A journey to end porn induced erectile dysfunction

It’s been an interesting day. I’ve done some minor petting yesterday night with my girlfriend (but no sex) and been fantasizing about that – and not porn – for some part of the day. I even got a minor erection from it, which is positive.

My next goal is to not use fantasy at all during sex. I admit that this is a daunting task because I’ve never had sex without using fantasy. I can’t believe I’m writing this; I actually thought this was normal (for me)! Let me write it again to make sure it sticks… I have never had sex without using fantasy. Not a single time. What is the most common form of sex, just enjoying the feeling and being one with your partner and having an overwhelming orgasm just from the excitement of having sex altogether – I have never been able to do just that. I can’t tell you how much I long for this. If I don’t use fantasy I’ll either eventually go limp, or the sex will go on forever up to the point where my penis is numb, and then it’ll go limp from that. Either way, I end up limp, frustrated, and my partner is mad at me and wondering what’s wrong. Fantasy helps avoid that scenario so I’m afraid of letting go of it.

It is clear though that it’s a major part of my recovery. I have to turn off fantasy eventually and replace it with reality. I believe I’ll try a gradual approach of shutting out fantasy and just concentrating on the feeling, or rewiring my fantasy to thoughts such as “my penis feels amazing in her vagina” instead of images of porn scenes stuck in my head. I’ll let you know what works when I get to try again.

Also, I wanted to say a couple more words about my slip a few days ago. As suggested in the comments, I was trying to analyze what really led me to slip up. As a result of this I realized that being alone in front of my computer with not much to do was a major factor. Being bored in front of the computer is something you’ll want to avoid like a disease. At least in my case I used to masturbate whenever I was bored, alone, at the computer – ready to use porn. If you’re put in that same scenario again too early during recovery, it’s overwhelming how your body reminds you of that rush you used to get when you were in that situation. The best is to avoid the situation altogether – go out, eat, do whatever you need to do to not be alone in front of the computer for extended periods of time with nothing to do. It’ll be too easy.

Date Update: I noticed that I messed up somewhere along the way with which day number it was (around day 10 or 12). I corrected it for the last three posts and this one, I’m actually on day 34 already 🙂

Hello guys. Let me get the big, bad, embarrassing news out first. I ended up PMO’ing today. So now there is 1 PMO on the scale after my first month. I knew this was coming sooner or later (maybe you guys were too!) and despite thinking that I’m a strong tough man and I’ll do this right the first time around, I gave in to my urges earlier today. Wow. Kind of like a robot – I turned my brain off for a few hours after a very stressful day and figured I could ‘edge’ a bit to relax, ended up browsing, ended up orgasming to porn. I’m upset over it, understandably. Of course it wasn’t worth it. In fact, I came somewhat involuntarily (didn’t touch myself, was just watching a particularly exciting scene when the rush came) which made the whole thing even less than worthless because I didn’t get even get much enjoyment out of it. The third bad part about this is that I was really saving myself up for sex with my woman which is likely happening in the next couple of days. I feel like I’m being punished threefold.

Now, from here are a few lessons to learn. First of all, do I let this be a bump in the road, or do I let this stop me? Clearly the second choice is not an option. It has to be a bump in the road. Does it set me back? Likely. That’s the price to pay. How much, I don’t know. Hopefully only a week or so. Heck, I think it’ll be 100 days before I notice much anyways, so it may as well be 120 days.

I have to say though that this is such a crazy challenge. It’s difficult to comprehend what you’re up against. I had no problems whatsoever giving up smoking. The enemy is clear: the cigarette. Somehow with porn, sex drive, and orgasms this is completely different. And boy, the fact that I didn’t see too much improvement in almost 30 days definitely caused me to give in and doubt the whole thing in my weak moments. This leads me to the next point: Expectation management. When you do this, make sure you really don’t expect too much the first few weeks. It’s not like waiting for a package in the mail where you can check daily and see if it’s there or not.

