Blue jeans
Fapstronaut
Hello reader,
I plan to not come back here, but wanted to leave some encouragement. Here's my story. It may be worth saying I am a Christian and my goals have usually been total abstienence from masterbation and porn. I appreciate not everyone here has those same goals. I hope my story might still be of some help or interest.
[TRIGGER WARNING- I do talk about masterbation, porn and sex. I try not to be graphic but there are some relevant details].
The beginning
When I was quite young - I imagine 7 or so, I discovered masterbating while sitting in a spa alone. No one told me about it. I just kind of realized when I pushed myself up against a jet.
When I was 10 I went to a boarding school. I was lonely, it was in a different country. I remembered the spa thing and started masterbating regularly, most nights. I felt guilty. I believe and at the time believed in God and felt that it was wrong. But when you are trying to fight a temptation that is right there - it is your own body - and the opportunity never goes away - well suffice to say it became a habit quickly. I would try to convince myself that it was okay, but that never lasted long. I told myself I would stop by the age of 16. And I kind of did.
Temporary success with accountability
Around that age I started meeting with a group of 2 other friends who were trying to stop masterbating. We met every week and would talk about how we were going. And that seemed to help me. After a few false starts, with the help of the group, and strengthened by the scripture Ephesians 5:3 'let there not be even a hint of sexual immorality among you', I stopped for 18 months. Then I got overconfident and started sleeping naked, or even starting to masterbate but not going all the way. Soon I accidentally masterbated while half-asleep - if you can call it an accident. And that happened again. And my streak was gone. And I never got it back. I convinced myself again that it was fine, and I had been wrong, and I returned the previous cycle. This was around the time I finished high school.
Uni and NoFap
I then returned to my home country and started uni. Throughout uni nothing changed. A few years after uni I discovered this forum, and mangaed a 3 month streak. I could tell that after 3 months I would be a goner. I was holding on for the sake of the streak! But I appreciated it nonetheless. I journalled most days, and read other posts. I had to be careful because reading other posts was often a subconscious way of me looking for arousing material. ANyway as expected a few days after the 3 months I fell and fell hard. And try as I might I could never do it again. Not even for a month! Most of the time not even for a week. I read all over this forum but just couldn't make things change for me.
Porn?
You may notice that I haven't mentioned porn. I never had a full blown porn addiction. I guess from a young age I knew that I was addicted to masterbating, and I knew that porn would be worse, and I did everything I could to stay away from it. There were a few times, including things on the internet and erotic fiction, but mostly if tempted I would just try to immeidatley masterbate to take away the desire. I had been given a book by a mentor like figure who shared his own experience of addiciton to porn and it freaked me out. He was still struggling with it at te age of 45 after being married and having kids.
How did masterbating work for me? At first I tried to think of nothing when doing it, figuring lust was probably worse in God's books than the physical action itself. That of course would only work early on and if I hadn't masterbated for some time. I would start playing romantic stories in my head, imagine getting married to someone and then seeing them with less clothes on. That worked for a long time. Later it went to imagining full nudity and sex. Later that stopped working.
Escalation
At some point I started coming across pictures online - adds while reading something unrelated. Mostly I would click away but the thought and desire was planted. I started to crave the excitement when that happened. I think I started doing things which I thought might put me into the path of that kind of thing - its crazy the weird games we play with ourselves! And then I started looking up sexual health articles. I told myself it was educational, but it was really for the excitement and hope that I would fall I think.
It all accelarated in my mid twenties. In 2020 I started a relationship with the woman that I am now married to. We were pretty good with boundaries as neither of us wanted to go there pre-marriage. We didn't kiss until our wedding day. She was a huge help to me, I don't know how I would have gone without her. We got engaged at the start of this year. Engagement was good but for temptation it was hard. The desire to be one was strong, and we were more physically intimate, longer cuddles, etc. and that fanned it. And I started to find masterbation much harder.
