This is where I stand

Hello I'll go by a nickname of mine Podo (pronounced Po-Do) and I am a 22 year old Male just graduating college in May. Because I just started writing this post I have no idea how long this will end up being. If you do end up reading the entirety of this post I applaud you. Odd that I would do such a thing when I have no idea if it would be a real accomplishment if this post will be long or short. But from what I've written so far it will be a long one.

To start off, I am a person who values all the facts. Thus I may talk about things that may seem completely unconnected but in my mind for some reason it is important. If there are some things you wish to ask about I'll do my best to explain.

Background:
I grew up in a small town north of the Twin Cities (Saint Paul and Minneapolis) in Minnesota. This allowed me full access to the cities and activities there as well as a slight rural life. My house was on a two lane 55mph highway with at first two "close" neighbors. Neither neighbor had kids my age. And I was the middle child between two sisters.
The second significant factor in my growing up was I was Homeschooled. My parents made this decision for their own reasons, many could be viewed as narrow-minded or foolish. But I would not trade this experience for the world. It had its issues which I'll address later but ultimately I'd probably be worse off in other ways and wouldn't mind discussing this in another thread.
Thirdly my parents raised me in a Christian environment. This means from an early age sex, provocative images, and provocative discussions were all avoided. Also I would go to church twice or three times a week. For those interested I went to a Baptist Church, but I am not here to engage in discussions of theology or the differences between religious bodies and their beliefs.

The culmination of these three environmental factors I believe play a strong role into my addiction to pornography. First and foremost I believe that my addiction has come from my own hands and by no fault of any individual person or group of people outside myself. I have made choices which I am solely accountable.


So the rest of this is going to be LONG. And I think I got the juicy stuff out of the way. So if you are just looking to say, "welcome etc." feel free to post that now cause I'm planning on rambling.

My History
Growing up was simple for me. My dad worked, mom stayed at home and help my sisters and I with our homework and kept the house tidy. Though I was homeschooled I was "socialized" (not in the stalinistic sense but in the "I had friends" sense). My family was involved in what is a called a christian homeschool group or "co-op". No this isn't like a commune or cult thing. The Christian aspect was to emphasize a common moral standard to be held by the members. This was an organization that my mother and a few other mothers (vast majority of the families had stay-at-home moms) formed to one socialize the kids, build a support group with like minded people in the area, and also fulfill some physical education requirements from the state. I don't want to go into the legality of Homeschooling because it varies drastically State to State and I have no idea if and how it works outside of the United States. Back on topic, The group met once or twice a week with ages 18 to pretty much birth. There were the media stereotype of eight children families or the jean jumper/overall wearing families. For the most part I'd say they were normal. The group fluctuated between 100-300 (including parents) for the roughly 14 years I was involved. But again you have to remember that is 200 kids ages 2-18. So individual grades were thin. Surprisingly there were six boys my age and we all got along pretty well. now these boys were the ones I would designate under the label of "schoolmates."

At the same time my parents were involved in a church in the cites, which was roughly a 30min drive in. This gave me another outlet to form friendships and I did. But the issue, and this came about later, high school, was the majority of these kids went to the same schools together so not only did they know each other through church functions but also daily school activities.

when I was about nine a new neighbor built a house on the land next to ours. Turned out they were grandparents with grandkids around my age. To make this part short there was a boy a could years older than me and we would play together but most we just sat and talked to each other. And at that point all we really talked about was girls, naked girls, movies with naked girls, a bunch of stuff that would involve those topics. This told he never gave me a dirty magazine or website to visit. So I did have the natural boyhood realization naked girls were a good thing is some way. But at the same time girls my age were still "gross, nasty, annoying, etc."

Going back to my schoolmates, we had a pretty strong feeling towards girls, that is cooties were a really and present danger to us. What this meant, girls are the enemy and thus must be avoided or pestered at all costs. This lasted up until around 12 when adolescence and hormones started to kick in. And then I realized girls my age were attractive. At this point I became curious about what sex actually was.

