Why do you do it?

I’ve been trying to work this out myself for a long time. I’ve thought of some inner causes and mental resolutions to fix them, and for a while over June and July I was doing really well, no porn, only the occasional wank, easily able to shrug off the desire to do either much of the time, since then it’s fallen apart with porn and more frequent masturbation. I tasted that freedom and it was great, so why can’t I return to it? I keep trying to do something different each streak to try and obtain different results, but things still aren’t working.

The causes I’ve thought of so far are as follows:

• Stress/fear of failure in life (resolved by reasserting that all I can do is my best, and if I fail I’ll just have to do better next time)
• Impatience to get back to meeting people in societies as part of my plan to find a girlfriend (which has been currently halted by all of this COVID business), annoyance at having such a small window to do so because my new job has early starting hours and late finishing hours (8:30-5:30), and the shame of not having ever had a girlfriend at 22 when so many unremarkable guys do (I can resolve the impatience and annoyance by focusing on getting settled into the 6 months probation of my job because that is the most important thing right now, the shame I can only fix by continuing to look for a girlfriend, which is currently blocked by COVID...)
• Concern that I may have to change myself in ways I don’t want to be more attractive to the opposite gender (I don’t want to be a snarky quip merchant or a fitness fanatic, I’m neither of those and nor do I want to be. I resolve this by maintaining that the right girl will respect me for who I am, I have had some success with building bonds with women in the past so I’m not unattractive to all women, I just should continue to be the best possible me, be more assertive when it comes to showing my desire and should focus on only selecting the girls that I bond the best with day-to-day)
• Anxiety that I may have a homosexual component because of gay fantasies (see my thread about it) when again so many people don’t (why of all people was I cursed with this? Why couldn’t I just be normal like so many dipshits? I resolve this just by trying to ignore it and focus on girls as much as possible, see above)

I don’t know if there are any more, there may well be, I’ll have to delve into my psyche further.

 

Avoiding responsibilities during critical times

 

Before I had a girlfriend it was a lot of curiosity and lust...just the allure of something that I had never imagined. Then I had a girlfriend and was clean for ~2 years, and eventually broke up. Eventually I fell back into PMO, and it was a bit different, as you described. It was more like "dang I wish I could just be physically and emotionally close to a woman I love and this is the only escape that I want right now." Of course it was still horny/lustful sometimes, but more often it was just out of sadness. :/

 

For me personally its my only sexual release, and probably always will be, so I think my biggest issue and why I keep coming back to it is that I haven't fully accepted the absence of a sexual release in my life.