I started meeting with another friend again to be accountable to one another about this. He was amazing and pointed me on to other resources - puredesire ministries. In the end I just got worse though. With my relationship, and just the lengh of time that I had been trying to masterbate without looking at porn, and the ingrained sexual habits that had formed. I really felt hopeless. I had tried what I felt was everything under the sun. Accountability partners, wearing different clothes to bed, incentive schemes (probably?), spiritual practices before or after, listening to podcasts, journalling, etc etc etc. And I was getting worse. In the months leading up to our wedding I really went downhill. I started scrolling on facebook and looking for arousing material, and reading more about sex ("educationally" and later on really not educationally!). The scrolling was the biggest trap for me. It could be anything, a news sight, social media. Something would take over in my brain and I could barely stop. I was learning Chinese, I would start doing this on Chinese social media too. And I couldn't hide from the algorithms. I got really sickened by how full my facebook feed became with things I was ashamed of. I spent one afternoon just repeatedly trying to give it feedback to say I wasn't interested in that kind of thing - which did work actually. I had sleeping problems and found it hard to sleep without masterbating. If I was stressed I found it relaxed me a bit.
I would wake up every morning with guilt. SOmetimes really awful guilt. And I would spend the morning mourning and repenting of it. It felt like such a waste of time that I could have spent on better things - actually delighting in God!
What changed
You may be wondering what changed, or if anything did.
I got married.
The wedding night was pretty wonderful, but also dissapointing. Firstly we really had no idea how to do it. I had had a conversation with a friend which was helpful, but I think we actually should have read something about the basic mechanics and how to get my wife ready. I think some of hte stress of that affected me and ultimately I couldn't hold an erection and we weren't able to have intercourse. This persisted for the first week of our honeymoon. We didn't fully know if it was because of my history of masterbation and looking at arousing material, but I was pretty sure it was. My new wife was pretty upset at one point about this. We really wondered whether we would ever be able to have sex. It was a pretty awful feeling that one night, maybe the most scared or sad I have felt.
We were reading a book on sexual intimacy and strategies for that kind of thing - which was namely being intimate without having any expectation that we would attempt intercourse. Just touching and kissing and that kind of thing, and relaxing. The idea was to connect the body more to the experience. I guess my body was used to a very specific set of queues, and not natural queues and sexual experience. We still were worried because it hadn't fixed the problem, but we hoped it might just be a matter of time.
On the last day of our honeymoon we tried again and finally the little guy kicked in and after quite a long time I was able to orgasm. I can't tell you how relieved we both were. And sorry I know this is too much detail, but hey its anonymous, when I came there was some serious velocity!
Post Wedding/Honeymoon
Its definitley taken a fair bit of time. For a while after that I was able to come but my wife wasn't. And that's still a bit of a hit and miss. But it really is amazing how the body starts adapting - both bodies, to enjoy it more, and get more control, etc.
So what about now? I'm almost 6 months into marriage. Keeping from masterbation and porn has definintely been hard at points, but I haven't masterbated or looked at anything. I set up a rule for myself pretty early on that if facebook was needed for anything I would ask my wife to go on facebook to find it. I try to avoid anything that involves scrolling. I can't tell you how helpful I find it 1) having sex every few days, and 2) sleeping in a bed with someone. Early on it was still really hard. If we went a day without having sex (which was most of the time after the honeymoon), I would desire the old stuff. And if my wife didn't want to have sex when I was feeling particularly aroused that was really hard. It was a kind of little hell at first. But of course I didn't want her to feel that it was just about relieving my sexual desire. And over time it has gotten a lot easier to go without, though still if we have a longer time without sexual intimatcy the old tempatation comes back. But I guess it all feels so much more doable now. The stakes are also higher. My wife has been very forgiving but it has broken her heart many times that I was still doing this stuff when we were dating (I talked about it with her sometimes during that season) and I know it would feel like a very big betrayal to her if I were to do it within marriage. It really would feel like shooting myself in the foot... actually taking a rusty metal stake and stabbing my foot over and over again!
I'm just at the start of my marriage and maybe things will get harder on this front again. But I just wanted to celebrate the victories, celebrate the people who have helped me, celebrate God's kindness to me, celebrate the goodness of marriage and how that has helped me. I appreciate you may not have a partner and this isn't necessarily under your control. If not, then I hope 1) that in some way my story might warn you about future consequences, discourage you from going in deeper, and give you hope that even where you have failed there is healing - I apprecaite that about this forum actually; and 2) that God will give you strength to do better than I did even without the help of a wife.
If you've read this far, thanks! It's nice to share my journey. If you have any questions or want to chat, feel free to reach out. I will try to check this once or twice again in the coming weeks. After that sorry, I probably won't see it. God's richest blessings to you - I hope most of all that you come to know the forgiveness that is in God, and in the person of Jesus, and life with him.
