80% sure I want to do this...

Hi guys,

I'm about 80% sure I want to quit porn and about 20% sure I want to quit masturbation.

My past and present:
I've been obsessively watching porn since I had dial-up-internet in my house, looking back.. I must have started around 15 or perhaps slightly younger.

I never did well with girls in School, I was the typical nice guy.. I didn't have sex with a girl until I was 18 years old. I did have a few opportunities, but I was raised as religious and even though I didn't remain religious, I still regarded sex as a special thing that should only be enjoyed with someone special.

Masturbation didn't feel special to me, it was a disposable thing and a stress release. I was horny a lot and didn't see a problem with looking at porn every chance I was on the computer, which was nearly every day. I very quickly went from looking at soft-core teen stuff to hardcore group sex and rough sex.

I'm now 31 and haven't stopped watching porn for more than a few days in all the years since I started. That's a lot of porn!

Currently my porn habits consist of searching, downloading and watching hours of porn every day. Within the last few years, I've searched almost entirely for interracial porn, preferring to look for interracial gangbangs, blowbangs and cheating porn. Just thinking about it and writing this turns me on.

I have spent so much of my life looking at it, thinking about it and spending so much energy in the world of porn that I am now seriously considering quitting porn altogether.

Like I said -- I'm about 80% sure I want to quit.

The damaging parts of porn have been:

• Lower energy, lost ambition
• Bruising my penis and on various occasions horrible swelling up
• Loss of endless hours of my life: Sometimes, I've masturbated for more than 12 hours, avoiding sleep and going to work feeling completely empty. On many occasions, I've said to myself "ok, I won't watch porn today", then I do, telling myself "only for a few minutes".. but before I know it.. 5 hours have gone by.
• I think it makes me more angry
• I'm never satisfied with the porn I have, I must have over 200GB on external hard drives.. I still long for newer stuff or search endlessly for older videos that I might have missed in the categories I like. I'm even at the stage where I make animations and photoshop pictures to increase the fantasy.

As a side note: Not sure if people on here are familiar with "daygame" (it's meeting women in the daytime) well, I've become very good at it, thanks to years and years of working on myself and facing my fears... so porn hasn't hurt my sex life, it's just the stuff I mentioned above.

In terms of quitting masturbation, I'm not quite as sure.. It seems likely depriving myself for no good reason.. I haven't masturbated without porn for a while, although I'm sure I could easily do it.

I wonder if whoever reads this could give me their thoughts and also their experiences... Similar or different to mine

Thanks

 

Thanks for the responses, it's nice to talk about this and get it out in the open.

I think the most damaging aspect that made me sign up to this site was that often a masturbation session takes hours out of the day and I lose energy and ambition to do my work... it's affecting quite a lot of my time and energy at this point.

However, there is still a voice in my head that says "it's no big deal, it's just escapism and it's fun"

One of the things i mentioned before was that I am good at daygame, I can literally meet 30 girls in a day, on the street, in coffee shops, museums etc.. and get 10 numbers and have a good time.. I'm not saying that to boast, I'm saying it because it is a superpower, compared to how lonely and unable to meet women I was until turning 25. I think the fact that I have that and a love of tantric, respectful, sensual sex in real life counter-acts the extreme fantasy driven porn.

Ahh... I don't know what to do here..Iit's very tempting to commit to it, but like you say it probably needs to be 100% motivation and I don't have that.

Another thing I see a lot on this forum is a big feeling of "guilt" and "shame"... I don't feel that personally - I make no apologies for watching porn, I like it, I don't believe that the porn I watch is shameful at all... I know there is a huge amount of abuse porn out there, but if the porn is negative like that, then I won't watch it.

I would even go as far as saying that some of the porn I watch is beautiful, even the hardcore stuff.. because it's animal expression, and as a human-being I believe that animal type desire is a part of us. it's not a bad thing unless it gets out of control I guess.

I think it's easy to paint porn as an evil, bad addictive thing, but I don't 100% believe that it is, that is probably why I'm not 100% motivation.

As you can see I am quite conflicted... Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

I wasn't expecting that response, that reminds me to re-watch Amadeus.

