How do you stop ogling and benefits

Can't say I've had much success stopping completely especially when the ladies in question are wearing very little clothing during the warm weather , but I definitely think I have improved and try to keep your mind from dwelling on thoughts of a sexual nature as much as possible.
It definitely makes things more difficult if you look to much so the more you can keep it under control the easier it will be for you.
I suppose it's quite obvious really .

 

I've always wondered what "ogling" actually means. I don't think I can stop noticing women and occasionally briefly looking with mild interest at a woman. I'd need to go round with blinkers.

Does it mean staring at a woman, looking for a long time, maybe at parts of her? I'm not often tempted to do that. But if I am ever tempted to do something like that, I remind myself that as a man *I* want to be the one with presence who's noticed by women, and that I'm at my most attractive if I'm focused in my own world and am paying no attention to random women.

It sounds narcissistic and maybe sexist (and maybe it is!) but I think it's possible for a man to get into the idea of being noticed rather than noticing, of being fantasised about even, and I think for a man who's had a weakness for visual titillation it may be healthy to do this mildly instead of looking at women. It could be a way of shifting male sexual obsessions and turning them in a direction that's not morally perfect by any means but less damaging in terms of relationships.

 

Sure, you can We can control ourselves. Master the mind.

 

Yesterday I had quite a victory on this very issue, if I do say so myself. I gave a 4 hour presentation to a group of 40 people. Most were quite normal, but this one young lady walked in dressed like she was going clubbing with a small blue dress, heels, makeup, etc. She was quite a looker, and she knew it. But I managed to avoid ogling her, even when she came up afterwards to ask a question and talked to me for about 10 minutes. I made it a point to look her in the eyes, both when we talked one-on-one and when I looked in her direction during the presentation. Ironically she probably thought I was flirting with her because of all the eye contact. But it was the only way I could think of to not check the rest of her out! Also, when she walked by afterwards I did my best to consciously focus on looking at other people, or at my presentation notes.

Noticing does not equal ogling. But to my mind anything more than that does.

 

I think as men, we instinctively know the border between appreciating the beauty and figure of a woman and objectifying/lusting after her. The line is certainly blurred due to mainstream media and porn’s brainwashing of what’s morally acceptable and what’s not.

Personally, I find the practice of guarding my eyes from ogling to be the most important and challenging task at my current stage of reboot. Especially now in the summer. I do my best to look right away when my eyes want to linger. The benefit is that each time I succeed, I prevent sparking up lust and fantasy right from the root.

 

have to say I have found attractive girls walking around with little to no clothes on a real challenge te last few days, a real trigger.

 

This has been the hardest struggle for me so far. My therapist said “You can admire a women for her beauty without sexualizing her.” I’ve been holding that in my head as a positive outlook. It’s still pretty difficult though.

 

Just my two cents:
Beauty is not only external.
What are her dreams, goals or insecurities? How does she see the world? What kind of hardships or successes has she had in her life?
......
When you objectify someone, you see a body. An ensemble of bones, muscles, fat, skin and hair.
You don't see a complex, flawed, imperfect, beautiful human being.

Not trying to minimize anyones problems. Just trying to offer a different perspective.

 

This is true. Humanizing a person is a great technique and in the end it’s all about finding what works for you. My quote is less about humanizing and more about seperating the ideas of beauty and it’s automatic connection with sexualization. Which is just another potentially helpful way of thinking about things.

 

Here's the ogling threads collection @Kenzi mentioned earlier: https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/tims-journey.78164/page-6#post-1126070

My own feelings about this have changed, but I still think there are two important questions to ask: why and how.

I've struggled with the why (as you'll see from my posts in those threads I collected). The three obvious answers are

1. Women know that you are ogling them, and it makes them uncomfortable;
2. Your partner senses that you are ogling other women and it makes her feel bad; and
3. It is a 'porny' way of seeing the world and thus makes you more likely to relapse or makes your reboot take longer.

@Kenzi's thread The "Feels" of Ogling (a Females Perspective) fills in detail on the first answer. But for me it wasn't enough. I talked this through with my therapist. It reminded her of school (= high school in the USA) and she said that her girlfriends and her always knew which teachers were ogling them and it was creepy. I pointed out that there may be lots of 'false negatives', i.e. the teachers they found creepy were, but some of the teachers they found uncreepy may also have been lusting, but were better at hiding it. For me this distinction is important. I would hate it if my actions were making women uncomfortable, but I honestly believe that I am so discrete, and such a kind happy guy, that the women are unaware. Who knows, I may be right, and I may be wrong.

The same uncertainty is true of the second answer - perhaps your partner doesn't notice? I recently had this confirmed. When I got home from my therapy session my wife wanted to hear all about our discussion (she always likes a debrief). So I told her. She was shocked and horrified that I was ogling other women, especially young women (our daughter's 25). This lead to a nightmare few days. Had I know I was making a disclosure I'd have been more gentle about it but I just assumed that she knew already. I asked her if she noticed me ogling other women and she said no, not since I was young (we started dating when I was 17 and I'm 52 now). So she definitely did not sense that I was ogling other women when we were out together.

There is something in the third answer. When I started this reboot I would find that pretty women made me think of search terms that would prove fruitful in porn sites. Simple things like 'redhead in a light cotton dress' I speculated would yield results I was sure I would love. As time passed those kinds of associations faded away. But the ogling didn't.

Another thing that has held me back from doing anything about this is my reluctance to police my own thoughts. I've always believed that the free association of ideas is the sign of a healthy mind, and that our fantasies are just part of that - a window into ourselves rather than an evil to be repressed. I can imagine a dystopian future where our thoughts are carefully policed but I do not want to live there now!

But things have shifted.

