From Forever Alone to Living a Good Live

A while ago I saw someone asking on NoFap if anyone ever transformed from being "forever alone" to someone who has a good life. I don't remember who this was and in which of the subforums he asked this question, but I think I owe him an answer nonetheless.

The answer is yes, it is possible. It is now 209 days ago since I masturbated the last time and I haven't watched porn during this time neither. The effects of this have transformed me into someone I would not even have dreamed of to become before starting NoFap. This makes me enormously grateful towards the people contributing to this website and I hope I can inspire someone who is now in a situation similar to mine before I started NoFap.

So who was I? I was 26 years old and never had a girlfriend. And yes, I also never had sex. I watched porn maybe 2-3 times and masturbated maybe every second day, so
I think I was not as deep in the porn swamp as many other guys in here. Also, I studied at a good college and I considered myself to be pretty disciplined. However, my confidence in myself was very low. I had good friends, but saw them less and less and a part of the reason for this was definitely my failure to build relations with women. This made me less and less confident around my friends and I also kinda started to avoid them. All in all it was a vicious cycle. I started reading a bit in the pickup literature and this definitely helped me. I also started to approach women
but the conversations always faded out and I didn't really know what to say. In retrospective it looks like I just lacked vigor. More and more I became... forever alone.

I started NoFap almost accidentally. I moved to another town to write my thesis
and first lived in a hostel and afterwards in a shared flat with thin walls. Of course, there would have been occasions to fap but something just held me back. I remembered a friend of mine who once talked about his reboots a while ago and so I came to the NoFap webpage. I read some of the success stories and decided to give it a try: 90 days were the initial goal.

The first two weeks weren't that hard. I did a lot of such streaks before just due to holidays and military experiences. After week two it became however super tough. Only reading the success stories in here kept me on track. What particularly helped me was showering cold, doing exercises regularly, meditation and keeping a diary. I also started to quit watching Youtube videos and reading the news. This was something that I wanted to achieve for years but never found the discipline to do so. It was
the first sign for me that NoFap is working. I also participated in a half marathon during that time and generally felt an increase in focus. After around 40 days I even stopped drinking alcohol. Monk mode was on!

From around day 40 to day 50 was probably the hardest time. I had a few wet dreams and the worst thing was the leakage all the time. Basically my dick looked like the mouth of a hungry dog, it was terrible. During this time I tried to approach women on the street but I never took the courage to actually talk to anyone. It was brutal. Also during that time I started using Tinder. I had a few matches and was writing with a couple of girls. Most of these conversations ended up quickly, however, contrary to intuition, they were making me less horny, so I kept on with it. After some time I texted with one girl with which the connection was great and after about two weeks
of writing messages to each other we had a date!

For me it was the first date since years and I was a shipwreck of a man at the beginning as I was very nervous. The date was however going quite well. This girl seemed to be very at ease with herself, yet she was by no means arrogant. This first date was giving me a lot of comfort. It meant some sort of progress for me and I was proud and happy after it.

After this first date, it was still hard to cope with my permanent horniness. I also had an issue of many sleepless nights. There were at least five times when I was waking up at about 2 am and just couldn't continue to sleep. Normally I would have masturbated and fallen asleep after but this was no longer an option. However I continued. Also, I continued to date the girl from Tinder. I was however very nervous when it came to her. For example she once asked by text why I am on Tinder and this made me completely freak out. My old me would respond with something that would
put me in the friend zone, but instead I was doing my exercises and then texted her back a good answer. It was going very well all in all and so after three dates we kissed and after 5 dates we had sex!

At this point I was 77 days into NoFap. Of course, everything was getting way easier afterwards, with lots of sex. I cannot describe how much I liked that after all these years getting nowhere with women. And it felt amazing!

After some weeks, the girl from Tinder who in the meantime became my girlfriend, went on holiday and I was back on the no PMO-path. During this time of about a month I went out only once and there was a girl who's a friend of a friend. I have not
really remarked that girls hit on me more during NoFap yet but this woman went crazy. She touched me all the time and when I told her that I have a girlfriend she responded by remarking that my girlfriend is not around currently. I didn't do anything with her, because I wanted to be faithful towards my girlfriend, but damn, I saw the effect of NoFap on girls on action at that time.

After I finished my thesis I went back to my old town. I'm still together with my girlfriend and I'm still on NoFap. I started practicing martial arts since I came back, which again, I wanted to do since years but I never found the courage to do so.

I began looking back a bit on what I did different before starting NoFap and and how it changed my life. I was for example checking out what I have written to girls during my fapping years and I found that, with absolutely no exceptions, it was always me who at one point of the conversation just didn't text back anymore. I think that NoFap gives you a sense of determination that you cannot obtain otherwise. For me, NoFap is now a lifestyle and I want to abstain from masturbation as long as possible.

Finally, I want to thank everybody that contributed on this page for spreading the ideas of sexual health. I cannot describe how much it improved my life!

 

Thanks for all your support, I appreciate it very much!

I've seen many questions and I try to answer them all.

@SorryWontSayIt
- I was on the PMO-path since like 12 or so. I don't remember exactly.
- The second question I didn't quite understand. I noticed something probably after 3 or 4 weeks. Sure, before I was super horny all the time, but I didn't really feel any increase in focus before these 3 or 4 weeks.
- Concerning the start of the conversation with the girl on Tinder, I was referring to the stuff she had in her description. I think the only tip for Tinder I have is to write only after a long time after you received a message and to first get your exercises done. And keep it funny. This worked for me, but I would definitely not consider myself as an expert.

@Angus McGyver
- Concerning your question how to overcome destructive and limiting thinking, I think this is a tough one, since I cannot claim to really understand your situation. What always helps me when destructive and limiting thinking is arising is, again, exercising. A quick run of about half an hour is making a huge difference. What is helping me as well is more generally to try to limit my internet consumption for example to quit all kind of news and Youtube. The goal is for me to be as active (by e.g. exercising, practicing an instrument or even reading books) as possible and to very cautiously select the media you passively consume. But again: This is just working for me.

One more thing that I want to share in here is that I think writing my thesis greatly helped me on my NoFap streak. The reason for this may seem counterintuitive: I felt an enormous fear of failing during the process of writing it and in my head I said to myself "If you fap now, this could make you fail, and you will forever hate yourself for this". This helped me even in the most tempting situations. I got some bad habits back recently, like wasting too much time on Youtube, and without this connection, it's way trickier to end them.