I plan to not come back here, but wanted to leave some encouragement. Here's my story. It may be worth saying I am a Christian and my goals have usually been total abstienence from masterbation and porn. I appreciate not everyone here has those same goals. I hope my story might still be of some help or interest.
[TRIGGER WARNING- I do talk about masterbation, porn and sex. I try not to be graphic but there are some relevant details].
The beginning
When I was quite young - I imagine 7 or so, I discovered masterbating while sitting in a spa alone. No one told me about it. I just kind of realized when I pushed myself up against a jet.
When I was 10 I went to a boarding school. I was lonely, it was in a different country. I remembered the spa thing and started masterbating regularly, most nights. I felt guilty. I believe and at the time believed in God and felt that it was wrong. But when you are trying to fight a temptation that is right there - it is your own body - and the opportunity never goes away - well suffice to say it became a habit quickly. I would try to convince myself that it was okay, but that never lasted long. I told myself I would stop by the age of 16. And I kind of did.
Temporary success with accountability
Around that age I started meeting with a group of 2 other friends who were trying to stop masterbating. We met every week and would talk about how we were going. And that seemed to help me. After a few false starts, with the help of the group, and strengthened by the scripture Ephesians 5:3 'let there not be even a hint of sexual immorality among you', I stopped for 18 months. Then I got overconfident and started sleeping naked, or even starting to masterbate but not going all the way. Soon I accidentally masterbated while half-asleep - if you can call it an accident. And that happened again. And my streak was gone. And I never got it back. I convinced myself again that it was fine, and I had been wrong, and I returned the previous cycle. This was around the time I finished high school.
Uni and NoFap
I then returned to my home country and started uni. Throughout uni nothing changed. A few years after uni I discovered this forum, and mangaed a 3 month streak. I could tell that after 3 months I would be a goner. I was holding on for the sake of the streak! But I appreciated it nonetheless. I journalled most days, and read other posts. I had to be careful because reading other posts was often a subconscious way of me looking for arousing material. ANyway as expected a few days after the 3 months I fell and fell hard. And try as I might I could never do it again. Not even for a month! Most of the time not even for a week. I read all over this forum but just couldn't make things change for me.
Porn?
You may notice that I haven't mentioned porn. I never had a full blown porn addiction. I guess from a young age I knew that I was addicted to masterbating, and I knew that porn would be worse, and I did everything I could to stay away from it. There were a few times, including things on the internet and erotic fiction, but mostly if tempted I would just try to immeidatley masterbate to take away the desire. I had been given a book by a mentor like figure who shared his own experience of addiciton to porn and it freaked me out. He was still struggling with it at te age of 45 after being married and having kids.
How did masterbating work for me? At first I tried to think of nothing when doing it, figuring lust was probably worse in God's books than the physical action itself. That of course would only work early on and if I hadn't masterbated for some time. I would start playing romantic stories in my head, imagine getting married to someone and then seeing them with less clothes on. That worked for a long time. Later it went to imagining full nudity and sex. Later that stopped working.
Escalation
At some point I started coming across pictures online - adds while reading something unrelated. Mostly I would click away but the thought and desire was planted. I started to crave the excitement when that happened. I think I started doing things which I thought might put me into the path of that kind of thing - its crazy the weird games we play with ourselves! And then I started looking up sexual health articles. I told myself it was educational, but it was really for the excitement and hope that I would fall I think.
It all accelarated in my mid twenties. In 2020 I started a relationship with the woman that I am now married to. We were pretty good with boundaries as neither of us wanted to go there pre-marriage. We didn't kiss until our wedding day. She was a huge help to me, I don't know how I would have gone without her. We got engaged at the start of this year. Engagement was good but for temptation it was hard. The desire to be one was strong, and we were more physically intimate, longer cuddles, etc. and that fanned it. And I started to find masterbation much harder.
