A letter to my penis

Dear old friend,

We go way back, but I don’t think we’ve ever been very close. I want to change that. Consider this letter a means of reaching out to you, opening up my mind and heart, and lending you a hand that, for once, intends to be helping. Let it be a celebration of our history together —one that honors the bad moments, of which there were unfortunately plenty, as much as the good ones— and the first step towards reconciliation. Writing this is my way to say thanks, say sorry, and put behind our problems to start fresh with a new and much better relationship.

---------------------------------------------

You were there from the very beginning. A tiny wrinkled peanut sticking out of my newborn body. As I familiarized myself with my own anatomy as a kid, it seemed to me that you were just another part of it, albeit perhaps a weird-looking one. You met a single, very specific purpose, and that was the extent to which I ever paid attention to you. I was not yet aware back then of the unique potential that you had to cause pleasure.

I discovered masturbation when I was ten years old, one night in bed while playing with my stuffed animals. Somehow during this gameplay, I noticed that rubbing one of those soft toys against my crotch gave me a new kind of interesting pleasure. That would eventually evolve into a more sophisticated technique involving my pillow, where I would lay down sitting on one end of it and bend the other end towards my chest, pulling it up and down to firmly but gently stroke you with it. This unusual new game proved to be way more enjoyable than the ones I had been playing before, and the pillow soon replaced my stuffed animals as my favorite toy.

Those early, roughly achieved cum-less orgasms with time developed into a more refined and customary manual practice. I stroked and struck gold. Fapping was a revolutionary discovery — a revelation of the great wonders and pleasures that you could introduce to me. We entered puberty hand in hand, and for a while were pretty much inseparable. During our particular honeymoon phase, anytime and anywhere was good enough to have some fun together.

Even in those initial and exciting days, I could discern the incredible power that those sensations had over me and the dangers of it all. As an early teenager, I did all sorts of crazy stuff just to wank one off, like making erotic drawings of my classmates or that time when I sneaked into my sister’s bedroom to look for her friend’s used panties. My hormones were already starting to drive me nuts and perverting the relationship that I had with you.

Then the Internet arrived, and that’s when I completely lost control.

---------------------------------------------

Getting high-speed Internet at home as a teenager was like gifting an album by The Smiths to a suicidal kid. All of a sudden I had endless fuel for my self-destructive tendencies. I could use porn to keep you hard for as long as I wanted. My young mind filled with horniness and insecurity craved the easy consolation of that momentary bliss and struggled to put any limits to it. The binges extended for more and more hours each time as I developed a crippling addiction to Internet porn.

I compulsively watched porn throughout my whole teenage years, hooked to the dopamine hits that I got from every new video. This addiction consumed me completely and prevented me from developing sexually in healthier ways. For a long time, I ignored the negative impact that porn was causing in my life, but I was even more blind to the effect that all of it was having on you.

It all became a bit too obvious the day that my addiction hit rock bottom. One night, after watching porn for more than seven hours, I noticed I was having problems keeping you hard. It wasn’t uncommon, you always seemed to get tired during long sessions and have a need for an extra gear to keep going. This time, however, nothing seemed to bring you back to life. When I peeked down my pants and looked at you, my heart skipped a beat.

You were barely recognizable. An amorphous pile of overflowed meat, unresponsive to touch and looking wider than tall. After so many hours of stroking, the tight grip of my hand had been too much to bear and you had collapsed under it. In my blind pursuit of more and more new videos to feed my addiction, I had totally disregarded you and, finally, broken you down.

The reality of what I had done to you slowly started to sink in, as I grew out of the mesmerizing effect of porn. Panicking, I tried to google the issue, praying that it wouldn’t be as important as it looked. Eventually I decided to go with it and wait it out for a few days. I was ashamed of you and me, and wanted to hide it all from family and doctors at any cost. Denying you the medical attention that you required was just another way to put my needs first once again. In the end, you recovered on your own and I got back the fully-functional and healthy penis that I didn’t deserve.

