sexual performance roller coaster during reboot

I put up a similar post on my journal but thought I would post here as well because it relates to sexual function post-PMO. I’m an older guy (mid 50’s) and married. I started my reboot on Sept. 23, 2016 so I’m approaching 4 months being PMO-free. Within a couple of weeks of reboot I started feeling a strong libido, would be very attracted to women (including my wife), from time to time would get spontaneous erections, and would usually have morning wood. I felt good. My wife and I were going through a rough patch in our marriage and weren’t having sex though. Then about 4-6 weeks into the re-boot we became intimate and had sex. It was an amazing experience – possibly the most intense sexual experience I had ever had.

After that things were better with the wife but the relationship still had its issues. As a result, we only had sex about once every two weeks. The subsequent times were still really good. During this time I found I would have major surges of sexual desire, to the point where my wife was wondering what was going on. (Around this time I told her about my PMO history and the reboot I was going through but that’s another story.)

About 2 weeks ago after feeling really horny and being rebuffed by my wife I started looking at dating/hook-up sites. I found it exciting to fantasize about having an affair and, of course, sometimes these sites had erotic photos of the women. In contrast to porn, these were real women (or at least some of them were) in my geographic area. I never gave into the urge to contact any of them but before I realized it I think I was activating those old dopamine pathways. Somehow I had convinced myself since it wasn’t really porn, and I wasn’t MO’ing, it wouldn’t be detrimental but I was wrong. So I think I probably disrupted by reboot by doing this. After about a week I stopped going to the sites and haven’t went back.

A few days after I started visiting those websites I started to become intimate with my wife much more frequently. (This was part of my motivation to stop visiting those sites actually.) The first two or three times we had intercourse there were no issues. However, last weekend, when we attempted to have sex for the 3rd time in 4 days, I found I was unable to get an erection. We tried again a couple more times I was just barely able to become erect enough for penetration and the sex wasn't so good. Since then (about 5 days ago) I feel I have been in near flat-line mode. I very rarely get spontaneous erections and haven’t been waking up with morning wood. I guess I will need to wait this out. Hopefully in a few weeks my brain will be re-set yet again. It’s odd because I didn’t experience the flat-line at the beginning like others on nofap.com have reported. Rather, I seem to be experiencing it after a brief relapse. Has anyone had anything experienced anything similar? I know that ED in older men can occur for reasons other than porn but I’m a healthy guy in good shape and never had an issue before so I’m thinking it is related to porn.

 

I should clarify that when I was PMO'ing I would typically not have a problem getting an erection when I was with my wife; however, I would have delayed ejaculation or no ejaculation at all. Plus it just wasn't as enjoyable and intimate because my mind would wander back to porn images rather than focusing on the woman I was with.

 

Thanks for weighing in, Rubidium. I think you are correct. It never ceases to amaze me how insidiuous the PMO habit can be. I was going along smoothly until this happened but there's bound to be twists and turns I guess.