So how do we overcome the coolidge effect?

Maybe we should connect. Your question hits my struggle perfectly and it's why I'm here. I desperately love my wife and want her WHEN we are intimate, but MO wrecks my path to get there. The orgasm hangover is heavy for me and makes me irritable. You hear around here: "anger is not an aphrodisiac." Lol truth hurts.

Openness with my SO has been crucial. I explained to her, after a long process of bringing stuff into conversation, that my goal was to be focused on my wife during intimacy. That meant she had to think about her role--getting beyond thinking of see as something I needed rather than something fun to share. Huge changes there. She didn't want to be an alternative to MO, but she could see that some small changes might be necessary. We are still struggling through this stuff, but struggling together I guess.

 

I've never told my wife about PMO. Not during the 4 years we dated nor during our marriage thus far. I started looking at porn when I was 6 years old. I started fapping to VHS tapes when I was 9/10 and I'm 25 now. It was all I had EVER known.

I quit PMO and I became agitated easier at first. I told her I quit MO and she asked me why I would do that to myself. We had been arguing and fighting a bit around the time and I told her that I believe that it was causing me to be irritated with her. She said "yea right." Within 2 weeks, she was all about it.

I can't fully explain to you a change. The first time I quit I made it about 43 days. I relapsed because of the radio and hearing about a leak that I immediately proceeded to google without hesitation. She knew that same day that I had started fapping again. Just the way I carried myself. I didn't feel regret at the time. I couldn't see a difference, yet somehow she could tell. She even asked me and called me out on it. I of course lied to her and said it wasn't the case.

Our relationship soared when I quit. It took a couple weeks. She noticed quite quickly it was for the best and began to make it a point to have sex more frequently. When it was "her time of the month" she bought me a sex toy and used it. She was committed to this maybe even more than me, and she didn't even know the full extent of it. It helped me, more than she may ever know.

How this is relevant in my experience is this: When I quit pmo, Sex became a new "thing". It was NOT what I had ever experienced. Sex became exponentially better the further removed from PMO I got. It became better than I had ever imagined it could be. This is very hard to explain in words. I thought sex was good before I quit. I liked it, I enjoyed it. I also thought it was "all" it could ever be. The intensity, the fun, it only gets better and better the further removed. To this point, I have only enjoyed the same woman whom I've been with for near 6 years more and more each day.

 

maybe look for coolidge effects in other aspects of life. like eat something new once a week or go with the partner on some vacation or try a new hobby(cooking or swimming) once every 2 months.

 

Start to rebuild by using oxytocin-inducing actions, such as "power hugging", as in this:
http://www.reuniting.info/lazy_way_to_stay_in_love

You'll soon find out that we are focusing on sex and orgasm too much and we feel easily frustrated....by re-connecting to our lover with a lot of bonding behaviors, love will flow a lot more, and sex might be more frequent. You'll have less tendency to focus on what you don't get.