Hi. My name is Pablo, I’m twenty-seven, and for about ten of those years I’ve been stuck in the swamp called PMO.
I don’t even remember exactly how I came across the topic. As far as I recall, I was browsing various sites and videos about how to do better with women, and somewhere along the way NoFap came up. After reading about it I realized that I have a problem, and a serious one. But one thing at a time. (This may be pretty chaotic, but I have to share all of this with someone, because today I’m especially at risk of a relapse, if it hasn’t already happened, but more on that below.)
My “adventure” with PMO started when I was around fourteen or fifteen. Inspired by my friends’ constant stories, I decided to try it myself. At first I tried without any help from pictures or videos, relying only on memories, but I never once brought myself to ejaculation. One late evening I came across some very light erotica. Basically just girls dancing and stripping. All they showed were breasts and backsides, nothing vulgar. And that was what I first brought myself to orgasm to. At first I watched it quite rarely, because I had to wait until everyone at home had gone to bed. Later came pictures passed on by friends or my brother, and my first porn films. But until about halfway through high school, these “games” were fairly rare, maybe two or three times a month.
The second stage was discovering what the internet had to offer. At first that was also just pictures, but at some point I discovered that videos gave a bigger kick. I didn’t have a computer of my own, though, so I still had to be careful. Sometimes a short clip, with every trace cleared afterwards. At first these were ordinary videos and pictures, but at some point I started drifting towards BDSM and female domination over men.
The third stage was around the end of high school. I discovered that there are masses of videos online, with no shortage of new stuff. I usually watched only about ten minutes of each, and that turned out to be enough, because I don’t remember ever watching a whole one. From that moment on the compulsive watching began. Opening a dozen or more tabs, and sometimes sessions lasting several hours. Most often it still happened at weekends or on days when I had no classes at university. But the frequency rose to three or four times a week, although most of the time still one orgasm a day. Unfortunately there was a lot of edging. And worse, my fetishes started heading in more and more twisted and disgusting directions. That lowered my self-esteem twice over: not only compulsive PMO, but also watching videos where men are humiliated and so on.
All of this probably contributed to the fact that my relationships with girls are terrible. Apart from the friend zone and the occasional kiss, I haven’t managed to build any intimate relationship. The last few months also brought weaker and weaker erections during PMO sessions. My morning erections disappeared. Worse, I started masturbating more often and for longer. Double or triple sessions appeared. The frequency rose too, and sometimes I did it every other day or even every day. I no longer waited for the rest of the household to go to sleep or anything; I just shut myself in my room without any embarrassment. Which caused extra stress.
I was exhausted at work, and after work too. My old interests stopped giving me any joy. I didn’t feel like doing any physical activity or meeting friends. New situations filled me with enormous stress. I had anxiety attacks, and everything seemed pointless. Sometimes, purely theoretically, I considered that maybe it wasn’t even worth living like this. When new fetishes stopped arousing me, I even started thinking about putting my fantasies into practice and going to a sex worker, a dominatrix (which is supposedly one of the last stages of the addiction). Luckily my natural stinginess probably stopped me, and I found information about quitting just in time. Since then a lot has changed for the better.
I made the decision to quit about six weeks ago. At first I set myself thirty days of NoFap. Unfortunately I hadn’t read everything properly, and I focused more on giving up masturbation than porn. So I lasted eleven days, and then put on some clips for two minutes. Luckily I stopped there. But the next day I unfortunately started reading posts online about a couple living in a relationship where the woman dominates the man and generally decides when he’s allowed to have an orgasm (I’ll spare you the details :P), and that got me so worked up that on day thirteen I put on videos again, with some edging but no orgasm, and on day fourteen, unfortunately, I gave in. Two PMO sessions, and the next day another one (only instead of a normal orgasm, a so-called ruined orgasm). After that came anger and regret, because I’d already seen quite a few effects, but I kept winding myself up and my dopamine kept jumping higher and higher.
I decided not to give up, so I went back to reading, mostly a recovery website. Practically the whole rest of that weekend went on watching and reading. Four weeks ago I made another attempt. A video there that explains how dopamine works in all this helped me a lot. This time I got to know my enemy better, and I started meditating (or relaxing; mostly I listen to some calming music and try not to think about anything). It went brilliantly until about day twenty-five (my absolute record! no PMO at all! the last streak like that was when I was maybe fourteen or fifteen). I believed a bit too much that it would now be plain sailing, and I let my guard down. First came more and more frequent fantasies about sex. Then fantasies with elements of my fetishes. The only plus is that I wasn’t recalling exact scenes from videos, but I was fantasizing about female colleagues from work (unfortunately in the context of my fetishes). That worries me, because I’d already had fantasies about hugging, caressing and kissing colleagues and friends, and now the fetishes have come back. Over those twenty-five days it varied: sometimes I was really horny, sometimes zero arousal for two or three days at a time. But from what I’d read I knew that’s how it’s supposed to be.
So what’s the problem? The last few days, twenty-six and twenty-seven, I had a lot of work, and very stressful work at that. I kept catching myself having porn fantasies, only with women from real life (people I know, and so on). Today is day twenty-eight (four weeks), and damn, I started to doubt whether normal sex is something that actually turns me on. I went onto a forum about female domination, read about people who live in relationships like that, then one link, another link, and I was already on a site with erotic ads. I looked through about ten ads from dominatrices and around fifteen photos, and then I came to my senses. Reading the forum and the photos took about an hour. I could literally feel my prefrontal cortex yelling: “What the fuck are you doing, man? We’re supposed to be fighting this and winning!” I turned off the computer, did a few dozen push-ups, poured cold water over my head and juggled some balls. Luckily I only looked; I didn’t even touch myself, both hands on the desk. After a while I turned the computer back on and I’m writing this.
Phew. Fuck, it still hasn’t gone away. I know some people aren’t fans of counting days, but personally it motivates me when the number grows, so I don’t break the streak. On the one hand I’m furious that today went this way; on the other hand I’m glad I got a grip on myself, and it was a valuable experience. Because I could genuinely feel my conscious brain breaking through the reptilian one, which wanted me to look at more ads and start jerking off.
Ugh, like I said at the beginning, this turned into chaos, but it helped me a lot. I believe I can succeed. I have a great toolkit; I’ve read lots of books about motivation, self-development and so on, but I never had enough strength to apply that knowledge. Now I know the reason was porn. Right now I really enjoy the English lessons I go to. There’s socializing, there are girls, I have to speak up, there’s loads of laughter, and I’m learning to take myself less seriously. Apart from that, I’ve gone back to doing sport regularly. I’ve started taking better care of myself. I’m practising eye contact, and I can already see big progress. Lately, instead of just holding eye contact, I sometimes smile, and often the smile is returned. My movements are also much more natural and relaxed. And a few times I’ve simply felt happy, just like that, for no reason.
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