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In a Deep Ditch, Very Hopeful of Escape

Discussion in 'New to NoFap' started by PotentLife, Mar 22, 2015.

  1. PotentLife

    PotentLife Fapstronaut

    Hi, there. Forgive the run-on sentences and probable typos. I'm typing this while working out on an elliptical machine at the gym, laptop on the dashboard components, and just wanting to get it out on the page.

    I'm a 43-year-old man who has been acting out since before the age of 15, the age I first masturbated to orgasm. I was introverted and shy and awkward, picked last for sports teams, etc, so it makes a lot of sense that my sexual feelings would also be inverted. My fantasies have definitely gotten weirder and more deeply embarrassing since my first orgasm fantasy which was simply a beautiful girl in my class. My fantasies have gotten so shameful and deep-rooted that they have felt like a permanent part of my identity. I have felt cursed. I have come to dread dating in part because of having to make that horrible confession and having my girlfriend either reject me outright or become my chastity prison guard, which has never been sustainable. One way or another the confession always surfaces, so I've stopped dating for now. The other reason I dread dating is because I've never made "real" money, even though I think I'm potentially as smart as anybody else, so there's just always shame surrounding it. "Why hasn't he ever gotten a real job," any attractive girl who dates me is bound to wonder. I've felt like I lacked some kind of elusive potency in my character that kept people from wanting to hang around with me or hire me. Even though I've tried being an artist much of my adult life, it seemed that my less talented peers were making vastly more money than I. I seemed to lack some animal magnetism and self-confidence that others who seemed less qualified than me seemed to use to surpass me. Fortunately it seems like these are the exact qualities that NoFap participants seem to be regaining in wonderful doses through periods of sufficient abstinence. I regained them, too - a sense of them, at least - during my significant periods of sobriety. How could I have forgotten those potent moments when my soul was full of sunshine, I ask now. And yet I did forget, as if forgetting my own name. But something triggered me to start focusing - really focusing and redoubling my focus today - and memories of my potent life are becoming more vivid to me. I'm remembering smiling and holding eye contact with gorgeous cashiers at the grocery store without immediately averting my eyes as if scalded by boiling water. I can actually have a conversation with a woman without worrying, if she's desperately unattractive, if she's going to come onto me or, if she's super hot, that she's already got me pigeon-holed like a million other guys who will never have the honor of having her. I can reject others and be rejected without my feathers getting ruffled in this state. In this little growing oasis that is taking hold of me now, there are a million gorgeous options for how to interact with a woman. Stories of other forum users I've been reading today have suddenly shone a flashlight on my own feelings of power, hope, celebration that are wonderfully accessible through increasing my capacity for sexual power and not frittering it away the moment I feel even the whim of temptation.

    Once while no-fapping for about a week and a half (a long time for me) I was practicing welcoming and releasing emotions using a book called The Sedona Method, and I felt powerful enough to walk through walls. It was astonishing. I felt like I was living inside one of my happiest dreams. I'm definitely planning on using The Sedona Method during this next big period of abstinence I'm planning with the help also of this website. Some techniques I'm excited to use, suggested by another forum user, are taking cold showers, flexing my muscles when tempted (which has worked before and which I'm astonished I'd forgotten!) and basically making my wee wee a "hands off" zone except for obvious hygienic necessities.

    I also have a habit of waking up early that I got from reading a book called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. I used to be the biggest snooze-button-pusher in the world, so it's good that this book actually has had me getting up 1.5 hours early just about every morning since November of 2013. My routine has been to write stories of how I'd love my life to be, in present tense, using new vocabulary words I pull off a site called vocabulary.com. I like learning new words because they feel like baby steps to learning about the world. I then translate those words into 4 other languages. I'm intending to work this new info into my mind more deeply throughout the day as I continue in my NoFap odyssey, and find the whole process juicier and more deeply delightful. I intend to regale the people in my life, even passing pedestrians on the bike path, with positivity, if only through an exuberantly smiling hello.

