It's a grey area. Is it good for your reboot? Bad for your reboot? Neutral for your reboot? From my experience it leans on being neutral/negative for my reboot. Keep in mind when I refer to "fantasizing" I am talking about imagining real world women (not pornstars). Fantasizing about pornstars is the same as watching porn. Personally I believe if you never fantasize, and then you have a real world sexual encounter, you will enjoy sex far more because your tolerance will be down. When I don't fantasize, and I have a significant amount of days behind me, every single girl that I look at I wanna fuck. What are your thoughts?
I would lean towards it being Neutral/Negative depending on how severe it gets. I have found that fantasizing can become detrimental towards my being free of Porn. That said, I have also found it can be hard to control or even realize that it's happening at times. When I do realize that a Fantasy has gone too far though, I make an effort to eliminate and replace the thinking pattern (much easier said than done). Making sure that there's less of a chance of going back to Porn (and Masturbation) is my priority, and part of that is changing the thoughts (including fantasies) that can lead me back.
Fantasies about real people were what I used to fap to before I discovered porn (believe it or not, there was a time when there was no Internet and porn was not so widely available as it is now). It was probably healthier than porn in the sense that it didn't lead to multiple fap sessions in a particular day. In fact, there were just as many days when I didn't bother to fap at all. That said, I'm not sure it did me any favours when I discovered porn and didn't have the strength to resist it. Now I'm older, and I think modern society's obsession with sex is just plain unhealthy. I'm not a prude or a monk, and I'm not saying there's anything bad or wrong about sex, just that it's importance is way overrated in the grand scheme of things.
This is an interesting question, and one that I've struggled with. I've been abstaining from MO to material related to some of my natural fetishes and trying to discover new sexual interests. Recently, I have been hit with flashes of vanilla sex fantasies with a real person (a client at work). On the one hand, I'm thrilled that my mind is vanilla PIV to the cravings that have always been dominated by my fetishes. On the other hand, I'm worried that such fantasies are slowing the recovery process, even if they're about a real person.
I understand the sentiment but we all have to take responsibility for our actions. Personally I disagree with the 'potential trigger so must hide this post's syndrome' because we need to be able to be exposed to and overcome triggers... We are not going to get better by hiding from anything.. topics, seeing good looking women on TV or real life or our own moods. We must acknowledge these urges and triggers but improve our responses to them.
I suppose it depends on what you're fantasising about. Even if you're fantasising about a real woman it can be bad. If you're thinking about this girl in a porn type scenario which most Porn addicts will undoubtably do. Then it's bad. If you're fantasing about what it would be like to hold her, what she smells like etc... then I actually think that's good.
I agree with JakeWoods. If it's a porn style fantasy that's bad. Fantasising about touch and smell is a totally different thing. I find fantasy can be a bad thing for me most of the time as I know it would be to porn style scenarios and unrealistic women. Each to their own really
When I wrote about the 'potential trigger' post, I was like on day 1-2 and had just relapsed. So I was probably freaked out after reading this...I was remembering about my last session more than fantasizing. After day 7 I feel much better and yeah, I can actually fantasize about real women in the real world. Sorry if anyone did get offended, did not mean to hurt anyone. And yes, safe fantasies only!
When I am not thinking about anything significant I try to stay in a meditative state. This involves counting and focusing on a pure image of a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, depending on context, I sometimes start having involuntary perversions that take hold. The automatic fantasizing often leads to an orgasm, unless I can snap myself out of it. I would say any kind of sexual fantasizing is negative.
It's absolutely negative. You're still getting a jolly from yourself and therefore feeding the addiction.