Far from contrition, what followed was a fall back into my damned habits. The addiction was by then too deeply ingrained in me for something like that to stop it. I continued to abuse porn and even broke you down again on two other occasions. Only after a long time did I start to gradually back down on my porn usage and make active efforts to combat this addiction. But, by then, it had already caused too much damage to both of us.

---------------------------------------------

My mid-twenties were the period in my life when I finally broke out of my shell and started to lead some sort of dating/love life. I was impatient to get out of my hole of shyness and inexperience, and losing my virginity was the turning point I had been anxiously yearning for so long. Imagine my frustration when I finally got a chance to do it, and you didn’t stand up for me.

I struggled with erectile dysfunction for years, dragging it along with me throughout my whole dating life. And through all of that and for all of it, I blamed you. I blamed you for not getting up in front of any girl — when I most needed you — no matter how much I wanted to have sex with them. I blamed you because you did not seem to have a problem when it was just you and me (and porn), but you retreated the moment things got real and stakes were high. You were the deadlock that stood between me and the accomplishment that I then saw as the key to turning my life around for the better, and I hated you for that.

I now understand that you were not the problem, just another victim. My years of abusing porn had conditioned you to a very specific kind of stimuli, and someone else’s handgrip, a mouth, or a vagina were not what I had trained you for throughout all those years. More importantly, the real blocker had never been in you, but way up here in my head. My acute performance anxiety was keeping me from relaxing and being present, and it was that fear that was ruining the whole experience. It wasn’t fair to ask you to be braver than I was myself.

Since then, I’ve learned to accept my responsibility and work on my issues. Your response to my progress has been amazing and I’m proud of how much we’ve both improved during this time. It hasn’t been easy, but we are at last in a place where we can both enjoy each other again in a healthy way. It makes me really happy to finally be able to have fun together, share you with the person I love, and, even if only after many years of struggle, bring you some well-deserved joy.

---------------------------------------------

We’ve sure had quite a history you and me. I’ve loved you and I’ve hated you. I’ve been disappointed in you. I have mistreated you. I’ve taken pains and pleasure in you. Our path has been full of ups and downs, but at the end of the day we are in this together, and always will be. I want to assure you that I’m committed to making the rest of the path a much better one for both of us. But, before that…

I wanted to say sorry.

I’m sorry about the way I treated you all these years. I’m sorry I abused you, using you as a mere instrument to my addiction. I’m sorry I was ashamed of you and blamed you for my problems. I’m sorry I disregarded your needs and neglected your well-being.

I also wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for always being there for me. Thank you for showing strength and overcoming so many obstacles. Thank you for not giving up on me and coming along in my recovery. Thank you for all the good times we ever had, and the great connection that we finally enjoy together now.

As every boy learns sooner or later, a penis is not just another part of the body.
It’s not something you can neglect or take for granted. Certainly not something to abuse or mistreat. Yet your penis shouldn’t be the center of your world either. It doesn’t prove your worth nor should its pleasure be your only priority. It is neither your enemy nor your God. Your penis is your friend, and you should treat it like one. Be kind to it, respect it. Give it pleasure, but also space when it needs it. Take good care of it and look after its needs. It will give it all back to you times ten and open the door to great pleasures you never even imagined.

This goes for all the good moments that await us.

Penis, my old friend, I love you.

 

I once read someone in the pornfree subreddit who had written a small apology letter to their penis. At the time, I thought it was a very interesting exercise of introspection and —for lack of a less cheesy word— self-love.

So I went ahead and wrote my own letter. This is a slightly shortened version of it. It essentially covers my whole history, touching on all my problems with porn throughout these years. I feel like there was something therapeutic about it and encourage everyone to do a similar exercise. Our penises have suffered our addiction as much as we have and deserve some love!

 

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it

It's great that you are working on cultivating that self-love and that you've seen the benefits of it.
One of the many things that porn addiction feeds off for many of us is precisely the lack of self-esteem and self-love.
I myself have a lot to improve there, and writing this letter was a reminder but also in itself one little step in the right direction.

Anyway, thanks for your words and good luck on your journey!