Man, I hated the orgasm earlier. I didn’t want it, it sucked, and on top of it all I have a feeling it’ll affect upcoming sex negatively. I’ll be sure to keep this frustration in my mind when the temptation strikes again. What’s interesting is that I really feel that I’ll come out of this stronger. I feel there were more lessons in this event than I can observe at this time. Maybe I needed to know how a PMO feels after 30 days abstinence to see how much it sucks? Not sure. I’ll keep you posted!

Hello, everyone! I hope you are doing well and you have/had a good Thanksgiving dinner and got to spend time with your families. Unfortunately I can’t report too many developments on the Erectile Dysfunction front; the last 5 days have been rather event-less. I’ve felt a little under the weather and didn’t have any sex, didn’t masturbate, and didn’t have any sexual dreams whatsoever. No spontaneous erections. Today I’ve looked at some erotic pictures for about 5 minutes, but I didn’t even get an erection from it. To be perfectly clear, I didn’t masturbate or touch myself at all, I just browsed through it – I guess I was “testing” a bit to see how it would affect me. That said, I think I can notice some very subtle progression in that I’m more likely to stop and stare at a beautiful women in the street, which pre-journey left me rather unaffected. I’m still looking forward to that “big milestone” where I notice a very significant change in my own behavior… Then again, from what I read, people need 90 to 120 days to reset. That leaves me with easily 100 days to go. Fingers crossed.

This is a rollercoaster! I was extremely horny, wanting to masturbate, pretty much all night last night. However, I managed to refrain from further masturbating, and woke up fresh from a sexual dream today. No wet dream though.

I have to say that this thing is not easy to do… it seems so simple, right? Just quit porn, masturbating etc. for a while. But if you’re conditioned over decades to masturbate to porn, then this is a real challenge. I’ve quit smoking years ago, and I have to say that that was a walk in the park in comparison. One of the main differences is that everybody knows smoking is bad. You give it up, and you somehow believe that you’re healthier. With porn induced erectile dysfunction you constantly have these thoughts in your head that masturbating isn’t inherently bad, and that a little bit of porn every now and then can’t do any harm. My freshly woken up mind can reason well against this, but after a day on the computer defenses wear down and it’s easy to start longing for just some release.

You earned it! It’s been a long day of work! Just this one time! … There are many variations of how your own mind tries to convince you. And it’s better at it than any other person would ever be; after all, it knows you all your life. I know I sound like I have schizophrenia but it does seem like there are two ‘parts’ of myself arguing with each other, with me vehemently trying to turn the reason part into the stronger muscle.

Today I’m passing the two week mark! It sure feels longer than that. I wish I could speed up the recovery process more, but I guess it simply takes time. I definitely have cravings for porn (just now actually!), and just sitting at the computer reminds me of masturbating to porn. No wonder, for more than a decade computers were my tool of choice to get to an orgasm. 2 weeks vs. about 650 weeks…. only a measly 0.3% of my computer time so far has been porn-less!

Also I can report that I had intercourse again yesterday, twice. The first time around was fairly nice, my erection was okay, but it all didn’t feel more sensitive than usual. Yet again I had to use fantasy to get off and couldn’t just concentrate on the woman. I think once I’m just turned on by the woman, and I’m being driven to orgasm by just her without any need for fantasy, then I’m officially on the way to be cured. It’s difficult to imagine, all I’ve ever done is fantasize while having sex instead of just enjoying the sex.

The second time, a few minutes after the first orgasm (chaser effect?), was less good than the first time. Not only did I essentially use fantasy through the whole thing, but I also lost my erection multiple times and couldn’t feel too much. I also took much longer to ejaculate and we almost stopped because of this. However, altogether it was pleasurable. I believe another factor why the second time didn’t go as well was that I wanted to prove to myself too much that I could have second time. Usually that was completely out of the question and so I pushed my luck a bit. Next time I’ll just listen to what I really want and not go for a second time if I don’t absolutely crave it.

Stats since Start:

Porn Use: 0
Masturbation: 0
Good Intercourse*: 0
Mediocre Intercourse**: 1
Bad Intercourse***: 4

Legend:
* No fantasy, ejaculate < 10min, 95%+ erection
** Some fantasy, ejaculate < 20min, 80%+ erection
*** Anything worse than (**) above, flaccid penis during intercourse, etc.