After being successful with my first challenge, I want to share my own story

WARNING: This text contains possible triggers! If you are vulnerable to certain triggers or fear that you could be harmed by them, please don't read!

Hi everybody!

Greetings from Germany! I am a 25-year-old guy that entered the NoFap community on Reddit one month ago and decided to start with a 30 day challenge in standard mode. I thought that it might be a good idea to start with a manageable challenge in order to get used to the idea and the lifestyle of NoFap. I didn't want to exclude real-world sexual activities with women although I actually had no sexual encounters during the past 31 days. Anyway, I successfully finished this first challenge yesterday. Having received my first star for my streak that has endured for more than a month now, I want to share my own story with you. Until today, I have never talked with anyone about my problems with fapping, fetishes and my porn addiction but I feel that it is necessary for me to talk about my personal situation in a open and clear manner. And I think that this platform here is optimal for that purpose.

So, how did my life go so for and why did I end up here a couple of weeks ago? Looking back at my personal sexual development, I have to say that it has always been a mixture of two components. On the one hand, I was into "natural" and vanilla things like the majority of people in the world. Although I only had few girlfriends up to today, I dated a lot of women and still regularly do. From this point of view, I never had any problems in my life.

On the other hand, I developed some rather uncommon sexual interests. And to make this clear: I think they have always been a part of me and my sexuality and developed at an early age. So, what kind of interests am I talking about? I have always been fascinated by the idea of women defeating men physically. I don't know, I'm probably fascinated of this because it is "against nature" and so on... I am pretty sure that memories about these ideas go back to a time before my puberty, probably when I was in primary school. Besides, I got curious when I saw a picture of a female bodybuilder in a sports magazine. That was roughly at the same age (before puberty). So, as I grew up, I developed some fetishes beside the vanilla interests that I stated before. In relation to the pre-puberty memories, I developed a fetish for mixed wrestling and strong, muscular women. And here comes porn into play! While I only occasionally fapped to vanilla porn, there was a growing interest in watching videos of mixed wrestling and of muscular women fighting and defeating their weaker male opponents. In the course of the years, I built a huge collection of those videos and made it the stuff I usually fapped to. The sexual desire for mixed wrestling and female muscle domination definitely became stronger over the years. And it definitely grew to an addiction for this kind of porn.

Things got even worse when I encountered erotic hypnosis, femdom hypnosis and femdom POV videos one or two years ago. While I fapped to this kind of stuff every now and then at the beginning, it became a bigger burden for me in 2017. I know, hindsight is always 20/20, but at first, I thought that fapping to these videos is just fun and a kinky game. Now I am aware of the fact that this was a huge misjudgement. Originally, I was curious about giving control to someone else, jerking to feet and obeying commands. But as many other people here stated before, you finally end up jerking to nastier ideas and becoming more and more addicted to these self-proclaimed "femdom goddesses". I even developed fantasies to visit a real-life dominatrix for femdom sessions, an idea I didn't have before.

So, in 2017, I eventually ended up jerking to both mixed wrestling videos and POV femdom quite a lot while my sexual interest in vanilla things decreased. However, I have to say that my main arousal had always been and still was mixed wrestling. I even engaged in two sessions with internationally known female bodybuilders. For those of you who are not familiar with that: it is basically about the woman kicking your ass in wrestling and dominating you, muscle worship and a happy ending (via handjob, blowjob or sex, depends on the female bodybuilder you meet). While I definitely liked the sessions, it was not completely what I expected (of course, due to exaggerated ideas caused by porn) and I had a few problems to remain my hard-on and to get to an orgasm. Altogether, I have to admit that both mixed wrestling and femdom pov/hypnosis porn fucked my brain and my sexual interests. In the end, I even considered watching transwoman porn and CEI (cum-eating instructions, as some kind of a further stage of femdom porn) but luckily, I resisted to jerk off to this stuff. But it wasn't until December 2017 that I realized I had to change something in my life. Within a few weeks, I had sexual encounters with two different women (don't get the wrong end of the stick: I am not the guy that fucks a large number of women here and there. I just don't have a girlfriend at the moment and engage in loose sexual relationships by occasion). Both times, I wasn't able to get and/or keep a hard-on and therefore I wasn't able to have sex with those really handsome women. I analyzed my personal situation and realized that the problem was my massive porn consumption and that I suffer from a PIED. This finally led me to NoFap and I signed up for my first challenge in order to make a change in my life.

So, how did it go during the first month? At first, I had some problems to realize my situations and face the fact that I harmed parts of my life due to my porn addiction. However, it became easier to accept the situation over the course of the weeks. While the second week was quite easy since I was on skiing holidays, the third week was very hard to survive. Urges and fantasies occurred more often and more intense but I managed to weather the storm. The last few days became a bit easier again although I have to admit that I sometimes have difficulties to avoid fantasies and engage a bit to long in them (fantasies of all kind: mixed wrestling, femdom, transwomen etc...). I probably have to find an additional channel to fill the void after having quit porn. However, the last three or four days were better again and I'm optimistic that I will successfully improve my focus and behaviour in order to benefit from NoFap.

I haven't really experienced the proclaimed super-powers yet. But to be honest, I don't mind about that since I already realized some small improvements in my life. I am slightly better organized now, I definitely don't waste too much time anymore and therefore have more time for all sorts of things. And I even observed small improvements in my sexual behaviour. For instance, I got a hard-on when the girlfriend of a friend of mine told me that I would be the perfect boyfriend for one of her female friends. That was a reaction I haven't experienced in years and it felt amazing.