I noticed that a lot of the men who's recovery I admire have moved on from their focus on porn sobriety and now focus that same effort and energy on fixing other things in their lives (@vxlccm and @Batboy123 spring to mind). The weird thing is that once they focus on these new goals the porn abstinence seems to just take care of itself. That got me thinking. We know that rebooting is more successful if we can replace the time we spent consuming porn with more healthy habits (like posting here, or even better creative hobbies or activities that get us outside) but it is also true that giving up porn proves to ourselves that we can change our own lives for the better. I do not believe the multitude of super powers claimed for nofap but there are a few I do believe. Pride is a dangerous word, it is one of the Biblical sins, but I am proud of staying away from porn for 614 days and I have started to want to apply my will power and integrity to other parts of my life that need fixing or that I am ashamed of.

The breaking point was where my ogling fantasies were going.

Spoiler: Mild Trigger

I've always been excited by seeing women in their underwear, and my favourite porn would include the women dressing or undressing. Similarly, when I saw a pretty woman I would imagine her dressing and what underwear she had on. But a few months ago I noticed that I was imagining me forcing her to show me their underwear, to take off her trousers or to lift up her skirt. Coercion is not my thing, and this did not feel like me at all and so troubled me. I think what was happening is that the side of myself that loves porn has become increasingly frightened and angry with the side of myself that is successfully abstaining from porn and it expressed its anger through my unsettling fantasies.

I brought this up with my therapist and after we discussed it I asked her "Should I stop ogling". She said "From what you have told me I feel that you should stop". She has also been eating away at my belief that we should not police our own thoughts. Perhaps I am not my thoughts. Perhaps I can become a better me by thinking more like the guy I want to be and less like the guy I do not want to be. Put like that it seems obvious but I still feel conflicted.

Anyway the net result of all that is that I am now staying away from ogling. I am not treating this goal with the same respect I treat my no-porn goal: I am not day counting and I am not as upset if I have a bad day, but I am giving up. Partly it is an experiment: can I give up and will I feel better about myself if I do, but it is more than an experiment, there's a commitment taking shape too.

So that's the "Why" question dealt with. What about the "How"? There are several techniques I'm using, most from the threads I've collected and a few of my own

• Look away. If you catch yourself glancing at a pretty woman's body find something else around you to fixate on. Like most of the guys here I am a very visual person, and I have 1,000,001 hobbies so it is usually easy to find something else that fascinates me.
• Look at men. I never give men a second glance, my gaze just slides over them. I am trying to be more attentive and warm hearted and try to imagine where they've been, where they are going, and what makes them tick.
• Plan for success. If you notice a pretty woman in the distance make sure that you are looking at something else until after you have passed her. If a sexy woman cycles past do not try to keep up so that you can keep looking, let her go.
• Go meta. If all of these techniques fail and you find that you are fantasizing about someone you just saw ask yourself why? What was it about her or (more likely) about your state of mind that made the fantasy impossible to resist? Are you stressed or angry about something? Are you trying to avoid facing some problem? What is it? How else might you solve it? Once these thoughts unravel the fantasy is long gone.

These techniques are, so far, working for me.

(N.B. This probably should have been a journal post. It is a very long answer to a very short question! Sorry.)

 

It is impossible not to notice, but it is what I think next that is important. Do I develop the notice into a fantasy or do I move on to other thoughts. The beach will definitely be tricky, but we are all sending him supportive good luck vibes. I do lots of yoga and I always imagined that yoga class would offer an impossible-to-resist ogling opportunity. It is difficult not to dwell on new class members (difficult, not impossible) but as I get to know them it gets much easier and after a bit I just tend to focus on technical yoga stuff, like which poses they are doing well, which they are strugling with, and if there's anything I could learn from them. We all just start to feel like fellow travellers.

 

The goal is not to avoid seeing attractive women and stop feeling attraction towards them.

The goal is to encounter the world as is, and have a proper frame for dealing with it.

So how do you stop ogling women? By having grace for yourself. See a hot woman, acknowledge that she’s hot, and move on. Don’t cultivate fantasy, don’t think about screwing her, and if you do, stop it, redirect your mind, and forgive yourself. Keep doing this as frequently as needed. Remind yourself that you are a man; and feeling attraction, arousal, desire for attractive women doesn’t make you scum, it means you are a straight male. So keep it reigned in. Keep that look under three seconds, and move on with your life. Try to think of that hot woman as a whole person and not simply a means to an orgasm.

 

I didnt read everyones answer, so i may be echoing what someone already said, but here goes. The number one thing for me is to remember that a woman (no matter how desirable) is a person. Porn addicts often look at attractive women only as sex objects and visualize them in vulgar situations, but they are human beings. They have good days and bad days, they have hopes and dreams, they love, laugh and have insecurities, and they are someones daughter, sister or mom. These seem like obvious facts, but the addicted brain doesnt see this it only sees a "hot girl". So, for me it really helps to remember that.

 

Empathy in this area is probably the most difficult to cultivate. As men we are rarely in any circumstance where we are ogled. I can't imagine the exact feelings a women has when it happens or the dilemma of deciding what to wear with this pressure in the back of her mind.

I know all the reasons why. I know all the hows to avoiding it and through a sense of chivalry I do my best to avoid it. However deep in my emotional center I can't actually relate and tap into any feeling that would give me something more then an intellectual motivation to not ogle. It sounds shitty. The only thing that works emotionally is that I know that the women I might ogle and my SO will think less of me for doing it. That pain of embarrassment and feeling like I'm just one of "those guys" keeps me in check, but I wish it was because I truly could relate and empathize.

 

i Used to ogle, chronic. now I look at the girls body and face and make contact so they see me looking. Now I admire. Much better.