I'm gonna keep this one short and to the point. It's your fault. You chose to masturbate that night. You chose to "peek". You chose to edge. That hurts right ? Embrace it. Afterwards... be happy about that fact. There is no demon forcing you to masturbate. There is no evil force forcing you to PMO. It's all you. You are strong. You will be able to keep your hand away from your pants. Nobody is forcing you to fap. That realization helped me a lot.
Yes, yes, yes...... As much as we don't like to hear it, it's the truth, man. Actually, this is as simple as it gets. One of the most important things to understand about this journey is self responsibility. For myself, I've been on this site for over a year, and any time I have reset my counter back to day 0, I have never complained or cried about it, and sometimes I don't even look for sympathy, and I do not say any of this to put anyone else down or look down on anyone. I say this, because it is important to understand that everything is a choice. Any time I PMO, I do it because I absolutely wanted to do it. There is no other reason and we just need to be real. If I relapse, I do it quietly and I don't complain. It was my fault and my own silly decision to do it. I'm aware that others do not need to keep hearing about me resetting my counter all the time. I just need to go away and self reflect and look at the situation honestly and look at how I can do it better. From my experience, that has been the best way to grow. To evaluate the situation clearly and accurately and not feel sorry for myself all the time. If people think this sounds insensitive, then maybe we need to think again, because this isn't no easy path, and by saving that semen, you're paying a great price (but one that is worth it), so the best way to go about this is to be frank and straight forward. Tough love as they call it. I'm starting to think that maybe we need more threads like this.
People keep saying that everybody should get out of their comfort zone. That's true. So people should also get out of that "It's not me. There are evil powers in my brain forcing me."- bubble. If you catch my cold. If you think it's not you, you might start to think that you can't control it anyway and you start to give in more easily.
Very good post. It's obvious to me that every relapse is my fault, but it's definitely something we should be reminded of every now and then. Whenever we get an urge and we fall, we choose to give in. PMO is not breathing, there's no deeper instinct forcing us to do it because otherwise we'll die, it's just us deciding that immediate pleasure is more important to us than long term benefits. It's all about choosing instant, meaningless reward instead of greater, but delayed reward.
@UsualSuspect Congratulations. You have just thought "the impossible thought". For an addict the impossible thought is: I quit, it's over, never again. Keep posting. Everyone here needs to hear this.
This is something that I've been struggling to remember as of late. Making excuses is only placing a mask over the truth. It's on me, and the benefit of that is that I can fix it.
Once I was on the verge of relapse and posting here helped me. I was looking for sympathy and it worked. I ended up having a conversation and i didn't relapse...well not on that day at least. i dont think it's all about will power. think of it as habits. our first language depends on the place n family where we grew up. its not in our control. once professor once asked our class 'how many of you'll like to listen to meditation or devotional music in the morning?' we all raised hands and she said 'it's cause as kids this is what you've been exposed to. so you're habituated to devotional songs.' its not easy to break a habit. just as its not easy to learn a new language.
