1. Welcome to NoFap! We have disabled new forum accounts from being registered for the time being. In the meantime, you can join our weekly accountability groups.
    Dismiss Notice

Wrestling with a fetish all my life

For Fapstronauts who are disciples of Christ

  1. Can you find enjoyment in drawing other things?
     
    XandeXIV likes this.
  2. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Funny you should ask because I was wondering about going into that point but thought I'd save it for a later (and longer) post!

    The short answer though is yes, but it often takes me some motivation to get going. It's sort of an obsessive problem that I don't want to start something if I'm not sure if I'll finish it. It's different when motivated by lust though, because the flesh isn't interested in the future....
     
    Tao Jones likes this.
  3. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 54

    So, Tao’s question yesterday has motivated me to write this one up today: my creative block/barriers with respect to drawing more generally, and how my fetish has interfered with and hijacked this skill that I have.

    The first few paragraphs will mostly focus on drawing in general but later on I will get into detail about the fetish again, so trigger warning for any others suffering with DiD / Bondage fetish or similar. (I know, that's basically true of the whole journal... but some entries more than others!)

    I like telling stories. I want to tell stories through my art, which is something I have done in the past, but only been able to do to completion when I had more free time available and/or when I was really, really motivated to do so. In other words, when I was younger! I have other creative skills, some of which are used in service to God though volunteer activities, and I can finish these, but they don’t require the effort that drawing and colouring require. This volunteer work is also what makes me too busy to find much time for drawing (or so I tell myself).

    I guess I like to be motivated by purpose (in art and in general). With the exception of drawing my fantasies, I don’t like drawing for myself… I want all my work to work towards something I can share with others, and I want to share stories. But this takes a serious amount of work, and I hate starting things I might not finish. I’ve started many projects which have never reached completion. I realise this is all obsessive thinking of sorts… so obsessed with achievement that I don’t begin if I don’t believe I’ll eventually achieve. This isn’t a problem with fetish stories because the lust drives itself.

    I guess there’s perfectionism too. I want to ensure the story has a script I’m satisfied with. I need to be sure there are no plot holes in the story I have in mind (I’m very, very fussy about continuity!). I want the characters to look right. If I do these on the fly, I get frustrated if they don’t look right. The difference when drawing my fantasies, especially involving my Naomi character, is I know exactly how I want her to look and how I want to tie her up, and I don’t really care about the script or continuity if nobody else is going to see it… these fantasies are for me and me alone.

    It occurs to me that when I set purpose and perfection aside, creativity flows naturally through expression. This journal is a good example. Okay, there’s purpose in my recovery, but these posts don’t always need to be as long or as in depth as they are. They just flow naturally as I think, whether it’s about my battles with lust or about anxiety or mental health more generally. And I’m not trying to win any writing contests or anything.

    Perhaps this has been the problem all along… if I work on art that expresses myself, perhaps it will flow more naturally. But that’s what’s happening when I draw my bondage fantasies. When I draw these women I get a thrill from drawing every curve on her body (not least her chest), from drawing ropes around her arms and legs and a gag in/over her mouth, from writing the thoughts that go through her mind as she struggles to escape or sits and waits to be rescued. The thrill is my motivation, and also I’m letting out a beast that’s trapped inside me – expressing it. It’s hard to think of something I can draw that flows naturally through expression that isn’t also sinful.

    A couple of years ago I decided to try a different approach to wrestling with my lust. Before I continue note I am not condoning this solution because I really don’t think it is the Godly one, even though it did seem to help (more on that later). I am not sharing to encourage a solution but to confess recent confusion in my search for one.

    I’ll rewind 5 or 6 years first. When drawing Naomi, I had a particular story I wanted to tell about her that I never finished, one in which she was tied up for 24 hours, with at least one page for each of those hours. Driven by lust I would starting working on it but later, after MO, destroy my unfinished work out of shame and frustration. This cycle would repeat many times because deep down I knew I’d be putting in all this work but at some point give up and not get closure on the story. The frustration was driving stress, which made me turn to PMO for release. The usual cycle. I stopped for many years but was constantly fighting between whether or not to try drawing it again, and in the confusion I’d stress out, start playing with myself when the ‘draw’ side was winning and just end up O-ing without any drawing at all. More shame. More frustration. Rinse and repeat.

    About 2 years ago, shortly after a relapse with respect to internet material, I asked myself “what if I did just complete these stories, but without MO”? What if I applied various mindfulness tricks I’d learned from my journey with anxiety to focus on what my body’s doing in response to these images without acting on it (where masturbation is the parallel to fight-or-flight response in anxiety)? Maybe my mind would learn to disassociate these images from masturbation? I believed I could and for the most part I did. I decided I would try this approach, but on the condition that if it looked like I was about to start a relationship with someone I would destroy all of it as I’m terrified of having to open up about this to a partner one day, but feel it will be easier if any material I had on it was destroyed.