I do prefer quality relationships, I'm not all that fussed about dating a lot of people to find the right one/s though. In fact because I can choose who I spend my time with the quality of personality, looks and connection are improved, way more than it would be settling for someone who I don't really want to be with.

If I hadn't learned this skill of meeting people, then my porn situation would probably be 10 times worse now.

Having a problem with porn 7 years ago motivated me to go out, be social and face tons of rejection... but it means that now I have the confidence to approach anyone I like.

I was just illustrating a point.. I have many options (just as I'm sure you do) and I don't have a problem connecting or having healthy sex... so, I think that counteracts the porn fantasy world to some extent.

I appreciate your response, any other thoughts would be appreciated

 

Last night I said to myself this is it, I'm stopping (after many hours of the day had been wasted)

Today I'm putting my thoughts out in the open, which has helped. I'm tempted to watch porn again tonight, but I won't, I'm giving a few days at least without doing it.. I will see how I feel.

What's your experience after stopping for a few days or a week? Do you notice any difference/big benefits?

Thanks

 

cool man, that's really positive

I'm currently on day 25 of meditating each morning - I use an app called "Headspace" I recommend it for being more present and valuing life

I hope to hear more about your progress

Some other positive stuff that I'm doing (in addition to at least reducing my porn) is using the website "meetup" and meeting new people who share my interests... maybe that could help you as well

I'm glad there are other people on here to talk to about masturbation, porn and life

thanks for you comments, means a lot

 

Headspace is very helpful, it's helped me to feel strong even when there are a lot of turbulent emotions in my life - very healthy as well, so I gonna keep doing that..

Here's my morning setup, if you're interested:

Wake
Splash water on face and have a small drink of water
Short meditation using the headspace app (just sit in a chair in my bedroom)
Shower
Breakfast
Watch some comedy for 20-30 mins
​

I've tried all sorts of things in the morning, but this seems to be doing me a lot of good.

Meetup was great when I went travelling, met some great people.. good thing about meetup groups is you can decide how social you want to be.. for instance, there is a group (or lots) for watching movies and then chatting a bit afterwards.. or you can go to full on adventures with people - so there's plenty of options for taking slow without that "first day pressure", remember most people who will attend are in a similar situation.. In a new town/city, just want to connect with people, so there's no awkwardness at all really, just ask people where they are from and what else they do etc.. before you know it, you will be more social and feel more connected to the world (at least, that's been my own experience) I personally used to go red and have panic attacks so bad that I had to lock myself in the bathroom for 30 mins, so my advice would be to sign up for a bunch of groups and then decide which ones you want to try.. baby steps are the key, social stuff can feel so hard when you've got used to isolation.

Then there's always the slightly bigger step of learning how to meet and attract people for relationships/fun - like I said, I learned to do daygame, which is much nicer and more natural than going to clubs (which I hate). You could learn to approach people that look interesting and just be social, then learn some skills to cultivate attraction and explore the dating scene a bit. Whatever you do, I think moving in the right direction is the most important thing, we clearly all have bad days/bad years, but moving forward even just a tiny amount can make a big difference to how enjoyable life can be overall.

I've invested tons of time and energy into personal development/self help and even psychology. It works.. does it fix every problem? No.. but life is imperfect isn't it, so maybe just moving forward a tiny amount is all we can do sometimes, the easiest thing, and perhaps most powerful, is helping people/one person - you're helping me and hopefully this message will help you and others a bit.

I'm impressed that you're 7 weeks into this - amazing discipline!

I might do a daily journal on here.. do I need to start a new thread on the forum for that, or can I just keep using this thread?

 

Alcyone..

I'm not sure if you are trying to be negative, but to me it is coming across like that. You seem to be picking at small parts of what I am saying.. It's almost entirely out of context, and your responses don't feel constructive. This is one of the big reasons I tend to avoid forums in general.

I'm not telling anyone how to live their life, and as much as I appreciate your feedback on my posts, I think you and I just see the world very differently. I respect the fact that you are on this forum trying to improve your life, and wish you luck in your journey. However, I would ask that you don't just post negative stuff or preach to me about what is right and wrong and make judgements. We are both human beings finding our way.. let's keep it positive dude.

I don't expect that we will agree on everything, so feel free to share your opinions, but if it's just criticism then there's no real value in it. Have a great day