Am I damaging or helping recovery?

First of all, it's called softmode. If you have PIED, then you need to go hardmode for as long as you heal completely otherwise it's not a problem. Softmode just takes more time to recover. Just don't PMO and you will heal no matter which mode you stick to. Although if you can, try to have sex with her without orgasming, that will inhibit the dopamine rush.

 

I'm doing soft mode reboot too, although I appreciate it takes longer to heal, there's no way I can go 90 days without sex.

 

There are many things that give our brains dopemine in varying dosages. Eating, smoking, gaming, etc. It is the chemical in our brain responsible for the positive response from said stimuli.

It's true what they say, we are trying to break that neuropathway that connects wanting an escape, a high, feeling better with the use of porn. Porn is high-intensity stimuli that overloads our brains and nueropathways and we simple can't process it all. That is why we get so excited so fast and fetishes evolve, and the ever increasing desire to chase the next hit traps us. It's simply insatiable.

You are asking if loving relationships which release the same chemicals are bad. I say no,... With some caveats.

1st is dosage. Since your GF is a real person and not the extreme artificial images of porn your brain will do a better job processing the pleasure. It will connect you two and bond the relationship, which is afterall what any of us really want, not to be/feel alone.

2nd. By making sex about people and not pixels we are also rewiring our brains to behave how we are naturally designed. This is normal and healthy.

As long as you don't use your GF as a sex object or use her to get off on your emotionally bad days. I can't see how it's the same thing as escaping to porn.

Best of luck, be kind to her, be kind to yourself. You deserve it.

 

I am also on the path to PMO recovery. I am not giving up sex to orgasm with my SO. Frequent porn use and long masturbation sessions to porn that caused intrusive thoughts, PIED and DE were the enemy for me—that was my status quo. It will never get better until you stop the porn.

I wouldn’t worry so much about the dopamine thing, within weeks of shunning porn I think you will see and feel the changes as you break the physical and psychological dependencies that replaced natural intimacy with another person. There are a lot of extreme views (quackery?) on here regarding brain chemistry; I think you’ll know when you start to see and feel the changes you desire. Stay the course, be strong.

 

Without dopamine, you would get Parkinson and die. It's behind many functions in your body and it controls your ability to expect reward, which is a natural part of being alive.

Partaking in normal activities such as sexual intercourse with a real woman is what you are created to do. Pornography, social media scrolling and gambling are especially formulated to hijack this system and examples on activities that are not natural for a human. It's another animal altogether.

Bottom line is; there should be no reason to abstain from passionate relationships, unless it somehow tempts you to drift into unhealthy territory.

 

I’ve been off PM for over 50 days now but my ability to abstain from O has only got to about 7 days. The O has always been real with my wife but I’ve felt terrible the next day, every single time. I get mood swings, I feel tired and irritable, my libido plummets, I lose all sense of willpower, I get depressed etc. I’m abstaining from O for at least 30 days now to see what this does to my mindset. Most of us PA’s probably haven’t removed O for longer than a couple of weeks at a time, me included. I’m curious (and kinda scared) to see what happens but I definitely feel like the O has slowed my progress down massively. It’s trial and error but very confusing for my wife and I, and not very pleasant.