    I ended up needing well over 24 pages to let out everything I wanted to happen in this story. It took a serious amount of work and actually felt more like obsessive behaviour than lust. There are times where completing a page was driven more by the obsession to complete than it was by lust. As I said earlier, I’m very busy. I would grab any free moment I could to do a bit more work on this story, but then get obsessed with continuing when I needed to move onto something else. Using the time after waking and before going to work. While watching TV shows or cutscenes in games… any shred of time I could find. I even did some of the colouring on my laptop while waiting at an airport departure gate. Eventually, I did finish everything I wanted to happen in this story, and occasionally I would read it again, without MO. I could go a long time without looking at it too. But I was never sure if it was the right solution. Even if the lust wasn’t still as issue, my obsession with finishing it was somewhat destructive in itself.

    I ended up seeing somebody at the end of last year (or rather the socially distanced, Zoom-based equivalent of seeing someone) and I decided it was time I deleted all of my work on Naomi’s story. However this potential relationship didn’t really work out and we decided to remain friends, but we reached that decision more quickly than I thought we would, which kind of caught me off guard. I felt some frustration, and lost my inhibitions, ultimately resulting in PMO. I wanted my art back too, but it was gone. I was in an out of hunting and seeking online for a while, fell back into a couple of self-bondage sessions earlier this year, and after a few more months of on-and-off PMO I’m at the beginning of my current streak.

    The thing is, the drawing without MO did seem to help. I still get urges to draw Naomi and other women tied up but the obsession with her 24-hour story has gone. Working on it diverted my attention away from internet material and real women in bondage at the time. I really don’t feel I need to complete this story anymore because I got closure on it. I’ve also managed longer streaks without PMO since. Even at the time while drawing I could sometimes look at my work and not feel aroused. I would wake up in the morning with a massive erection, desperate to MO (with or without P), but let it out into drawing or colouring parts of my ‘project’ and the urges would subside without even touching myself. There are times when the obsession wants to work on it but the rest of me just didn’t feel like it, not even the lust.

    So something seems to have worked, but I feel that it shouldn’t have helped and that this isn’t how God wants me to heal. Furthermore, it didn’t feel right serving in various ways or interacting with various Christians knowing that I was intentionally keeping this material on my computer (as I would scan finished pages and colour them digitally).

    I do sometimes wonder if I should work through any images that come up in my head by expressing them on paper without MO… maybe… but A) I’m ashamed of this solution and doubt that God approves and B) I’m not completely sure if I need it anyway, especially with the help of NoFap and the progress I’ve made so far on this current streak. Writing about my temptations on NoFaps also seems to be a release, but it’s difficult to tell if that’s the relief of opening up or because deep down I’m getting off on it. In general, it’s hard to be open and honest and express myself for the sake of getting help without also conjuring up images in my mind that trigger temptation.

    Naomi is very much the embodiment of my fetish. An idol, even. An idol when the motivation is lust and an idol when the motivation is obsession. She has the body I like, gets into the situations I like and approaches them with the attitude I like. Her appearance and her stories are accumulated from character designs and stories that have caught my attention over the many years I have entertained my fantasies. It’s embarrassing talking about her, and to personify her to the extent that she has a name and almost talk about her like she’s real. A few of you have told me before I don’t need to be embarassed, and I get that and I am very grateful for your encouragement :) But embarrassment is another anxious reflex for me so I'm still going to be feeling it for a while. But I’m willing to subject myself to it... such openness is necessary to confess the influence this fetish has had over my life and creativity. Opening up to embarrassment is how I move forward and make myself forward so I can get more help. So bring it on.

    As I write I’ve realised quite a few things:

    1) Regarding my fetish, it’s interesting to reflect on the difference between the obsession-driven actions and those driven by lust.
    • Obsession - I associate the obsession with my 4/5 year-old self who saw Mowgli constricted by Kaa and asked “what’s that like?” - long before gender came into it, back when I was intrigued by the general phenomenon. In this sense, Naomi’s situation is trying to answer this – she is restrained for a long period of time and my art explored what that’s like.
    • Lust - I associate the lust with my teenage self who discovered orgasm while masturbating to a mental image of an attractive woman in bondage. Perhaps best in this sense personified by Daphne from Scooby Doo… an attractive heroine frequently in bondage. Naomi’s physical characteristics are reflected in this sense (her design is not influenced by Daphne at all, but as I’ve mentioned before Daphne is something of an icon to DiD fetishists).
    2) Regarding creativity, I really am letting perfectionism get in the way, which in turn is driven by a fear of sharing my art with others. Maybe I just need to create my – more wholesome – stories for myself at least and not worry about others. Who cares if it isn’t finished? And even if it is… who cares if it isn’t perfect? No story ever is…. Besides, in the digital age it’s much easier to edit and tweak content digitally (which I did with fetish art anyway).
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
  4. You are on a good and helpful path, I think. Do not lose sight of the sin you are defeating: LUST. Anything that promotes lust must go. Lust always begins in the mind with a thought. If you let it take root, it will grow until it overwhelms you. The problem with just letting lust run its course until it has been exhausted is that it will always come back again, with some new idea or permutation on the theme that attracts you. If you continue this pattern, you will never be free. Freedom is our goal.

    It sounds like you have some terrific talent. I challenge you to pursue your final idea above, under #2. Come up with a story that interests you, one that has no lust of any sort in it. Draw that. See how you feel during and afterwards. I am curious to hear how it goes.

