I'm new here, 30 years porn use, 15 years into relationship

Hi all,

I'm new here. I'm a straight, secular married guy in my 40s. I've been using masturbation (and porn when it's been available) regularly for 30 years as a refuge from anxiety and feelings of rejection and for the past 20 years as a safety valve for sexual frustration in relationships with partners who've had much less libido than me (I've never cheated though I've been strongly tempted to).

In the past year I've experienced problems getting erections or sexually responding when my wife is having sex with me. That's prompted me to reconsider my porn and masturbation use and take a break to try to make it easier to get turned on and erect. It could also be made worse by getting to that age where erectile function starts to slow down naturally.

To be perfectly honest, I'm very wary of the moralizing tone of a lot of what I read about porn addiction and masturbation. Some of it seems to be straight recycling of historical and religious shame-based control and rejection of human sexuality and masturbation which in my opinion has been hugely damaging in its own right.

But as I'm experiencing a pattern of being unable to get enough of an erection for penetration even by masturbating myself when my wife wants to have intercourse (for a change!) then it's time to pause and reconsider. Feels like I'm definitely masturbating too much for the good of my marriage...

I'll probably start a journal thread, partly as way of thinking through my own issues.

Thanks to all for reading and supporting.

 

Thanks, NewLife

I'm not on here because I'm ashamed of my masturbation or using porn. The kind of women-friendly porn I prefer is not that far removed from the sex I have - I'm not attracted by weird or non-consensual abusive porn. But I'm definitely MOing too much which is harming my real sex life. And I definitely was spending way too much time on PMO to the detriment of the rest of my life, including my marriage.

So my goal is to give up self-masturbation for at least 1-3 months and see how that affects my erectile function and libido. I'm giving up watching porn for the same period except any times that my wife and I watch porn together as a turn on for her to help her feel more inclined to have sex (we've done this in the past occasionally).

On of my issues is that my wife generally has a lot lower libido than me and MO is a refuge for me from that frustration and feeling rejected. So nofap forever probably isn't realistic in my relationship but I definitely need to find a new balance - I've admitted to my wife that fapping has desensitized me and that I'm giving it up for now while we work on our sex life. I'm hoping that a new fap-balance for me will help change our relationship for the better and make sex more frequent and fulfilling for both of us.

I'm also curious about the role of PMO as an avoidance mechanism to escape uncomfortable emotions. That avoidance tends to make me procrastinate and drift. I think it's turned into a self soothing behavior when I feeling lonely, depressed, guilty and maybe some of the unvoiced bad emotions from early childhood experiences (nothing as serious as actual abuse though).