A life on PMO rebooted

Hi everybody, this is to introduce myself, I apologize for the excessive length.

First of all, I am from Spain, Electrical Engineer, 56 and I have been on PMO since I was 14 or so through 54. I would maybe take away the “P” when I was a little kid since masturbation came to me naturally and I remember getting really horny just watching girls dance on tv.

I was never happy with fapping and I always felt bad about it. I went through my teenage years addicted to soft porn magazines in a kind of intermittent mode, but that whole thing made me feel really awful and I now recall myself as a super-introvert wimpy person. My self-esteem was extremely low and I never felt I could approach a girl and talk to her. I felt like a Martian on Earth, totally displaced an out of touch with reality. I started to like young girls, and that is when something in me alerted that if I continued I would go through a path of no return, it was time to quit I thought.

So I opened-up a bit and become engaged in volunteer activity. I started to go out but I was still some kind of nervous wreck, and pornography was still there, deep inside by brain, as some kind of comfort zone I was reliant on. So even if I did not buy these magazines, they were extremely attractive to me, like an obscure object of desire.

Still, I gained some confidence and started dating some girls when I was twenty-something, it was trying for me because I was so socially untrained. The first time I tried to engage in sexual activity (no penetration) I felt totally baffled. My girlfriend laid on me and started rubbing her genitals against mine, she came several times and I just felt nothing. It was so utterly beyond me that I could arouse and come to a real girl that I simply disconnected and lost my erection.

It was really difficult for me to gain enough confidence to have sex with this girl that later became my wife. She had an enormous patience and little by little, with no penetration, I started to engage in sex with her. We got married a few years later and remained so until late 2015.

But in those years I was married to her I never managed to get rid of the desire for porn. Even if I could pretend that I was a happily married man I still relied on it. It was a secure place, where I could find comfort and self-assurance. I was never disloyal to her with actual women (I was deep scared to engage any other woman) but I remember buying hard-core magazines and later downloading videos every now and then, fapping and feeling horrible. I spent a lot of years fantasizing about almost everything instead of doing things.

Our relationship always had ups and downs and I used porn to increase my sexual drive (or so I thought) sometimes watching porn together, although she was not very fond of it. In the end, I had increasing difficulties to get aroused and the whole thing seemed pretty artificial. We started to drift one from the other to the point we became strangers. We did seek counseling but I was not honest enough to bring this subject into the discussion and we simply gained a few years while our sons and daughter grew up. It was not only porn, I ate and drank too much and gained some 10 kilos, high cholesterol and blood pressure.

My wife started to drift away from me, going out with divorced friends on her own. I would wait for her home and became very reliant on porn again, it was the only way I thought I could get horny enough to have sex with my wife when she was back and “keep her happy”. I used to spend two or three hours browsing videos to the point I felt really high, waiting for her to return at maybe 2-3 am. I started to transition to heavier porn in the process and started to watch disgusting things which I now regret.

As you can guess, it was some king of zig-zag situation when I would be very aroused one day and totally limb the next. Worst of all, I now understand was actually not making love to my wife but merely masturbating with her body. Everything in our relation became tainted by this situation. I always constantly felt during all these years that I was lying to my wife because I was never able to gather the courage to tell her who I really was. So I was not having affairs with other women, but I had completely alienated her from me. Arguments were almost continuous and, although I was still in love with her, I was trapped in a circle.

It was no surprise that at some point she decided to end our relationship, I guess I would have never had the courage to do it. And it was a total reset, I found myself divorced and on my own, unhappy with my life and desperately needing to re-invent myself.

I came across this site and I was very inspired by the stories I read here. Most of them were written by younger people than me but I could connect very well with their feelings and they were so optimistic about recovery. What I liked the most is the concept that you can actually re-program your brain to like actual women, not fictional ones.

When I was three months into this abstinence I tried to date a girl from the office. I felt attracted to her and she did correspond. I thought everything was solved and I would be perfectly able to make love to her without being mentally absent. It was beautiful and exciting when we would kiss secretly around the office and I could feel my vigor coming back.

To my surprise, when I finally tried to have intercourse with her I lost my erection and was totally limb. No matter what she would do I had a feeling of total impotence. In truth, it didn’t help she was too aggressive for my taste, I thought this was her natural behavior and I thought I should feel aroused by it, but I didn’t.

I tried this three times more and only reached orgasms with oral sex, but that feeling of impotence was always there when I even thought of intercourse. Surprisingly she became in love with me but to me, but it was so frustrating I decided I could not take it anymore and decided to leave it there.

At this point I was completely disoriented, I had been abstaining from pornography, from masturbation, I had been going out more and practicing sports. How come all this did not make any difference? I even told the doctor about my problem and his opinion was I should relax, he prescribed a drug that I never tried.

To make things worse, I lost my job and my car broke down. You know how life is and, in case you don’t, you’ll find out.

I decided to earn my living as an independent stock trader (I am reasonably good at that) stick with abstinence and look for some additional help.

I started to go out with different people, not dating, just joining for relaxing activities. I made new friends trying to accept them as they are, without judgement. I met a few girls I felt some interest in and finally I decided to approach one of them.