    Keep walking the Path. :)
     
    GodsDaughter and XandeXIV like this.
  5. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 55

    Really, really tempted upon waking up. Waking up in the morning is probably when I am the most vulnerable. I know that when I get up to brush my teeth, get dressed, etc, the temptation starts to subside. More-so when I get dressed. After lunch, when at home, is a second point of serious temptation. ‘Food-comas’ make me feel weak and tense and I get them a lot (I have discussed this with a doctor). My mental resolve is therefore weakened too and I’m desperate for a release for the next couple of hours, with nobody else around to stop me.

    But I realise I have to recognise these as temporary. During these times I’m trying to bargain and make excuses for indulging temptations. It’s when I really feel like I don’t want to give up PMO. I want to fail. But I need to keep reminding myself that periods of temptation are temporary. Mindfulness will help here. When I feel like I ‘need’ to indulge in my fantasies I must remind myself that it’s only a temporary need and that later in the day, especially if I’m enjoying time with friends, I won’t feel that need at all.

    ---

    Otherwise today: I got back running again. No pressure. I didn’t make it along my route without stopping but then I didn’t really try. I was just easing myself back in and enjoying it. No pushing myself, but still gave the cardio a good workout. Probably will alternate running and resistance training a bit more for a while.

    Zoom with overseas friends at lunchtime. Great to talk with them, and as always the joy of being with friends puts me in a mindset where I am just not interested in indulging the flesh. I think running and burning off some steam helped here too.

    I decided to put in some extra hours of work this afternoon to try and get ahead of things, but motivation wasn’t really there. Still, progress is progress, and I need to be careful about overwork anyway. I want to show responsibility and diligence but not so much that I’m just people-pleasing or acting out of fear. No more today. Time to chill :D
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
    GodsDaughter and Tao Jones like this.
  6. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 56

    Not much to report today. Strong temptations upon waking again but as usual they subsided once I got going. I spent a lot of time on NoFap and on the PS4 this morning, then church in the afternoon. Some things are taking some getting used to having only recently returned to worshipping in the building, bit we're getting there.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
  7. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 57

    Woke up very tempted yet again, this time thinking about two other people I’ve had very powerful fantasies about in the past. They are also the only two people I have had to unfriend on Facebook because my lust for them was so strong. They aren’t really friends, only acquaintances, which made it easier to unfriend them (but also made it easier to fantasise about them!). If it’s somebody closer who I want to keep as a friend, I would simply unfollow them so any new photos of them don’t show up in my news feed and trigger me, though I could still choose to look at their photos if I wanted. In the past I’ve got caught up trawling through photos of women I know on Facebook, trying to find the perfect pictures of them, and maybe, just maybe, finding a photo of them tied up, as unlikely as that would be. But the obsession in me decided I wouldn’t know if I didn’t look. I haven’t done this for a very long time now, but even as I was getting out of that sickening behaviour, the two women I thought about this morning were especially difficult to resist. Unfollowing wasn’t enough – I’d still be tempted to go to their profiles if I thought about them. Unfriending was the only choice.

    One of these two women were stuck on my mind all day, but the urge to PMO was surprisingly easy to resist. It got me thinking: perhaps it is the thoughts that are the real addiction, not so much the PMO. Even without PMO the thoughts are very pleasing. PMO has been easier to resist for longer periods of time over the past few years, despite the occasional relapse. But the fantasies have always been there. Even if I don’t act on them, thinking about them has always given some degree of pleasure. I didn’t masturbate this morning but I’m ashamed to admit I still enjoyed thinking about these ladies. Jesus says we commit adultery with our eyes – how much more is this true of our thoughts.

    I am not saying that the real addiction being in the mind makes it better – far from it. Nor am I saying it justifies PMO. It all has to go. None of it is pleasing to God. It’s just helpful to have a better understanding of where the real problem is.

    ---

    Work – difficult again. I had to bite my proverbial tongue responding to an e-mail (‘bite my fingers’? Suggestions welcome!). I’m actually venting right now having just written it. It’s the same project that’s been giving me stress. Without going into detail, I don’t feel as though somebody we are hiring is doing the job we hired them to do, but I don’t really have the justification to say that explicitly and even if I did I’d struggle to know how to do so gracefully. But this e-mail took a delicate balance of grace and understanding on the one hand, but getting to the point and being clear about our expectations on the other. I had to be sympathetic but not a pushover. And I don’t know if I got these balances right – I pray to God that I may have done. I did not reply straight away as I was both frustrated and anxious upon reading the e-mail, but let myself process and cool down before taking any action.

    Ultimately the real problems go above my head and that of the party in question. Management stuff, you know. Red tape. Overhead. Beuracrasy. I hate beuracrasy. I just want to enjoy the technical side of my job without having to manage people in these ways while navigating so many rules and procedures. I know they are there for the security of the company. We have auditing because people commit fraud. We have rigorous airport security because of the actions of terrorists and smugglers. Rules and procedures exist in response to the sinfulness of man. I know these rules are all set by fallen people like me, in response to the actions of yet more fallen people like me. The real problem is sin. I forgive everyone involved because I too am a sinner.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
    Tao Jones likes this.
  8. Terrific insights, on every front!
     
