Addicted To Sexual Content

[ProblemSolving]

I am in a relationship and while spending time with her I don't even think about watching porn or other sexual content. As long as I have sex. But when I don't have sex for like 3 or 4 days I notice that I become frustrated. Or when I am alone for a few days I know that I will need to masturbate to some porn or something similar. Somehow I would call myself addicted to it. For like 10 years already. I joined the nofap group but I don't really see the point of it, because I can never ever reach 90 days of no fapping. And way too often this nofap journey becomes a torture for me.

My question is: Can I work on my addiction by reducing the intensity of the sexual content when fapping? Few days ago I thought that maybe I should quit porn videos once and for all and substitute it with pictures of softcore type? And even when I will feel some sort of dissatisfaction because the pictures just don't seem to be enough for me, I would fap again to some pictures? And make myself get used to this lower type of stimulation?

I will go bananas if I try a nofap challenge again.

[key]

Remove porn from your life entirely. Masturbate whenever you have the urge, if possible just be present and aware of your actions when you do, If you need more stimuli your mind is great at imagining things so don't give up so easily!

If it's not working stop fapping,  try again later, whatever. Just get rid of porn & your future self will thank your past self for it.

 

[ProblemSolving]

Thank you. Will do my best to follow your instructions.

[Mppdidi]

I can relay to that. After quite some journey i found this video on youtube. It is worth watching from start to end.

 

 

All the Best.

 

Mppdidi

 

 

[Mppdidi]

Forgot to mention that i originally started with this tedx talk making my through to the above video.

Keep In mind that the gnosic stuff is not really my cup of tea - BUT it got me to rethink aboult sex in an entirely different way.

 

So goog luck and,

 

All the Best

[poimandres]

On 6/6/2016 at 2:55 AM, ProblemSolving said:

As long as I have sex. But when I don't have sex for like 3 or 4 days I notice that I become frustrated. Or when I am alone for a few days I know that I will need to masturbate to some porn or something similar.

Sounds like you are a stereotypical healthy male between the ages of 13-80 years old with a normal sexual appetite.  

The choice is yours to "quit", but from this line here.. I doubt you have anything to be concerned with. If you want to "try to stop" you'll probably fail as you won't be able to stop thinking of doing the act. 

The best way  to not do it as frequent, is to get busy and stay busy.  Since you have free time to rub it out, lift weights instead, read books, try to keep your mind stimulated.

 

All that being said.. maybe I have the addiction too? 

Edited June 18, 2016 by agnosis

[ProblemSolving]

A small feedback here. I really started not using porn anymore. And I think it redirected my mind to some degree. I still had to masturbate like every 3-4 days, otherwise I would explode. I can imagine going back to porn someday, when I have a healthy attitude towards it. Till then I will keep on focusing on the natural triggers that the world has to offer. 

[ProblemSolving]

I need a little bit more of an advice here. I messed up and use porn again. And I just feel happy. I don't know what I should be doing. I have this urge to have a lot of sex. Because it is fascinating to me. The intimacy. Imagining myself having sex with other women that I don't know yet. I have a big sex drive. My girlfriend usually was the limit. She loves sex as well, but she is sore on a regular basis. Probably just too much sex. She comes everytime. The thing I like about porn is, that it creates a lot of dirty fantasies and therefore spices up my sex life. 

On the other side I decided nearly a year ago that I should change my attitude towards porn. I watched all the videos about bad effects of porn. And still here I am. Am I alright or am I doing wrong?

[Mal]

@ProblemSolving

This is what you are doing:

I like porn.

I like the fact that I like porn, but I feel ashamed because somebody else told me that I should not like porn (Life Coach, or wannabe on a self improvement forum)

Now I'm in a pickle because I internalized the idea that porn is bad, and now I have two conflicting drives, one is to continue with the porn, one is to resist it because I was willing to buy into somebody else's meaning around porn.

My advice to you:

Just be aware of all this, let it all be there, and continue to do what you need to do until YOU show up and make the choice that is right for you.

Edited July 11, 2016 by Mal

[ProblemSolving]

Thank you. You really give good advices. I was getting lost in this experiment. And I completely forgot where I want to be. I remember my mother always telling me that I should stop playing video games. She did that since I was 15-16. But the first time I truly decided to reduce my video game consumption was in the age of ~23. Because I made the choice. And I don't think that all the gaming in the past was a complete waste of time. It all made sense back then. I wanted it.

So here I am with my porn consumption. I enjoy it. I like tits. I like women acting sexy. It arouses me. And nothing external like a nofap community can really change the way I am.  

[Mal]

@ProblemSolving

I agree. One must do what they do until they are done with it.  If somebody is thinking about taking the rocky road, but are not quite sure, then I will give them the benefit of my experience, and leave them to decide for themselves.  But to tell somebody that they need to stop doing something that is already ingrained is probably a losing game, because of this conflicting drives thing, it just strengthens the false self and ingrains the habit even more.

[Allinthemind]

Due to your guilt, I think that you are exaggerating your "addiction". You are moderating its use when you are not seeing your girlfriend; addictions would take over that situation and possibly affect your intimacy.