In conclusion, I am totally happy that I started with NoFap and proud that I was successful with my first challenge. I know that I still have a long way to go but regarding the first positive effects of being abstinent of PMO (especially porn and masturbation), I feel very motivated to continue. I immediately set another challenge of 60 days. Combined with my first 30-day challenge, this would sum up to the "magical" 90 days which I would consider as a first remarkable achievement.

Sorry for this extremely long text but I felt that I have to share my inner thoughts with you guys. This is a great community and we can and will definitely reach our goals together! Keep it up!

Kind regards, TR Styles

 

Hey @StopTheMusic,

thank you for your reply and your advice! I haven't set up a journal in this forum yet but I'm going to start one pretty soon. During the first 30 days, I rather engaged at the NoFap subreddit. I'm going to organize my profile and be more active here as soon as I'll get more free time to do so. This will definitely include following your advice and reading some journals

Kind regards,
TR Styles

 

Hey @J4102,

thanks for your reply! I just glanced at your journal a few moments ago. And in combination with your post here, I'd like to give you the advise to take it easy and to not be so hard on yourself. Every person is different and so are the individual starting points here at NoFap. I would describe myself as a quite focused and ambitious person but don't have the misconception that my current streak of 30+ days ways plain sailing! It is usually an up and down, there are good days like today and there are worse days with a lot of urges or slight headaches. So, you are definitely not alone with your situation and a lot of people here - including myself - share the same or similar problems.

At the moment, I feel quite motivated and self-confident to continue my streak. If I succeed, I would be glad if that is motivation for you, too. But keep in mind that it will probably take a while to cope with this difficult situation and that there will almost certainly be setbacks and obstacles to overcome. However, don't get discouraged! Try to analyse and learn from your difficulties and relapses.

Would be cool to stay in contact with you! We'll be able to reach our mutual goals together

Kind regards,
TR Styles

 

Of course, I don't really know you yet. Therefore, it's hard to estimate your behaviour, your experiences and your current status at NoFap. However, always keep in mind that this is rather a marathon than a sprint. What helps me to bypass (or even avoid) urges is to keep myself busy. In the first place busy with my occupation (job, school, university or whatever). But you definitely have to look for further activities to fill the void. Notably, I experienced to feel absolutely no need for PMO when I'm out with my friends. Furthermore, there are other things like reading, sports (for me it's football and working out in the gym) or even this forum that help me to keep the right track. And I'm totally sure that you can find a lot of activities of your interest, too

I just set up my own journal. It is linked to my profile. I'd be glad if you took a look there from time to time.

Kind regards,
TR Styles

 

Hey @Keebs0113,

yeah, in the narrower sense, on the first try with NoFap.

Over the course of the years, there were a few situations where I made rather halfhearted attempts to stay away from extreme porn. Similar to what you suggested here, I tried to only masturbate to vanilla porn or just pictures of attractive celebrities or female friends. But that wasn't successful. Probably because I wasn't really prepared and organized. I didn't have a plan back then - in contrast to the current situation with the help of NoFap. Moreover, I think that complete abstinence from all kinds of porn AND masturbation is more likely to lead you to long streaks and success but that might also depend on the single individual. Therefore, I started to stay away from PM entirely (or as you described it "cold turkey").

There are phases in the double digits where it gets indeed harder. But the longer you are able to deal with your problems and urges, the more you get used to it. That's my current impression.

Kind regards,
TR Styles

 

That's exactly the point! In my opinion, one has to create a distance to porn and the things that could potentially be harmful. Once you let those things getting close to yourself (either by peeking/edging or by trying to fap to other stuff), there's a good chance that you fall for it.

Kind regards,
TR Styles

PS: Following each other in this forum could help supporting each other and achieving our goals. Feel free to add me to your list, guys!

 

Hey @Big Al O))),

sorry for my delayed response! I was quite busy during the past couple of days...

Firstly, you can start a journal by opening a new thread in the forum's subsection "Reboot Logs". Look at the main page of this board, scroll down and select the appropriate section regarding your age. Subsequently, your journal can be added to your profile via the Personal Details page.

And secondly, it is - roughly spoken - up to you where you post your challenge. There are threads for all kinds of challenges in the "Rebooting" forum. You can either post a reply in one of those threads in order to set up your challenge or you just mention it in one of your personal threads. In the end, those challenges are nothing official but rather something you have to deal with for yourself. I see them as a tool that encourages us to keep the reboot up. Speaking for myself, I can say that those challenges motivate me to go through difficult phases and stay away from PM(O).

Kind regards,
TR Styles

 

Hey @Protagoras,

nice to hear from you! But what do you mean exactly? For me, this wrestling and femdom stuff is the sort of porn that I was addicted to. I actually consider it as porn since it has the same effects to me/us that vanilla porn has to other users here. So, did you suffer from watching those kinds of videos, too? Or is it rather a real-life thing that you can't get rid of (for example wrestling and domination sessions)?

Looking forward to hearing from you again! It's always good to meet persons with similar addictions and experiences.

Kind regards,
TR Styles

 

Okay, then we have definitely made similar experiences. I didn't have a session since July 2017 and have been clean of videos for more than two months now. But it's nice to hear that you have been abstinent for such a long time

But one more question about your situation: Why is your counter at 22 days? What was your relapse (or at least what you considered as a relapse) when it wasn't the wrestling/femdom videos?

Kind regards,
TR Styles