As I already stated before, I think occasional masturbation without porn is totally natural and healthy, if you find the right balance. But before that, I think you need a reboot to clean your mind, rewire and stuff. But how long should it be? I'm going for 90 days but what do you think? Too much? Too less?
Question. I understand you think M without P is natural and healthy once you find the right balance and that is obviously your choice, my question is, how do you find and maintain that balance? What safeguards will be present in order to prevent you from going from balance to excessive?
My willpower. Fair enough? As for the balance, I believe that it's gonna be when I deserve it. Like, not while in bed at night or hiding in the bathroom or stuff like that. At least one week between each fap and most importantly when I feel good with myself and like i deserve it, like I did something good for me and for everyone. But it's NOT gonna be a reward, nor a motivation to do good things, it'll just be a way to manage and regulate myself
Yeah, if I was hypothetically going to return to M and O without P, I'd have trouble finding the right balance. If it was a scheduled thing, like once a week on the same day that might be okay.. But after going 90 days without, does 7 really seem like enough? These are questions that can only be answered by ourselves.
I do think personally that anyone that enters this process with the mindset that "one day I'll be able to masturbate healthily" has not embraced that this is an addiction. Do you think an alcoholic would start rehab saying "well, I'll give it three months and then I'll have a drink. But only on a Saturday night and as a treat"? Using masturbation as a reward sounds like a very slippery slope. I know some people do manage to reintroduce masturbation but for me I just think that the idea of scheduling it regularly is just replacing one compulsive behaviour with another. Lets not forget as well that porn and masturbation are very heavily wired together and take a lot longer than 90 days to break. I also know, first hand, that the urges to relapse get really strong around the 70 day mark. If I knew that I was going to start masturbating again on day 90 then I almost certainly would have relapsed. I personally think, and this is just opinion and not science, that you should feel fully rebooted before you even think about introducing masturbation back. I don't know how long that takes but I suspect that it takes most people a lot longer than 90 days.
Well, to be fair I wouldn't consider myself an alcoholic by any means, masturbation never ruined my life, i never spent more than half an hour a day watching porn, and I didn't fap for like a week sometimes just because I didn't feel like it, however I decided that quitting porn was the right choice, reading blogs and watching videos, and when I heard about nofap I told myself that I should reboot first to "clean" myself, and secondly to prove something to myself. I decided to do 90 days purely because everyone talks about the famous "hard 90" and so I thought that it could be enough days to rewire etc.
This is your journey, travel it as you need to. You have been given several warnings concerning your direction but you know you far better than we do. As long as you are being honest with your abilities, proceed. There are many that are very passionate about what they have experienced, as you have witnessed. Take the information, or not and proceed. However you move forward, we will be with you. The most important thing is for you to keep moving.
