26 days in

Hi guys,

I'm sure ya'll get very long opening posts all the time so I'll try to be as succinct as possible.

I lost my virginity in February and despite waiting so long to lose it [I don't want to say exactly how long because I'm embarrassed] it was an awful experience. We did it with a condom and there was no sensation whatsoever - like zero. I wasn't fully erect but even still, this wasn't exactly what I'd imagined. Even with the blowjob [also my first] I couldn't really feel anything. I didn't cum and haven't seen the girl since. You couldn't pay me $10,000,000 to try again with her because there was a lot of embarrassment, a lot of shame.

That's how I stumbled across the world of NoFap. I tried to investigate why I experienced no sensation and read similar stories as mine. It was attributed to a porn addiction and that was like a Eureka moment. I still felt ashamed of what happened, but a little more optimistic because NoFap represented a light at the end of the tunnel. I've been masturbating since my early teens.

One of my earliest memories of this was waiting for my parents to go to work during the summer so I could use the computer and rub one out. This was about 15 years ago and part of me feels sick for having wasted so much of time and youth on this, but I'm trying to change. I haven't masturbated or orgasmed in 26 days. Sometimes it's really easy, other time it's really hard. Sometimes I find myself getting really horny, just from thoughts. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign.

I say a good sign because surely it's healthy if you can get somewhat erect without the aid of porn? And I say a bad sign because I've also read about the infamous 'flatline' phase, where libido takes a nosedive, but I haven't experienced any of that and it worries me that I'm not doing it right. I have seen boobs by accident in films, and other times I knowingly click on non-nude but sexual photos of women I see on Twitter and things like that, just because it's there.

But I haven't watched a single second of pornography and that centres me again. It's exciting and frightening to know that this is the longest period in 15 years that I haven't watched porn - exciting because I've never been porn-free as a grown man before, but frightening because, as I said, I feel like I've wasted a lot of time for no reason.

I want a girlfriend and children. I want to be happy and this feels like a vital step toward being truly happy, but I'm also scared I'm going to fuck it up for what is essentially two or three seconds of pleasure.

One thing I really would like from ongoing abstinence is a return of normal boners. Well, I say a 'return', but if I've been masturbating habitually since I was very young then it's possible that I've never had a 'normal boner'. I've never in my life had an erection that you could describe as rock hard. Some NoFap guys say that they do get to a point [no pun!] where their erections improve drastically, but others aren't as optimistic.

I'm not going to ask how long it takes for erection quality to improve. I guess it's case-by-case, all relative. In fact I'm not going to ask anything. Overall I feel strong but I know that within seconds it can change, based on something as harmless as a single thought, so any advice to keep me strong would be much appreciated.

Thanks for reading.