    XandeXIV likes this.
  9. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 58

    Another day with on-and-off temptations. Shopping during my lunch break was particularly tough because there was a particularly attractive lady with a particularly attractive chest walking around the supermarket, and it took a lot of discipline to avert my eyes. I had to do my best to ensure I was in a different aisle, or not facing her if we were in the same.

    Work wasn’t too bad overall but full of distractions that made it difficult to get in the zone. Hopefully tomorrow.

    Anyway, reflection time….

    ----

    I shared in another thread earlier today (I think) how even if we may feel tempted to keep our addictions to ourselves, they will still find a way to hurt us and others. It’s reminded me of one such example that happened to me that I had been meaning to write up.

    A previous job I did involved contract work for the government, which required a special type of security clearance. Getting this clearance means surrendering your privacy significantly. They government need to know everything about you, including porn habits. Why, you may ask? They need to know you can’t be threatened by blackmail. They need to know your weaknesses in order to know how threat actors might pressure you for information or actions against national security. It all comes out – not only porn history, but other addictions, broken relationships, ex-partners, everything. And they have ways to know if you’re lying – they could find this stuff out themselves if they wanted (w.r.t. porn, by contacting your internet provider, for example) – the only reason they interview you is to see how honest you are. There’s an urban legend of the government knowing about somebody having a child that person didn’t even know about themselves. Not sure if it’s true but based on what I’ve heard I wouldn’t be surprised.

    So, I couldn’t risk lying about my own internet habits, but at this point in my life I had never opened up to anybody face-to-face about my fetish. I was absolutely terrified. Technically I could have pulled out and not pursued this particular path, but my fear of letting others down and anxiety about future wouldn’t let me quit. Already it was clear that this secret I’d always thought I’d keep to myself was working its way into my wider life. I thought I could silo this fetish but it was clear to me now that that was no longer the case.

    I had to wait for a call from an interviewer to arrange the meeting. Sure enough, one day I get a call from an unknown number and it’s the guy. Interview arranged. At some point I learned he was fairly new and others told me it would be easier because of it… but this actually made me more nervous. An experienced guy had heard it all before, stuff probably much more weird than my fetish. But not the new guy. This made it much more scary for me. I was seriously nervous in the run-up to this. One of the most anxiety-inducing things I’d ever experienced.

    Anyway, interview day came, and I anxiously answered a whole load of questions before getting to the ones about my internet usage, porn included. I forced myself to admit I had the fetish, but from there anxiety reflex was running on overdrive. The interview finished and I would need to wait to hear whether I was cleared or not. But I waited anxiously… what would they think? What if they wanted more details? I didn’t hear anything for ages, and I actually ended up moving onto a different role that no longer required this clearance. However it would still have been useful, and I think the company had been paying for it anyway.

    Thing is, when I had almost forgotten about it, my phone rings. It’s a private number. My body enters fear mode in an instant. Life-or-death threat detected. Fight-or-flight circuits engaged. Indeed, it was the interviewer, and he wanted a follow-up interview. I couldn’t think under the sheer fear I felt at the thought of having to discuss this embarrassing fetish once more. I agreed, almost on autopilot, as though I was just observing the situation (essentially freezing and just letting the situation play out).

    However, after some time to reflect and calm down, I spoke to various managers about whether or not I really still needed this and whether it would be okay to just withdraw my application, and it was all fine. Phew. I cancelled the interview. All was over.

    Except I now have a fear of the phone ringing. Well, fear is overstating it. But the anxiety reflexes do kick in, especially when it’s a withheld number. But the positive is that I had shown that I was capable of admitting I had this problem to other people. Indeed this did come useful a few times in later life when for one reason or another I had to do it again. But outside NoFap, out of the people who would be able to identify me, very very few people know.

    Returning to the original point that made me bring this up…. The fetish for the first time had found a way to break free from the silo I had kept it to. It found other ways since then. Its escape caused me great anxiety. I know that should I ever get married my future wife will need to know about this fetish. Honesty is paramount in a healthy marriage. But the knowledge of this fetish and the things it has led me to do won’t be easy for either of us. When that day comes this sin will once again create difficulties for me and even worse: for somebody else. When I was anxious about the first time… others were affected too. My work suffered because I was too anxious to concentrate. So my company suffered. We might think we can keep our sins secret but one way or another they will find a way to affect our lives and those of people around us, directly or indirectly.

    I praise God that He has sent a saviour through whom I am no longer held accountable for my sins or their consequences, but pray that those I have hurt (whether they know it or not) will heal, and that no others would be hurt in similar ways.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
    Tao Jones likes this.
  10. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 59

    I'm okay today, but it's been another day where my flesh really, really wants to give in. It feels more like the obsessive desire for closure than the lust talking, but it's temptation nonetheless. The flesh is just waiting for me to stumble... any excuse to give in to temptation. It's planning what to do if I do. It's making a list of unfulfilled fantasies.... things to draw and people to think about. How to make the most of it before I attempt another streak. It's waiting for something I can count as P,M or O so I can reset the whole thing and indulge in all three over and over for the remainder of the day.

    Even as I write I feel dishonest because I really want to give in, as if I'm doing all of this because only because it is God's will and not because I actually agree with Him.

