Is it essential to give up masturbation?

Hi all,

I gave up porn about 80 days ago and i'm still in a 'flat-line' period. I was under the impression after reading a flat-line-related article online- which caused me to give up porn in the first place, as I had been experiencing feelings of low libido etc for a number of years- that you could simply 'reboot' your sensitivity to sex by JUST giving up porn. As such, I've still been masturbating approximately at an average of a couple of times a week, however, there was one period lasting about 4 weeks where I didn't masturbate once, early on in the porn-abstinence phase. Since that 4-week period, I've had a slight increase in libido (hence masturbating without porn occasionally), however my libido is still pretty low, so still definitely experiencing a flat-line.

My questions is: is it completely necessary to give up masturbation as well, or does it simply speed up the recovery process if you do? The arousal I get from masturbation isn't nearly as extreme as from the porn I used to watch, however, if giving up masturbation would give me good libido and remove this flat-line phase, then i'd be very, very happy to do it.

I should add that i've slept at a 'sort of' GFs house on a couple of occasions in the past couple of months and had absolutely no desire for sex, suggesting that I still am 100% in a flat-line phase.

An answer to this would be very much appreciated and i'm willing to give up masturbation 100 times over if it sorts me out. Please let me know if I need to explain things better. This is a great website, thanks!

 

Thanks a lot for the response, that's helpful. Looks like i'm going for a nofap approach as well then, starting today- let's see what happens!