I was so happy when she accepted going out, but I was very afraid as well. With my previous experience I was scared to hell.

Then, when I first kissed her in a bar, she corresponded in an extremely gentle manner and then rested her head on my shoulder. I cannot sufficiently describe the sweet feeling she provoked in me, I think I am desperately in love with this woman ever since.

We started going out and I absolutely loved kissing her (I still do) I like to briefly open my eyes every now and then and look at her face while we kiss. The way she gives herself to me, with her eyes closed and a mix of relax and thrill just turns me crazy in love with her.

Later, when she first invited me to her apartment I was again very nervous because, even if I was deeply in love with her, my insecurities run very deep inside my brain. So I was happy when she said she wanted to go little by little, we simply kissed and drank some tea, later I left.

The subsequent days we engaged in further advances with no intercourse, but she was always very clear on where she would draw the line. She would simply state she was uncomfortable with something and we would stop it. I kind of loved this sincerity and I did not mind leaving her apartment when she requested me so. During all this play I felt marvelous, very excited and aroused. My mind was not floating around in some fantasy and I was getting to know her details, how she behaved, her body, her smell, her hair, and everything I saw I liked, maybe because I was really feeling connected to her.

So one of those days, the worst happened, when we were to have sex I penetrated her but within a few minutes I lost my erection. I felt like the sky was falling on me. She was very kind and she comforted me with her hands, but reality is that I still had to resource to some kind on semi-wild fantasy while that and it did not make me feel truly confident.

So I was kind of desperate: abstinent, totally absent from porn, practicing sports, having quit drinking at home, losing wait, in love with a marvelous woman and impotent. What kind of sense did this make?

At that point I read some more advice on the internet and I found that some people had solved the issue with stress relievers. Also, they would always recommend to extend foreplay as long as possible. To top things I bought some “natural potency enhancer” in the pharmacy and kept a stress killer pill in my wallet.

Then, when the occasion came, I did swallow the enhancer pill but changed the stress killer for a glass of wine. We spent an hour kissing and pleasuring ourselves in the coach and when I made love to her it was revealing. I was still unsecure but I remained erected, I was able to make love to her and learn of her reactions. Even though I cannot describe this as one of my most enjoyable nights it was absolutely terrific to me in the sense that I felt potent again. Still I felt a bit disconnected, like I was not totally with her.

The next time this distance went away I was able to feel a lot more (my brain isn’t killing my sensations any more) and ever since we have marvelous sex with each other. I like to watch her as she gets excited and the way her body looks, I like the mix of tenderness and explosion she can bring together, I love her like I have never loved anyone before.

So in retrospective I have to say I deeply regret what I did to my ex-wife because I tried to rely on her to fix things which I should have solved on my own. It is not sane to lay your problems on the people that love you and hope that they will just fade away, because they don’t.

I have grown a total abhorrence of porn, and I do understand this is a consequence of my experience and what it has done to me. I have absolutely lost any interest in it and I don’t have to fake it. This is an enormous liberation and I now feel like I was carrying an extremely heavy load for nothing.

Also, I have internalized the absolute need to change to a healthy life style and have cut down on food and drink. It is terrific to feel physically fit, and the discipline that comes with physical training is definitely good for the soul.

I do not consider myself as somebody who can lecture others on PMO, I think I am just a survivor who came very close to disaster. I hope my story can help other people, especially people of my age, to regain hope in life.

 

Thank you D.J.

The strategy has been to get real. Enjoy real friends, do real things and stop day dreaming.

To tell you the truth these are still hard times for me since I lost my job and I decided I wanted to earn a living by trading stocks. As you can guess this is not an easy transition but to me it is all part of the same dynamic. Quitting PMO has empowered me and now I am not afraid of undertaking new challenges, a girlfriend, a professional project etc.

On the "P" I have lost any desire for it. I think I blame it for the suffering it has inflicted on me and I simply hate it. On the "MO" I read that abstinence increases testosterone levels, same as intermittent fasting, so I am all for it. I never had such a rewarding sex as I have now with the woman I love.

 

Actually, quitting PMO also encouraged me to stop drinking at home. I was drinking almost a bottle of wine a day and I decided i could never get physically fit if I continued with this habit. So I replaced wine with orange juice and I have lost weight, my blood pressure has also improved. I still enjoy wine when I go out, and I actually enjoy it better than before.

The surprising thing is that I quit this cold turkey and it really didn't take much effort. I believe once you go past PMO you realize how small and stupid some of our vices are.

 

Thank you for your support.

I think you have a very good chance of developing this rejection for porn. In my case it started when I realized all the harm it had done to me and how stupid this desire was. It was all rooted in my anxiety and my fear of facing life as it is, and specially women as they are.

It helped to get in shape to feel better with myself, to socialize and to get involved in interesting activities. I now try to enjoy the moments of life for as long as they last and I don't set myself absurd goals. One of the most destructive thoughts I had is trying to guess the "when" of things, or the "how long". In my opinion nobody knows when or how long will things take, and it does not matter at all.