As with your gaming history, you were/are using something to manage stress/relieve tension. I don't think that the activity has become the new problem. Keep things in moderation; suppress something and it shows up in another area of your life.

[Infinite]

@ProblemSolving An addiction is anything that you feel you cannot go without for a certain period of time. Now with that being said, although you are having issues with releasing porn, what reasons are there to even release it other than the reasons that you've been given by other people? Masturbating to porn after going 3-4 days without sexual activity is completely fine. Even if you were doing it every day, it'd still be fine as long as it wasn't getting in the way of your life. Do you want to let it go because it's actually negatively impacting your life, or do you want to let it go because people told you that you should? 

I recently got rid of porn after years of struggling with it, but it was because I was addicted to the point where I'd masturbate 4+ times a day, and I'd spend periods of 3-6+ hours on porn. It was completely destroying my life. I never had the energy to do anything at all because of the amount I'd waste on ejaculating, and my mind was always consumed by the thought of porn at all times. I wouldn't say that I'm completely out of the addiction yet because I'm currently only on day 12 without porn, but I have absolutely no urge to look at it anymore. After years of struggle, I just finally got tired of repeating the same perpetual cycle and decided that I was done with it. I had realized that although I may have wanted to stop watching porn all these years, I didn't want to stop more than I wanted to continue watching it. My efforts in ending the addiction were not truly sincere because deep down, I still wanted it. After realizing this, I thought about how much porn has effected my life and decided that it wasn't worth the 6 seconds of pleasure that it brings. After that, I dropped it with no internal conflict. It's only been 12 days, but I feel like I'm done with it now.

I learned a valuable lesson from all of this. We often tell ourselves that we want to achieve something, but in reality we don't truly want it. If we truly wanted to achieve that thing, whatever it may be, then there wouldn't be any internal conflict when it comes down to actually doing whatever is required to achieve it. Internal conflict means that part of you wants it, part of you doesn't. If you truly wanted it, then you would act decisively towards it, and you would not hesitate to do whatever it is that is needed of you in the moment. 

Edited July 21, 2016 by Infinite

[reddd]

I agree. One must do what they do until they are done with it.

[ProblemSolving]

Really appreciate the amount of replies. There were also some internal reasons of course. Every little thing that I decide to do somewhere starts inside of me. The main reason was how I behaved to other people. I felt like I had a lack of appeal. Lost my virginity somewhere around 22 years or so. And it was a prostitute. Had to wait like two more years to finally have sex with a "proper" girl. I was afraid that my sexuality was just wrong. I loved to masturbate using porn. So there was some sort of craving inside of me. But I usually was a loner. So I never appreciated the presence of people around me. Usually leaving a bad impression with the people that I interact with. Same at school, university and the work experiences that I had. I thought that all this might change a little bit without porn. Now I am here in this forum and all the videos from Leo that I watched and I can say for sure that I transformed in some way. All the thoughts of fear or whatsoever are drastically reduced. I am not afraid that people might think negativelly of me. I will do the "mistakes" till I realize for myself that maybe it might improve my career when connecting with certain people. That my worldview might improve when opening up more and more. And all the other stuff. Anyway, that was a little offtopic. 

I am using porn. When I know that I will visit my gf soon I stop it like a few days before seeing her, because it does change the way I have sex with her. The thing is, that it has positive and negative aspects to it, on which I won't go into detail here. I still like porn. So I am using it. No more barriers. Maybe someday I will stop. But that doesn't matter for now.   

[IndependantKouhai]

 

On 6/6/2016 at 9:55 AM, ProblemSolving said:

 

I will go bananas if I try a nofap challenge again.

1

That's good, have you watched Leo's video on the root cause of all addictions?

"If you permanently want to conquer any addiction that you have is you just sit with emptiness and do nothing. So if it's a food addiction, you sit with an empty stomach, and you do nothing, if it's a drug addiction, you just sit with clean veins, and you don't do anything. And as you do that, don't go into fantasy, but just sit there very mindfully. Don't distract yourself! You will want to distract yourself with a book, calling a friend or whatever, DONT! And as you sit in that emptiness, all you have to do is you have to surrender yourself to the purifying fire of emptiness, where all of your sufferings and cravings will come up, and you will sort of face your inner demons. And as you sit there, you're going to have a  psychosomatic reaction, your body and mind is going to go crazy, you're going to feel uncomfortable and perhaps even ill. But the longer you sit there, hour after hour doing nothing, that purifying fire will burn out your inner demons. Imagine your demons coming out one by one as the hours go on. 
 If you don't do this, you don't conquer the addiction, you just find some short term solution, and usually what will happen you will fall back into it, if not in a week, then in a month, maybe in a year, maybe in 10 years, but you will. You haven't faced the inner demons; you just swept them under the rug."

 

[Jelly_Shades]

7 hours ago, IndependantKouhai said:

 

 

"If you permanently want to conquer any addiction that you have is you just sit with emptiness and do nothing. So if it's a food addiction, you sit with an empty stomach, and you do nothing, if it's a drug addiction, you just sit with clean veins, and you don't do anything. And as you do that, don't go into fantasy, but just sit there very mindfully."

 

I agree with this. The most effective way to deal with addiction (or any emotion at all) is to sit with it and let it tell its story.