    This is why my prayer is always for a change of heart - that each and every day and at all times my will would be aligned with God's. This is not just mind over body... it's mind over mind, or more importantly: Spirit over both mind and body. I can't do this without the Father.

    I also know that there are times where I DO want to keep on resisting. I want to do it for God, for my friends and family, for the people God uses me to serve, and for everybody here on NoFap.

    Please Father, let Your will be mine, every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
    Tao Jones likes this.
  11. We walk by faith, not be feeling. Even when we do not feel like following, we press on. To go back is only pain and death. We must keep moving ahead, deeper into the Kingdom of Life. There is nothing else in this world that can satisfy us.

    Even when it makes no sense to us, even when we cannot recall why we made the commitment in the first place, we remain true to that commitment: No P and no MO, no matter what. If we simply stick with that, our minds will begin to clear of the fog, and we will see clearly once again, in time, guaranteed.
     
    XandeXIV likes this.
  12. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 60

    60 days! 2/3 of the way to the famous 90 day goal. I know the fight won't be over then, and that I may not even make it that far, but I don't think I've ever made it this far, so progress is progress!

    Still though, the flesh taunts me. The part of me that doesn't want to make it to 90 and just wants to live for this evil still has a loud voice. The flesh is scared of hitting 90 days, and this morning I felt I should reflect on the fears that it has:

    "What if the 90 days challenge doesn’t work? Will I still have urges? How will I know it has worked?"

    To be fair, these are valid questions, but I know they are not excuses to give in, as tempted as I am. I would still be interested to know peoples' experiences here. But the flesh uses these questions to cast doubt on whether resisting PMO is worthwhile. That's a ridiculous doubt... of course it's worthwhile.

    "Do you really want to give all this up?"

    This is certainly a ridiculous question. Yes, I do.

    The flesh can't imagine a life without PMO, especially with respect to my fetish. To never experience all the things I've experience again is scary, especially if urges never stop. It often feels like my fetish is part of my identity, and that losing it will be like losing a limb. The flesh is afraid of the phantom pain that will be left behind if it ever truly goes away. But this fetish is not my identity. My identity is in Christ.

    "What if I never get a wife, and so never experience sexual pleasure again?"

    It's not all about sex, flesh. And there are blessings in singleness (1 Cor. 7:7-8). Besides, you know full well from my battle with anxiety that 'what if' thinking gets us nowhere.

    ---

    Work was good today. Busy, but noticable progress. Plus, one of my deadlines got pushed back a week. I'm currently feeling much more positive :)

    But I finished work fighting strong temptations. I decided to try an approach I'd been meaning to try for a while. My urges for self-bondage appear to be partly rooted in a need to isolate myself from the world, to have space to think freely with no distractions, and to be free from perception of time. But I don't really need bondage to do this... I can just meditate. The problem is that I have poor discipline with meditating for a long period of time. I'm very restless and struggle to sit/lie/stand in one position for long, and I often wonder if this is a part of the fetish's appeal, because it cancels that out. But, I decided I was just going to lie in bed and think for an hour straight. Even if I did move about in bed, I wasn't going to leave it for that hour. I set an alarm but moved my phone and its clock away to lose all sense of time. I'd think freely, but perhaps use some of the time to work on understanding why I have these urges even more. So I did this, and it was nice and relaxing, without having to restrain myself.

    But the problem is that I fell asleep :emoji_laughing:

    I hate falling asleep in the daytime... I feel very groggy afterwards. And it left me in a kind of depressed state. However, for a while, the temptations were gone. And I'm starting to feel better now as I write and reflect. Depression is rare for me, but I know that it doesn't tend to last long for me. I can accept it's there and that it won't necessarily be how I will feel later on.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
  13. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 61

    Didn’t sleep well, but had a very vivid, powerful dream that’s been on my mind all day.

    I dreamt that a beautiful woman saved my life (and that of others)… it was some hostage situation and she saved everyone through some combination of wit and action, possibly as part of a sort of swat team. Part of her rescue was pretending to cooperate with the enemy and she seemed to be paying particular attention to me throughout, eventually winking at me just before she dropped the act and saved everyone.

    I asked her on a date, and she agrees, almost as though I didn’t need to ask. It totally seems like we just instantly connect. Randomly at some point in the dream her head is shaved, but I’m still very attracted and very into her. I’m elated that things are going so well. It’s the same elation when things seem to be moving in a positive direction in real-life romantic pursuits.

    I then woke up in the middle of the night (not unusual for me at all), disappointed to discover it was all a dream. The elation I felt was tangible in that the disappointment was also. I ended up obsessively flicking through people on a Christian dating app. I couldn’t get back to sleep until after I’d had my breakfast, which I always have in bed!

    I haven’t been on many dates, and have never really worked up the courage to explicitly ask somebody on one, just hang out ‘as friends’, and on one or two of those occasions retrospectively call the occasion a date. But this whole dream really made me want to go on one.