I started meeting with another friend again to be accountable to one another about this. He was amazing and pointed me on to other resources - puredesire ministries. In the end I just got worse though. With my relationship, and just the lengh of time that I had been trying to masterbate without looking at porn, and the ingrained sexual habits that had formed. I really felt hopeless. I had tried what I felt was everything under the sun. Accountability partners, wearing different clothes to bed, incentive schemes (probably?), spiritual practices before or after, listening to podcasts, journalling, etc etc etc. And I was getting worse. In the months leading up to our wedding I really went downhill. I started scrolling on facebook and looking for arousing material, and reading more about sex ("educationally" and later on really not educationally!). The scrolling was the biggest trap for me. It could be anything, a news sight, social media. Something would take over in my brain and I could barely stop. I was learning Chinese, I would start doing this on Chinese social media too. And I couldn't hide from the algorithms. I got really sickened by how full my facebook feed became with things I was ashamed of. I spent one afternoon just repeatedly trying to give it feedback to say I wasn't interested in that kind of thing - which did work actually. I had sleeping problems and found it hard to sleep without masterbating. If I was stressed I found it relaxed me a bit.
I would wake up every morning with guilt. SOmetimes really awful guilt. And I would spend the morning mourning and repenting of it. It felt like such a waste of time that I could have spent on better things - actually delighting in God!
What changed
You may be wondering what changed, or if anything did.
I got married.
The wedding night was pretty wonderful, but also dissapointing. Firstly we really had no idea how to do it. I had had a conversation with a friend which was helpful, but I think we actually should have read something about the basic mechanics and how to get my wife ready. I think some of hte stress of that affected me and ultimately I couldn't hold an erection and we weren't able to have intercourse. This persisted for the first week of our honeymoon. We didn't fully know if it was because of my history of masterbation and looking at arousing material, but I was pretty sure it was. My new wife was pretty upset at one point about this. We really wondered whether we would ever be able to have sex. It was a pretty awful feeling that one night, maybe the most scared or sad I have felt.
We were reading a book on sexual intimacy and strategies for that kind of thing - which was namely being intimate without having any expectation that we would attempt intercourse. Just touching and kissing and that kind of thing, and relaxing. The idea was to connect the body more to the experience. I guess my body was used to a very specific set of queues, and not natural queues and sexual experience. We still were worried because it hadn't fixed the problem, but we hoped it might just be a matter of time.
On the last day of our honeymoon we tried again and finally the little guy kicked in and after quite a long time I was able to orgasm. I can't tell you how relieved we both were. And sorry I know this is too much detail, but hey its anonymous, when I came there was some serious velocity!
Post Wedding/Honeymoon
Its definitley taken a fair bit of time. For a while after that I was able to come but my wife wasn't. And that's still a bit of a hit and miss. But it really is amazing how the body starts adapting - both bodies, to enjoy it more, and get more control, etc.
So what about now? I'm almost 6 months into marriage. Keeping from masterbation and porn has definintely been hard at points, but I haven't masterbated or looked at anything. I set up a rule for myself pretty early on that if facebook was needed for anything I would ask my wife to go on facebook to find it. I try to avoid anything that involves scrolling. I can't tell you how helpful I find it 1) having sex every few days, and 2) sleeping in a bed with someone. Early on it was still really hard. If we went a day without having sex (which was most of the time after the honeymoon), I would desire the old stuff. And if my wife didn't want to have sex when I was feeling particularly aroused that was really hard. It was a kind of little hell at first. But of course I didn't want her to feel that it was just about relieving my sexual desire. And over time it has gotten a lot easier to go without, though still if we have a longer time without sexual intimatcy the old tempatation comes back. But I guess it all feels so much more doable now. The stakes are also higher. My wife has been very forgiving but it has broken her heart many times that I was still doing this stuff when we were dating (I talked about it with her sometimes during that season) and I know it would feel like a very big betrayal to her if I were to do it within marriage. It really would feel like shooting myself in the foot... actually taking a rusty metal stake and stabbing my foot over and over again!
I'm just at the start of my marriage and maybe things will get harder on this front again. But I just wanted to celebrate the victories, celebrate the people who have helped me, celebrate God's kindness to me, celebrate the goodness of marriage and how that has helped me. I appreciate you may not have a partner and this isn't necessarily under your control. If not, then I hope 1) that in some way my story might warn you about future consequences, discourage you from going in deeper, and give you hope that even where you have failed there is healing - I apprecaite that about this forum actually; and 2) that God will give you strength to do better than I did even without the help of a wife.
If you've read this far, thanks! It's nice to share my journey. If you have any questions or want to chat, feel free to reach out. I will try to check this once or twice again in the coming weeks. After that sorry, I probably won't see it. God's richest blessings to you - I hope most of all that you come to know the forgiveness that is in God, and in the person of Jesus, and life with him.