I knew there was such a thing as sex, and that it was a taboo topic for my parents to discuss. So as a 12 year old with access to DSL(what was considered High speed internet in my area) I used wikipedia. Now also I thought Pornography was actaully illegel to make or distribute thus I avoided all pornagraphic sites. Also I did understand enough about computers, my dad is an electrical engineer and at the age of 12(2004) I understood how to download patches for my pc games and simplistic program manipulation. What was I saying? Oh right, I knew enough about the internet that viruses, malware, trogens, etc. came from illegal sites or unregulated sites. Thus I stuck to wikipedia. So for a while i would simply browse the different articles about either "sexual intercourse", sex positions, or porn star profiles. I do remember coming across the page on masturbation, and the page had a drawing of a guy jerking. I was appalled and said I would never do that, because to a 12 year old me it looked gross. Anyway this eventually evolved to me actually visiting pornsites. At one point I had found a Movie sex scenes archive and so started with the softcore stuff then using links and key words from there moved to actual pornsites.

The first time I had an orgasm was from a wet dream. A believe I had two or three wet dreams before I realized what was actually happening. I do remember one time catching myself and running to the bathroom thinking I need to pee but found only a goo, obviously semen. The first time I masturbated was with a sock filled with "material"(I'll keep the details private so I do not give any ideas because I understand some random stuff can trigger a struggling person). again I believe I was 12 or so at this time.

The frequencies of my masturbation slowly started to rise as I began to understand how everything worked. I never masturbated to hardcore porn till I was 15 or 16. Before that it was stealing my mom's VS, macy's, kohl's, catalogs. After a while I had developed it into a whole procedure where the "set up" would take as long as the actual act.

Some may ask at this point, you grew up in a Christian home and environment, didn't your parents or pastor, etc. tell you masturbation and porn and sex is wrong. Oh yes they all did. But that is all I heard from them was it is bad. And sex is only for married couples. I was never told what sex was, I learned that from a wikipedia article. Same with masturbation, porn, contraceptives, where babies came from. Sure I had put two and two together, guys have a penis and girls don't so I bet the guy puts in down there, but for all i knew it was the same hole she peed out of and that was gross to a 11-12 year old. So I got my sex ed from the internet. And we all know the internet's majority stance on sex. Now I'm not hear to preach but to get it off my chest. If I am to believe in a Christian worldview (worldview is how I see/interpret the world) I would say pornography is a immoral sin, it is not natural there are bible verses against it, specifically Jesus speaking against it. Now on the subject of masturbation? Again if I am to hold to the Christian Worldview, I can on masturbate when I am looking and thinking of my current wife. These are very broad and simple statements on a rather complex subject, but again this is not a place for me to push my personal beliefs on anyone nor to judge cause guess what I'm in the same boat.

 

Now moving on.

My Girlfriend situation can be explained by the sheer lack of available girls I knew. Let us explore my options. First homeschool group: probably 5-7 girls around my age. Second, Church: 10-13 in my age/grade. So looking at a total of 15-20 available girls with out me determining if I found them attractive. And this situation prevailed until my junior year of highschool.

My Junior year of high school mixed up my social circles a little and broadened my horizon. I started taking college courses through an adjunct academy comprised completely of homeschoolers. This academy was located in a northern suburb of Saint Paul. The academy was majority Christian homeschoolers. Another social change was I started attending a second church youth group that some of my homeschool friends were a part of.

This second youth group was were I found my first girlfirend at age 17, she and I were in a relationship for roughly nine months the last three she was in california as a freshman in college and I was a senior in high school. The summer we were together I experienced my first kiss and saw my first in person naked woman. Neither of us actually had sex but did pretty much everything else(no anal). We did this because she(let us be honest a horny 17 year old boy usually is not the one saying no when looking at a beautiful naked girl) wanted to hold out for marriage as we were all told to do so in church. In the five months or so we were physically involved, I only orgasmed once in her presence and ultimately by my own hand, and I believe she experienced her first orgasm over the phone with me when she was in california.

