Your Addiction: Porn or Orgasm?

For me personally, I give myself a way out, giving myself permission to orgasm.
So I 've a goal: just live without any form of sexual stimulation.

I am now 13 days without watching anything stimulating.
But in the same time, I don't feel the need to masturbate at all.

 

The think is, imho, that we have to go to the root of our problems.
Porn is not a problem, it is a symptom of a deeper layered issue.

Also, think about this.
Porn has everything to do with tension right?
Or more, with the release of tension.
If you stay relaxed and peaceful, you won't have to release any tension.
If a tension is build up in your body, seek other ways to release it.
For example:
Talk to somebody
Run for an hour.
Hit the wall or your pillow
Pray
Meditate

I think the talking is the most important thing. That's something most men didn't have learned by their father

 

I think the healing process is speeded up by total abstinence. Surely i'm mostly addicted to porn

 

Everybody is different and I know I'm addicted to P and M, so I need total abstinence right now including sex to heal the years of damage I created.

Sex is a natural and healthy part of healing as well, you should try it and as long as you feel okay, and aren't having problems then keep it up. Even though you're still orgasming it's completely natural and good for the mind and body, I say go for it.

 

The issue here is about fantasising not whether you watch porn or not.

If you are 100% present with your partner, not fantasising at all, then thats fine. However, I find this very difficult in early days of recovery. Therefore I need to abstain completely from sex to begin with, until I can be present.

 

From my personal experience I believe masturbation lead me to my reliance and addiction to porn. I started masturbating long before porn was readily available to me, but once porn was so accessible on the internet my masturbation frequency really took off. Porn became the stronger drug, and then I needed more graphic porn as vanilla became bland. I am on day 7, out of 50 some odd years of masturbation multiple times a day. My reboot will take time but so far I am happy with the results. I am sure if I allowed myself to masturbate today, porn would be back on my calendar by tomorrow.

 

I'm not sure. As @Sarah Walker said, "everybody is different". For me the goal was to give up porn (for the resons listed here) but you may have a different set of reasons. Unlike say @Jerk Reaction, @Sarah Walker, and @dhammapada126 I didn't come here to give up masturbation. But the more I read about rebooting and the more I started to admire the experimental nature of this site (i.e. people working out what helps them, trying things out, posting results, helping each other, ...) I decided to try abstaining from masturbation too (I'd given up porn, again, a few days earlier when I joined the forums here.) It has definitely helped me resist pornography. I did not give up sex as I am married and I though that might damage the relationship I was trying to mend, but perhaps a monk-mode 90 day reboot is what will clear you.

Have you decided?

 

Jerk Reaction said it very well: "I am sure if I allowed myself to masturbate today, porn would be back on my calendar by tomorrow." So the "porn vs masturbation" question is a bit of a chicken and egg sort of scenario. It's why curing your addiction to BOTH appear to be the best answer.

Few would call porn "natural". And I would caution us to justify masturbation by calling it "natural".

And I love clever nicknames. Jerk Reaction........priceless.

 

You should consider the relationship between porn and orgasm/excitation. When you eiaculate, if you are used to do it with porn, you are probably strengthening similar pathways in your brain, even if a little different.

The point is to develop new pathways, as disconnected as possible with the old ones.

 

Luckily at this time of my life I do have someone that likes sex. The problem is we don't live together and things happen on weekends that make having sex possible. I would like to blame my PMO addiction to the time my late wife was ill and we didn't have sex,but I know I watched porn way before that time. Right now I am able to have PIV sex with no problem. That is due to my cutting down the PMO sessions. I still don't think I would be able to MO without watching porn videos.i don't think looking at images would work, so I guess I am addicted to porn.

 

It plays both ways. I love the feeling of an orgasm but with porn it made it much better (Back in the days of course). It's like a pizza. You got the pizza (Orgasm) and you want the pizza to taste better so you add the toppings (Porn)

And also if you want to masturbate that's totally up to you. As long as you stay porn free.

 

I like pizza.
But I would compare porn with a pizza with rotten meat within.

 

That works too haha

 

And even worse, it's a stolen pizza

 

I think you should actually stay from all forms of sexual activities for a good 90 days, let your brain recover and rewire after all the years of abuse you been giving it. Only after then should you try to go for more natural sexual activities like sex and staying away from pixels on computer.

 

Totally agree with you, we should recover from years of abuse on our brain first before taking those steps.