To Grow Manlier, I Need to Quit Porn

Hi, I'm Andras.

I'm here for the same reason all of you are here: I want to quit pornography. Our motives will probably differ, but I want to emphasize the point that I stand with you all. I think I need to quit watching pornography.

And right now, I need your help.

I'm doing badly.

Writing this at the end of a very nasty binge of watching porn and masturbating, I tremble with doubt and anger at myself. I feel a disturbing lack of control over my own habits. Guilt too. It's hard to the describe the despair precisely. Noticing the faint post-orgasm pleasure fading away I'm only left with the awful-feeling realization that I failed to abstain.

Ugh. Now I'm getting a headache writing about it. Maybe that last one is from the cognitive dissonance generated from the contradiction between who I say I am and what I actually do. You see, I identify as a stoic. I privately admire traits like self-control and patience. Wisdom and bravery. Virtue and masculinity. So naturally, I'm distraught that my values and my behavior don't match up.

I want to quit porn because I intend to regain control over my urges. Privately, I think it's disturbing that I'm led by my feelings and urges. In quitting porn, my goal is to not indulge or suppress my urges, but to manage them properly so that my sexual energy isn't wasted on pixels. I want to learn how to harness my sexual power into constructive activities, and use it to enjoy the company of women, rather than masturbating alone in a barracks room.

Quitting porn is part of an overall scheme of developing masculinity. I can't speak for others, but for myself I think that porn distracts me a lot from the activities needed to grow manlier, like lifting, going out on adventures, reading books etc. Although a there's a part of me may feel like I need pornography, another more rational part acknowledges that I don't.

I want to listen more to the rational guy in my head. I have trouble staying accountable to him.

 

To noonoon:
As I read your reply, I recall a specific line of my favorite poem, If:

"If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same"

I do need to practice patience. It is a trait I am lacking, especially now, on day 1. Perhaps I ought to view the struggle of overcoming my bad habit of watching porn as a private trial, intended to help me develop patience.

And you are right about the wishing part. I can't "wish" myself to day 90. I must take each day as it comes, one by one.

 

Thank you for the welcome, friend! I have begun to skim the thread you linked me, and I already found some tactics that I intend to apply. I like your metaphor of war: indeed, I am fighting an enemy, one entrenched in my own mind. I shouldn't fight him halfheartedly, but with every weapon and tool I have in my arsenal.