. The only thing that saved me was that I've never been a guy with low standards, so for me to fuck another man he would have had to be pretty as hell, borderline transgender, which aren't very easy to find. People say having high standards is a bad thing, but at least it keeps your dick out of needless trouble.