    Thing is, I used to be incredibly shy. I was at university when I finally got the courage to ask somebody out, and that exhausted me mentally, pushing through the anxiety in order to do it. I have become much, much more confident in recent years, which is ironic, because I’m now cautious about relationships for entirely different reasons. The first is that I have a very niche calling with respect to serving God, and experience has shown that it’s hard to see myself with somebody who doesn’t share it (if you want to know what the calling is, get to know me via DM… I’d be giving away too much of my identity if I explained it here!). The second is one I’ve mentioned a few times: that I need to know I can open up about all of my fetish struggles. I need to feel safe enough around them. Which is hard without getting to know people first, and for me that takes time. It’s one thing to know I can tell somebody anything, but another to actually make myself do it. So in both cases, I’m now looking for something incredibly specific. But it’s better for me to be single my entire life than to live in sorrow with the wrong person.

    I do have peace with singleness, mostly, not least because I’m pretty introverted and like having my own space. But there are times when singleness gets me. Sometimes I want to be married for the wrong reasons. Because I want sex. Because I want to give my parents grandchildren. Because I’m the only one in some friendship groups who is single. These are all wrong reasons to marry, and the latter two are examples of me worrying what others think and not going with what I (and more importantly God) wants. These things make me impatient sometimes, and tempted to flirt or otherwise lead on people with whom I’m very unlikely to be compatible. I’ve hurt people by leading them on too much before and it’s a mistake I really don’t want to repeat.

    Returning to the point about the elation I feel when things progress in a positive way… it occurred to me today that it is very similar to a sense of elation I have felt during really good PMO sessions before (maybe dopamine or oxytocin at work?), which is not a good thing. It’s either telling me I'm at risk of fully replacing sex with PMO, or that the elation I’ve felt around women I’ve liked in the past has been driven by lust or other some other shallow factor. It’s hard to describe, but interesting to have observed this today, and I will continue to reflect on it.

    Past mistakes have shown me that shallowness isn’t just about wanting somebody for their appearance. I’m sometimes misled to think that because a beautiful woman and I are keeping a conversation and having a good laugh that that means we have a connection. But I’ve learned – the hard way – that a true connection needs to be deeper. I missed out on learning a lot by growing up as the shy teenager I was.

    I struggle to accept that some women are / have actually been interested in me, because I’ve grown up thinking none of them ever were. Somewhere along the line, I’ve assumed by default that if I express my feelings to a woman she will be repulsed. I have had many, many females friends and still do now, so that's not the problem, but I can never shake the feeling that they won’t like me if I were to confess feelings to any that I have come to feel that way about. I feel inferior to women, and sometimes intimidated by them, which is bad, because I’m subconsciously assuming the worst about them when so many of them, friend, family or otherwise, have been so, so good to me.

    An interesting revelation I had recently was that one of the women to whom I’ve felt most inferior is also the one I’ve fantasised about the most. I’ve never had any romantic feelings for, and the intimidation is more because she's rather assertive! I can think of one other person I’ve had intense fantasies about and of whom I’ve felt intimidated by, and I’m wondering if there’s a connection. It could be coincidence, of course. It could just be that both these women have bodies I'm particularly attracted to.

    I generally don’t fantasise about somebody I have romantic feelings for, but there are occasions in the past where once it’s become clear that a relationship with that person isn’t going to happen, my mind no longer regards them as off-limits, and they do become an object of lust in my fantasies.

    My mind places various categories of people in the ‘off-limits’… but the challenge is teaching my mind that everybody is off limits. All women are loved by God and not to be used as objects of lust, regardless of my relationship to them or lack thereof.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
  14. There is nothing magic about 90 days. It is just the first 90 days of a commitment that lasts the rest of your life. But thinking of it that way is daunting. Better to just take it one day at a time. I cannot possibly resist temptation for a year or a month of even a week -- but I can resist today. I'll tackle tomorrow when it gets here. Each day has enough trouble of its own, and I know God will be faithful to help me today. That is enough.

    When you meditate, do not do it in bed. When you eat, do not do it in bed. Bed is for sleeping only. If you associate bed with other activities, it harms your sleep, and confuses you when you are not sleeping there. If you want to meditate well and eat well, do those activities in other locations. Keep the bedroom for sleeping only.
     
    XandeXIV likes this.
  15. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    My understanding with the 90 days is that for an average person, from a neuroscience perspective this period of time without PMO help's one's brain to reboot, though I appreciate this may take much longer depending on the damage done. I was just 90 as a representative number for whatever that period of time is for me :)

    But yes, you are right in that it is every day that counts more-so than the sum total of them. It is about damage to the heart more-so than it is about damage to the brain, and only God can fix hearts. But if repair to the brain is going to make the experience just that bit easier, then personally, that is a milestone I look forward to.

    ----

    Day 62

    Run this morning but it didn't go too well.... I felt very light-headed. Usually I've had more to eat the night before, and/or left less time between breakfast and the run.

    I've put in some extra work today. Just about to finish now. I actually don't mind working on a Saturday too much as it's mostly on my own terms. I work on the things I'm interested in and completely ignore emails and Teams (unless I need anything from either)... in fact, I close them down completely. Today's been productive too, so I can enjoy my evening :)
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
    Tao Jones likes this.
  16. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 64

    A good day work-wise! Very good progress on multiple fronts, and I'd say the extra effort I put in over the weekend has paid off. There's still some way to go, but I'll take this victory.

    My run wasn't so great, but I've only recently started trying to get back into it. It really does feel as though the problem is in my quads... they just feel like they're getting tired too easily.

