it's ok

dear all,

yesterday i stumbled upon an article on a blogspot site (bestofnofap) in which a young man described his experience during a 90 day period of not masturbating. i would like to post the link, but can't due to the forum restrictions. you'll be able to google it with the keywords provided
he gives a link to a website on meditation that i highly recommend btw!
i just typed in a reply to his 2 year old entry but decided to post it here instead, since i just signed up yesterday hoping to find some kind of manual on how to do this whole nofap-thing but at the same time not really knowing what to think of this place. i see some people posting here like nofap is their new religion, which is fine if it works for them, but i've decided i didn't want to follow this "cult" as rigidly as a lot of people do here. to me that means that i'm not comfortable with using the whole terminology, except when it makes sense to me (e.g. i will use "fapping", as i feel more comfortable writing that over "masturbating" all the time). i also won't start a day counter, since (again - to me!) this is not about collecting trophies.

anyway, here is my take on and my history of nofap so far:

i'm 29/m/hetero and in a 10 year relationship.
before i started to not masturbate anymore i started meditating, that was about 3 months ago. i was in really bad shape back then, psychologically speaking. i started going to a buddhist centre in my city that offered free group meditation, but later realized I wasn't comfortable with how that center was organized, always felt like i was slipping into a sect/cult of some sorts. so i stopped going there, and since then i've been struggling to keep up a regular meditation practice. but that's life, right? you fall you get back on your feet.
even back then i very quickly started becoming more and more self aware. the first 2 weeks were intense, especially in terms of "progress". one of the side effects was that i didn't feel the urge to fap as often anymore. this got back to a "normal" level pretty quickly after that initial phase though, but to me it is in retrospect kind of a starting point for all this.

it was only about 3 weeks ago that i unintentionally started nofap during a very intense working phase in which i basically only worked and slept, always being around people, even at night. so i was rather forced to not masturbate for a while, and i also felt like taking the challenge to do this for those 10 days. at that time i had never read anything on NoFap, even though i had heard of the movement.
back home i honestly was a bit torn if i should start fapping again but of course eventually did it. and it felt awesome, not gonna lie about that. but it became so normal so quickly again (within 3 days to be exact), that i started to think about extending/restarting the experiment to not masturbate for a while.
that was on june 30. i am now porn and orgasm/ejaculation free since july 1st. at first i used to compensate by edging, without porn though.
i would say i have a vivid fantasy and don't depend on porn. this whole thing to me is actually not that much about the porn. i mean, i do want to quit porn and i did 7 days ago. but i would say that since i started meditating, a certain averseness to porn grew bigger and bigger and i started feeling bad not only after watching porn but even while i was at it. the moments that especially triggered this aversion were those in which women (or men for that matter) were treated or treated themselves with a lack of (self-) respect, which a lot of porn (if not most of it) out there displays. i currently don't feel any craving to go back to porn.
anyway, i started my journey compensating by edging. yesterday i became curious about the nofap-movement and whether edging was actually cheating during a nofap phase. i'm still kind of undecided in that matter, and would be happy to hear your opinion. if anyone even reads all this.
as of yesterday i subsequently stopped edging, too. so far it's not any more difficult as before. i would even say i can feel some of the positive effects already. i even did after the said 10 day work/nofap (even no edging) phase, but as i hadn't read on anything on the positive effects yet i didn't really relate it to the fact that i wasn't fapping at the time.

to sum it up, what i'm looking for is an overall increase in quality of life, being able to deal with my depression and addictions, get more energetic and active, fill my time with meaningful activities and practice sexuality based on interaction with other humans. i have no idea where this is taking me. but it feels good so far.
i know that quitting porn and masturbation is a very good first step to this. i've had the feeling for quite some time now that fapping makes me "soft". i don't really like this expression since it provokes an image of masculinity that i don't agree with. but this is not supposed to be a feminist manifesto, so i'll stick with it for now.

i'm thinking of writing a few lines of criticism about NoFap in the future, would the community be open for something like that?

thanks you all and all the best,

=ok