At this point I was marturbating roughly two times a day, if I didn't have anything going on I would sometimes go a third time. This would be the summer before I went to college. I would try personal wipes where I would throw away all the accumulated material I was using and not masturbate for maybe a week but then I would be home alone or just bored and start over.

Over the Summer I attend a Christian camp as a camper for my age week then was a counselor for younger ages for a month. I didn't masturbate for somewhere around 35 days because I was on campus grounds in rural Minnesota with probably a 5mps download internet speed, so even though I had a laptop I didn't have access to very much. Also there wasn't too much privacy which was a good thing if I wasn't suppose to masturbate. Well I got home after a four hour drive and didn't make it a day without the erg.

The next step was moving into my college dorm. The college I attend is a Christian school with strong blocking software, apparently the software block Victoria's Secret because the girls on campus complained about it. So this stopped me from viewing hardcore porn but I still had access to youtube and thus racy videos there. But I still told myself, "this is a new chapter and now it will be easier to avoid temptation so you can do this." Two weeks in a finally broke. I had two roommates but I knew their schedules well enough to know when and when not to.

I lived for a year in the dorms then my parents moved into the cites close to my school cause my younger sister was attending it as well. So I was able to live off campus in my own room. Which opened me up to a lot of freedom. My mother was now working so during the day both parents were gone and there was no distractions aside from video games and I didn't enjoy sitting around campus all day just to sit around.

My sophomore year of college I got my second girlfriend and we dated for roughly 2 months. One night we spilled our huge emotional sexual history baggage. She had been abused by a teenage when she was 4-7. And I talked about how I was addicted to pornography. At that point she told me that she couldn't be with someone who would objectify women and support such an industry. So we dated for another few weeks then she asked how I was dealing with porn and masturbation and I told her I had done it that day and she broke up with me later that evening. We also had never kissed in the two months we dated.

This last summer I was very agitated with myself and the situation I was in. I was going to a School where the stigma was if you ask a girl on a date you are dating thus ultimately looking to marry her or else the relationship was a waste of time and a mistake. Because I was a child of the internet I attempted to find some real life gratification through the internet. I signed up for a bunch of dating and "hook up" sites but of course they all required a monthly fee and I didn't want to spend money (you'll see the irony in a moment). So I was working landscaping to help pay for college and I got a random day off because of a thunderstorm. I had at this time the TOR browser so I started looking for hookers online(see the irony of spending money). finally got in contact with a massage girl who only did handjobs. Met with her and never orgamsed even after an hour session. Found sometime the following weekend went in again and finally did orgasm but that was by my own hand. After this experience I realized there was something odd. According to the media: sitcoms, dramas, jokes, etc. guys are horny and thus really enjoy outside stimulation. Now premature ejaculation jokes aside, even I knew getting a 40min handjob without orgasm was out of the ordinary.

At this point I determined to explore this "phenomenon" further and actually came in contact with a hooker. I met with her and then did orgasm but still it felt "pushed" like I had to focus on the orgasm. Well needless to say I realized I had just lost my virginity to a hooker and age 21.

Fast forward a month. I had just started my senior year in college and found a dating app and was attempting to use it extensively, went on a few dates with a couple nice girls but they weren't really my type. I did run into a couple "loose" girls but still if I was to orgasm I really needed to focus.

I did find my most recent girlfriend using the app. Went to coffee, had a good discussion. Went on a couple more dates then made it official. Slept over at her place some 8 times but never had sex because at this point we both wanted to make sure this was going somewhere before we made that commitment. But again I only orgasmed once in her presence and that was at my own hand. Then she got super busy and we drifted apart and now are officially broken up.

Now I am back to one to two times masturbating a day. And sometimes one session could take up to two hours long before I am to orgasm. It is getting in the way of my professional career because it is keeping me from using precious time to job search so I may have a job after I graduate College.

And that is where I stand.

As I said early on I didn't know how long this post(s) was going to be so thank you to those who read it in its entirety. If you have any questions please let me know. If you have any suggestions on threads to follow that would be most helpful.