    Temptations haven't been so bad the past couple of days, but the desire to give in is still there. The rest of this paragraph is tricky to put into words... but what's been interesting though is that even when I start to entertain the idea of giving in, there's a voice that's saying 'I'd rather not', as if I really just can't be bothered to PMO. One of my goals is for resistance to become a habit, and this kind of internal monologue seems to be an indicator of progress towards that goal. This isn't a new one, actually. It doesn't come up often though. And it doesn't guarantee success, of course.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
    Tao Jones likes this.
  17. You now know it is something you can say no to and do without. Keep it up. There is never a good reason to go back. We will never find what we seek in lust and PMO.
     
    XandeXIV and InnerMan like this.
  18. XandeXIV

    XandeXIV Fapstronaut

    Day 65

    In terms of insights, today has been pretty crazy. I have had all sorts of insights on multiple fronts; so many that it’s been tricky to concentrate on work! But I don’t feel too bad considering that I put in extra hours over the weekend

    Anyway, this will be a long read! Insights concern my stress and anxiety issues and also my fetish. I’ll cover the stress first:

    Stress

    I’m getting more and more convinced that having too many parallel things going on around me is bad for me. At work, I think I’m as high in my company as it’s safe for me to be and any higher would be too much responsibility. Stress leads to PMO. I can’t avoid stress completely but that doesn’t mean I have to let it in. The past year or so has helped me realise this. Whether or not the national lockdown has contributed is not clear because I happened to have been given more responsibility, and therefore more to juggle, at around the same time that started. But managing stuff remotely has been tough and would haven been easier in person.

    I realise now that I would rather take on one huge responsibility than many small ones. This will be important in directing my choices in the future, and by extension their effect on my mental health. I need to think about what things I agree to be responsible for are necessary and what aren’t; both inside and outside of work. Note I said ‘agree to be responsible for’ and not ‘agree to doing’. This is more than just doing – even if I delegate something to someone else, it’s still on my mind. It’s something I have to oversee regardless of how involved I actually get. It’s space in my mind that I’m realising my mind does not have room for.

    Another revelation I had while working related to my anxious ‘what if’ thinking and difficulty making decisions. I find it hard because I see so many possibilites, mostly ones in which I make mistakes. But maybe that’s okay? Perhaps the real issue is that I fear the potential judgement and blame when I make those mistakes. It’s okay to be aware of what may go wrong but it’s dangerous to dwell on it. This too, across the space of all possibilities, also clutters my mind.

    Fetish - Warning: Triggers ahead

    Firstly, I dreamt I had reset this morning. A very convincing dream, and I woke up very aroused and with an erection, so the line between dream and reality was very blurred. The fact that there was no mess to clean up was the only thing that convinced me it really was a dream. Until then I was ready to reset my counter and everything, and very tempted to ‘make the most of it’ and commence a binge. Good job it was just a dream!

    The war in my mind

    Anyway, it somehow led to further reflection on that 'voice' I wrote about yesterday that would ‘rather not’ PMO when I entertained the idea. Perhaps I have a better way to explain it now. If I had to describe my internal dialogue over the past few days, i.e, the war over my mind, it would be something like this: both the flesh and the Spirit are presenting their cases to me, but neither of their arguments are particularly convincing. It has to be one or the other, and I’m defaulting to the Spirit, but I do so somewhat begrudgingly and remain unconvinced even though I know deep down that the Spirit is right.

    Answering “What’s it like”?

    Later in the day urges had gotten stronger and I went to read through some of my older posts and it really got me thinking. First, recall there are three main ways I’ve entertained this fetish in the past: hunting-and-seeking online material, art (in particular storytelling) and self-bondage. Also recall that this all started with wanting to know what it’s like to be tied up. I realised in a later post that it may be more accurate to say that I want to know what it’s like to be tied up and feel safe… because the idea of people restrained uncomfortably and/or in general peril repulses me completely. But I think there’s more....

    It’s not that I want to know what being tied up is like, rather I know what I want it to be like. Safety is just one of the things I want it to be, perhaps the main thing… but this revelation is a fresh one so I’ll think about what those things are or may be at a later date. The point is that there is an ideal that I want every bondage scene to be. I have my ideal scene, perhaps different depending on whether I’m tying myself up or drawing stories about tied up women, but I have these ideals either way and there’s plenty in common between the two manifestations of this fetish. In both cases, I’ve attempted to reach the ideal. With Naomi I may have even reached it because last year I finished the story about her I’d been trying to finish for years. But hunting-and-seeking online content – whether a scene from film or TV or intentional fetish material - has never worked because I have no control over it and I therefore cannot push it towards that my ideal scene. I have no influence in making what its really like for the character, actress or bondage model be like what I want it to be like.

    What the flesh will miss


    For a long time I went only MO, without all three of my ‘activities’, for a few years until a relapsed two years back. This was a huge setback in one sense, but in other ways, it was all different, for better or worse. My experiences with the relapse, combined with the realisation above that I’ve really just wanted the “what’s it like” question to have a very specific answer, have led me to reflect on what I hope to get from each activity versus what I actually get. I’ve also recently observed that my flesh is scared of never experiencing sexual gratification again, and will miss all of these activities. But it occurred to me that some I will miss more than others, based entirely on to what extent they meet my ideal and answer “what’s it like” in the way I want to.

