Do streaks add up? Or are you back to square one after a relapse or binge?

well thats great, but keep the progress coming, dont just stop where youre now

 

Honestly, i do.

A full reboot is 90 days, if you relapse twice in 90 days you're nowhere near to accomplish a fool reboot.

 

We are not comparing like for like. of course masturbating once a month is better than multiple times a day - it will do you less damage, it will waste less time and energy and it is less likely to interfere with your love life, your work or study life, etc.

But whether this is an achievement worth celebrating depends on your goals. Do you wish to cut down or do you want freedom from PMo forever? Many of us believe that we can defeat our urges for porn forever and replace them with healthier attitude towards sex, a happy and fulfilled married life, or complete freedom from sexual urges. If this is your goal then occasional porn use will not help, and will probably make it harder - as the urges are worst for an addict after a week or so clean, if you still use occasionally then you will have to rely on extreme acts of willpower forever, and will never achieve the freedom that we seek.

 

The days don't matter. It's the underlying mentality that is important. The problem I see here is going from originally convincing ourselves that "P will not be tolerated at all" to "P is okay as long as I have a long enough streak". If you keep doing this over and over, this creates a new habit where P is okay but first a long streak must be done to earn it. The P at the end is the reward for the good behavior. Read The Power of Habit to learn more about how habits are formed and strengthened.

The brain is not going to change if there's not enough pressure to change--that's how neuro-plasticity works. The brain is astute enough to know it need only wait long enough to get its fix so it will have no incentive to change at all. It will wait patiently 30, 60, or even 90 days of no PMO if it needs to so it can get its reward. I've even done 103 days of hard mode in the past and it was all for nothing because I wasn't serious enough about the change. I believed I had "earned" my relapse at the end.

David Goggins always emphasizes you need to learn to control your brain and not let it control you or you're f*%ked. Give the brain no way out and then it will be forced to change. I highly recommend watching this small part of an interview where he very clearly explains this idea:

 

I actually had this situation for a couple of months. I did it once, then stopped for weeks, then did it again, on and on...
From experience I can say that PMO'ing once every couple of weeks it is not the exact same thing as PMO'ing every day. I can tell you however it does influence the way you see women and the way you see yourself. The impact might not be the exact same, but these thoughts are most definately there.
Fact is, no matter how you look at it, you've got difficulties stopping even if it takes you two full weeks or even a month to give in to break, you still have those difficulties. That's all that matters I think.

 

Having gone over 90 days several times, I think the streaks do add up... but for me, relapsing after 90 days basically makes me at square one again. If you succumb, then you put yourself back in the cycle of addiction. Yes the progress you made benefits you, but that progress means nothing if you relapse and then subsequently fall into the same old patterns for long enough.

Yes, the less you pmo, the better it will be for you

 

Exactly. PMOing once every couple of years is totally different than relapsing once every couple of months if totally different than once ever couple of weeks is totally different than relapsing everyday.
The frequency matters, but if you relapse after say 3 years clean, you can still fall back into the old pattern. Alcoholic should never drink a single drop ever again

 

I won't answer in a theoretical sense but j in a personal one. So anyone who might be reading bear in mind this is one person's experience not necessarily there same as anyone else's experience. I know in qualified to speak to my own experience and I think I have at least a seat at the table of a discussion about this addiction because I'm a lowbottom SPA who hasn't had to use any form of pmo since 3-12-13.

My experience was both, with "back to square one" being sort if first among equals, more helpful to stay there more often.

It's like a heroine addict who ads up twenty streaks of 35 on average... Addict math . Or you could call it meth math