Journal. Cheer me on?

Sex is, for me, simply never a solo activity any longer. Its purpose is to grow a couple in intimacy with one another. MO is purely selfish and cheapens the power of sex by turning it into something it was never meant to be. It is performed in isolation (at best) and in the presence of many illusory others (at worst). MO may be acceptable for some, but I do not see any way it can be for the addict.

 

Well done! Excellent progress

However you or others answer this, I would say celebrate the togetherness with your wife regardless of what it means for your battle with PMO. In itself it's a wonderful thing for you to experience and I'm really happy to hear that you have been able to do so recently. Its purpose is not to help you overcome your battle but for your and your wife's enjoyment. If things do get tricky when times like these don't happen, it is bad in the sense that it could lead to sin, but I would also say that's a normal temptation and you shouldn't blame yourself for it. Time apart will always lead us to temptation... what's good or bad is how we manage that temptation.

I think this also relates to Tao's answer to your next question (which I will come to shortly)... togetherness with your wife - though primarily important for its own sake - can be a reminder of what intimacy (sexual or others) is supposed to me. So I would say try to remember this when you are tempted to MO or PMO. These two things are not selfless, intimate activities and therefore they can never replace any time of togetherness with your wife regardless of whether that togetherness is sexual or not.

I was going to answer this more for PMO before I realised you just mention 'MO' here. In any case why I don't MO, by extension, applies also to why I don't also PMO.

Firstly for me there is an extent to which I simply can't explain it. God has put it on my heart not to do it anymore and words can't do justice to the change He has made in this sense. This doesn't mean I'm free from it - I live on the assumption I could fail any time - but the point is my heart is significantly more against it than it ever was, to the extent that most of the time I'm not even resisting anything. I just don't want to do it.

But this followed from a lot of reflection on reasons I can express, that when I came to understand completely in concert with one another one day, the penny dropped and my heart was in a better place.

1. Firstly there is the above point about it not being a truly intimate activity and being a completely selfish act.
2. Then there's the fact that even if I am not using P, I'm still thinking about it. I'm still using real women who I am not married to as objects in fantasies they have no consented to. Even if I think about fictional women, I am forming emotional bonds with them that I should be forming with a real, in-the-flesh wife. In MO, with or without P, I'm trying to have a taster of something I ultimately can't have - intimate sexual relationships - emphasis on the plural - with women who are not my wives.
3. Each episode of such fantasies will never be enough and I will always want more, whether taking the fantasy to a new extreme or actually turning to P, and these are just more steps to something I can't have. I realised therefore that it's all just so futile. Any sexual activity outside marriage is just a stepping stone towards something that God forbids (and of course each step is forbidden in itself anyway). I think this realisation ultimately reinforced the realisation of how selfish it all was too.
4. It serves no true purpose outside sexual gratification either. We might say it helps us relax, but this is where points in my signature come in. If we rely on MO to calm us down or help us cope, we will only be more stressed without it in the future. The idea that stress leads to (P)MO is a lie. The truth is that (P)MO leads to stress.

A lot of the points on futility are covered in the SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION online book I recommended, though worded differently.

 

What are you looking for from MO? Are you finding it? Is it delivering on the promise you are believing with no down side?

 

One thing that helped me in this regard was to begin viewing O as something that belonged only in the context of intimacy with my wife. I repeated this as a truth to myself: Engaging in O solo only led to problems and robbed my wife of a gift that properly belongs to her. Over time, as I replaced the lies in my thinking with this truth, the idea of solo O began to seem very odd, and my inclination for the practice waned. Also, MO only and always led back to P for me, and P is what I have committed never to return to. Now I can see that MO and P were both tied up in lust, and lust is truly the thing that needed excised from my heart and mind. Today, the practice of MO seems bizarre and makes me feel a little unsettled to even consider it. There is nothing there that I want any longer. Whatever small pleasure I may have once enjoyed in MO seems a small, petty thing in light of all I have gained by being rid of it.

 

During the course of my years of sin, I carried with me unceasing shame and guilt. I am a Catholic and over the years, I contritely confessed my ugly sin to a few priests and one or two of them advised me to consider the bible versus concerning the story of the prodigal son. Specifically, they wanted me to focus on how wonderful the son must have felt when the father immediately forgave him without condition.