    1. Online content: I haven’t actually written about this in this journal as much as I could, but this may be a reflection of this next point: that I *think* I have reached a point where giving this up doesn’t bother me that much. It’s the other two that I crave more strongly. The relapse started with this, but from that point on I wasn’t hunting-and-seeking nearly as much as I used to, and even when I did I wasn’t always masturbating. The futility of it all was becoming more clear – I knew what I wanted to see but I could never find that perfect scene. Furthermore, knowing that what I want a bondage scene to be is merely a fantasy made me consider the reality. I was getting better at reminding myself that each woman I masturbated to was somebody’s daughter, or possibly a sister, wife, girlfriend or even mother. It was a real woman against whom God forbids me to sin. In the case of intentional fetish videos I tried to ask myself what led this woman to agree to this? Is she really into it or is she trying to earn money for college or something? Both are wrong, but in the latter case the producer is exploiting women. Not okay. I think these new ways of thinking about this particular habit, combined with the realisation that I’d never find my ideal, were helping me genuinely lose interest. But I am absolutely not saying my flesh has no interest. I could still easily be led astray, especially if I start masturbating and the brain chemicals start flowing and I lose self-control. This stuff is just as dangerous as it ever was. However, right now I don’t feel as though I will miss this particular manifestation of my fetish.

    2. Art and story-telling: I got back into this later into the relapse as a means to not fantasise about real people but also because in this activity I have control over the answer to “what’s it like”. Why do I need the stress of searching when I can create? I was also attempting to release myself of the stress of going back and forth between starting my ideal story and destroying it. It was control not only over the scenario but an attempt to gain control over the fetish itself. I feel this is very significant. Anyway, I was able to complete my ideal story for Naomi without masturbating. I sometimes did slip up and masturbate and sometimes did so to orgasm. But for the most part, it was just the drawing and attempting to get this out of my system. This work is all destroyed now and I do still get urges to draw standalone images or shorter stories, and I feel as though it is now the more visual element and less-so the ‘in-the-mindset’ element that my flesh will miss. I will miss looking at my ideal damsels in distress even if I don’t need to get in their heads. But again, I’m only describing how I feel now as I type and perhaps more recently as a whole, but it’s not safe for me to assume this will always be the case. It’s entirely possible I’ll indulge in the longer project once again and that I will want to imagine myself in the position of my characters.

    3. Self-bondage: This is harder to control in order to realise my fantasies – easier than hunting-and-seeking, but harder than drawing. I always want to experience being tied up for X number of hours (I use X because X has increased over time!). Yes, if done right, it gets me in that mindset that I crave. But there’s always some detail that’s never quite right and the obsession within me wants to get it right. The frustration can lead to me to just MO and get it over with. Later in the relapse I tried again earlier this year for the first time in about half a decade, again under the illusion that If I just got it out of my system I won’t need to do it again. I made it to the latest X and feel no need no change what X is… but now my curiosity wants to try again but do things a bit differently. There is just never true satisfaction.

    Summary

    I think now that all these years I have been chasing what I want the phenomenon of bondage to look and feel like, but have learned that reality very rarely aligns itself with my fantasy. To some extent I have succeeded in the flesh’s ‘goals’ during the relapse, but there’s always something else. I still want to tie myself up. I still want to draw bound and gagged women even though I don’t want to make such a project of it. I've never tied up a real woman and I don’t think an urge is there per se, but if the opportunity presented itself I can’t promise the flesh wouldn’t take it.

    Lately there is a dialogue between the flesh and the Spirit in which the flesh is trying to convince me to do the things I think I would miss if I never have any sexual experience again, but when I start to warm to these arguments my gut instinct suddenly sides with the Spirit. I know the Spirit is right. But the flesh keeps screaming back.
     
    Tao Jones likes this.
  19. Reality will not and cannot ever live up to fantasy. That is the lie in fantasy. Time spent pursuing fantasies is simply wasted. Far more satisfying to engage in the pursuit of something real.

    Keep responding to the voice of the Spirit. Keep focused on his truth. The lies will eventually fade until you can see them for the dull things they truly are; meanwhile, the truth will become more and more vibrant, until we are overwhelmed by God's majesty and come to rest in his deep peace for good.
     
    Untamed_fantasy and XandeXIV like this.
  20. Untamed_fantasy

    Untamed_fantasy Fapstronaut

    11
    21
    3
    Hey, I just want to recommend some video from Jordan Peterson to you, who inspired me to do Nofap and helped me a lot and I think he is a good guy who is searching for the truth. I don`t know if u know him but he is a Professor/Author/clinical psychologist and I think he is very helpful for many people who are struggling with life or just with little things in life. In this video he talks about social anxiety maybe it can help you, and I remember there are some other videos from him about social anxiety maybe they are helpful too.

    The link for the yt-video is:

    I also saw some other videos about this topic by just typing “Jordan Peterson social anxiety” into youtube. The videos aren`t long most of the time under 5-10 minutes, and I think they are very interesting.


    (I hope posting a link isn`t against some website rules, idk never saw it before)
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2021
    XandeXIV and Konka like this.

Share This Page