    I acted out last night right before I went to sleep and it reminds me that I have sometimes been surfing porn while falling asleep. My eyelids would be sinking, jaw slackening - dead tired - and something would kick in compelling me to finish the orgasm first. When I'd be abstinent for a time - often no more than a day - I'd often wake from a sound sleep with the mad desire to grab my computer - even if I'd put it in the other room - and grab my dick as well. It's been a one-way train once I've gotten a certain momentum in this area, and seemed impossible not to finish the deed.

    When I first was introduced to the internet, I basically sat in a room full of computers at UCLA secretly playing pocket pool, orgasming and quickly moving one digital window over another to hide the images when somebody passed me in the computer bay. This was my very first time online, mind you. It was about 3 in the morning when I finished, dead tired, and knowing I couldn't get a bus at that hour, I went to an upper floor of a building and fell asleep in a toilet stall. I woke to the police. I wasn't a student there, so I wondered my fate, trespassing charges, etc. I couldn't remember my address when they asked me where I lived. True, I had recently moved to the apartment, but I'd had never had a memory gap over something so simple. That's how dead tired I was. The cops asked me if I had been "partying." Yeah, officer. Partying in my pants. Anyway, they let me go with a warning. That was around 1996. Since then I've been able to go about 27 day max without masturbating. Every so often I'll go a few days abstinent and start to regain confidence in my career, my attractiveness to women. Facts, words I'd known, good ideas I'd forgotten would suddenly appear in mind in rich profusion, effortlessly. It was like I suddenly found myself in the cockpit with a set of controls before me, remembering I knew how to fly. I did the 90 meetings in 90 days at SLAA and attended a few SAA meetings, with no more success than without. I took on service positions that left me feeling shackled to a dead end positions in a therapy that didn't work, and I left the group with little more than resentment. I haven't really gone back except when invited three times by a friend. I actually grew to hate the 12 Steps, even though I'd felt so flooded with warm light and positivity when I'd first started. I joined Toastmasters this summer and for some strange reason have wanted nothing more to do with it lately, even though a part of me reasons that these are some of the nicest people and the work required is quite easy. Is it the addiction at work, numbing me to its competitors? A part of me, like a mule pulling against a rope, says I'm done with it. I'm done. I want to isolate, hide away. I withdrew from college in the spring of my second year. I could have at least completed the semester.

    I think the thing that has most been present in my ability to remain abstinent has been a sense of hope of abstinence - of conserving and cultivating resources gained from a fresh perspective on all this. A video, a new challenge wherein I know I've just got to be abstinent or I'll fail, a day trip away from my computer, have often been the thing to jump start a new period of abstinence. So I have been perennially on the lookout through the years for new programs, new projects that will stick and finally whatever engines that lay dormant in me would kick in and I could go on autopilot with prolonged enough chastity to put a wedge between me and perverted, self-sabotaging behaviors, etc. That autopilot has happened for a while, like the flight of a paper airplane, usually after a few days of abstinence it would seem quite natural to go through my day checking tasks accomplished off my list, noticing a rise in my overall creativity, suddenly getting excited about a project I'd dismissed during my masturbation phase as a delusion of grandeur. Suddenly it would seem possible again.

    One thing I'm ultimately hoping to do is to change my perverted masturbation fantasies to real-life sexual experiences with a woman with whom I'm truly willing to commit and together build our lives into something better, more substantial; buying a house I can commit to upkeeping carefully, cultivating diverse substantial incomes. I intend to accomplish some goals like learning to write sheet music in my songwriting process and cultivate potency in my paintings and stories through the core psychological strength that comes with, well, not sabotaging my psyche every day with masochistic fantasies in which I've tended to play a helpless role.

    Well, I'm done working out. If I don't stop writing now, who knows how much longer I'll write? This is a beginning. Congratulations if you've read all the way to the end. My goal right now is 3 days of abstinence, starting at midnight tonight. That's a total of 72 hours abstinent. Once I do that, I'll set a longer goal.

    Be well. Thanks for reading.
     
  2. Richard88

    Richard88 Fapstronaut

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    Hey bro, interesting read. Hope you're making good progress! Stay strong, and keep busy!
     
  3. bord15

    bord15 Fapstronaut

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    It's important to reflect and embrace imperfections, then acknowledge your potential for change.

    appreciated your sincerity
     
  4. PotentLife

    PotentLife Fapstronaut

    Thanks for the supportive comments, guys!
     

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