Their point seemed to be that I needed to embrace the beauty and joy of God's forgiveness and relinquish myself from guilt and shame as part of my healing process but I was unwilling to do so. I felt that my shame and guilt was needed in order to prevent myself from recommitting this sin. How wrong I was!

Shame and guilt were only effective in prompting me to start another reboot. They were completely ineffective in helping me to sustain the process. However, the product of sin is shame and even thinking solely of one's wife while MO is still a sin. If we were to watch ourselves on video committing the act of MO I think it would be evoke feelings of disgust and humiliation. This is because we are not meant to use our bodies in this way. God created us in His own image. What an incredible thing humans are, shouldn't we treat ourselves with the respect with which God created us?

Please be assured, since I have found freedom from this sin, I have found freedom from debilitating guilt and shame and this feeling of freedom is so much better than any session of MO ever was.

 

Each lie of temptation can be countered with truth from our Father. We never need to let the lie take root in our hearts; we can always combat it with truth!

It feels like it is the best thing ever, but that is a lie. The truth is that the good feeling lasts only for a moment, and then the reality sets is of just how empty and hollow PMO is -- and always will be.

It feels like you have to have it, but that is a lie. The truth is that there is nothing there to have. It is all an illusion. In truth, it possesses you. We must not allow this, for the sake of our very souls.

It feels like you cannot focus on anything else, but that is a lie. The truth is that it is P that robs you of your ability to focus. The longer you pay attention to this distraction, the longer your ability to focus will remain fragmented and broken.

You know the Truth. Keep your gaze fixed on him, to the exclusion of all else. Faith is our right response to God's revealing of himself. He is speaking to you now. How will you respond to his voice?

 

Billy Graham's daughter once said that God is a gentleman. He will not foist himself upon us if we don't want Him to. I think God gives us that choice each minute of each day. If we choose P, He allows us to do so. If we cut away the inhibitions of our heart and open it up to Him, He will fill it with the Father's love. A house divided against itself cannot stand and a man cannot worship two masters. We can choose purity, peace and unconditional love offered by the creator of the universe or we can choose the bright shiny package wrapped up by the devil to conceal animalistic, drooling, ugly lust with its inevitable guilt and shame. The choice is really just that stark.

 

We don’t grow in times of comfort, we grow in times of discomfort. Embrace the pain. That’s the pain of you getting tougher.

I was addicted to MO before marriage. I was constantly asking my wife for HJ’s after we got married. This helped to shift my sexual dependence to her and got me out of the habit. It also made me dependent on her for joy, which wasn’t a terribly healthy thing. But better for both of us than solo MO. This doesn’t really constitute advice just trying to relate.

 

We do not need O to live. Many live O-free lives that are rich and full, in perfect contentment. So, why do you think it is that you have made O to be so important in yours?

You are not going to go crazy. Your brain just needs to adapt to a new reality. It will. The difficulty will lessen if you let it happen. If you keep chasing O at your own hands, you will never be free of the compulsion. You can master this. God will provide you all the strength you need to do whatever is required.

 

Hang in there, it gets easier! In my experience, desire for sexual pleasure doesn't go away but it does reduce to a level commensurate with its importance. Certainly, a loving married couple can be gifted with the act of sex but I find that now that I have eliminated P from my life, sex has become more of a fulfilling act of love, for both of us, than short lived gratification.

 

I'd need to understand better how the author is envisioning that working. It seems like a non-sequitur without additional context.

One thing I can say with certainty: If MO is combined with lust, it will never be a helpful practice. If MO can become solely mechanical and the mind not engaged at all during it, I suppose there may be room for it in a healthy life -- but, in that case, I can't help but ask: What's the point?

 

I can't say that this statement is true or false. It may be that frequent MO creates a desire by one partner of the marriage for more sex. If one partner has a drive for more sex but the other does not, will sex be a loving act between a married couple or will it be a purely physical act where one of the partners is simply fulfilling a request or a duty? Love doesn't require sex anymore than sex requires love. Mutually desired sex between a loving married couple can be a beautiful enhancement to love but is there mutual desire if one parter is desirous and the other is simply performing a duty?