fantasizing about real girls that i Know and come in contact with

First of all, this guy in the video is a salesman, only making videos for his business. I would not consider him an expert on the topic of rewiring your brain after porn addiction. There are plenty of videos and articles out there by actual scientists who have conducted research in this area.

But I get that you want to fantasize. All over this forum there's guys asking 'Is it ok if I do this ...?'. In pretty much all cases this is just the brain trying to get a fix after being cut of from PMO. There are no shortcuts or things that will make it easy.

Do you want to get rid of your PMO problem and all the problems that come with it? Then do your 90 days and stop trying to find ways to bend the rules. Your brain needs at least 90 days to reboot, so why take the risk of having to start all over again or having to go for a much longer reboot by fantasizing and other things that you think are ok?

 

100% dedicated to sorting this out. 11 days no PMO, gonna go the hard route... Well, that is a good way to start, but 11 days is nothing against a decade of masturbation and objectification of women and several years of pornography. As you are 100% dedicated to rewiring your brain's neural pathways, edging and/or fantasizing (even about 'real women I know') has to stop.

 

Ok, heres the deal. Fantasising about pornography is pathological and has to stop. Fantasising about real women is not pathological but still needs to stop for the reboot. Use the 3 second rule for both - dont think about any of them for longer than 3 seconds. Use mindfulness/urge surfing to respond to those fantasies. As you recover, you will realise that pornography fantasies dissapear and dont actually enter your mind at all. You wont be able to stop fantasies about real women entering your mind and that is normal, and they will continue to enter your mind as long as you are around them and during and after your reboot. But you shouldnt let them stick in your mind more than 3 seconds.

Fantasies about real women instead of pornography may be an indicator of a return of healthy arousal template, but still need to be moved away from for a reboot.

 

Perfectly expressed. Thank you.

 

For me, I know that my fantasies about *real girls I know* would often end up becoming just as dehumanizing and porn-like as actual porn fantasies. In that case, I don't think it's any better. I think it's just like creating new porn in your own head. It's going to keep you in the habit of looking at those women as objects to use. A big benefit of NoFap seems to be rewiring how you see women in daily life, a lot of folks who succeed on here say they started to appreciate women as people, instead of sex objects. I think your fantasies at this point would likely keep you in an old rut of objectifying, preventing that evolution. So I agree with the people above that it's best to try to stop those fantasies, at least for the 90 days.

 

i second that. right now not fantasizing about girls i know is the biggest challenge for me. Since i haven't watched porn in weeks my mind is mixing content for the past with images of real women. And yes, these fantasies become dehumanizing/objectifying rather quickly... i believe once your are able to desire a women without objectifying her your brain has successfully been rewired.

 

When I went over umm 70 days once.. I noticed or rather caught myself fantasizing of just being with a beautiful girl in my class. That was weird but it was exciting. My body was vibrating. I didn't fantasize about having sex with her or even making out actually. I was just fantasizing of being with her and it turned me on like hell.
But I didn't relapse after that. I had no trouble detaching from those thoughts. I was fantasizing her laughing at my jokes playing with her hair her hands interlocked with mine stuff like that. Almost like a girls fantasy lol.
What I personally feel is when you find yourself getting thoughts like these (which you will after many many many days into your reboot) you should let these thoughts come. Don't suppress them. Don't overindulge either. You won't because it isn't porn. There's not that level of novelty I guess.
But never ever fantasize intentionally as an experiment or something and if you do get thoughts like these early into your reboot (very small chance you will) then just stop it because sooner or later you will start thinking about porn.
I noticed that I didn't think of porn in that unexpected fantasizing session. It was like it had nothing to do with porn.
That's just my opinion.

 

Ad Vipassana: if you keep going, you'll find the folly of any fantacies, any attachments.

There is an excellent intro to Vipassana, online-book (has helped me a lot, though I am not a Buddhist):

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

 

How long does it take usually to reboot?

 

My estimate is 60-90 days.

 

That's very interesting. Thanks for that.

Mr. Scary

 

What kind of fantasy is "objectification" of women like? How do we know the difference between a healthy and unhealthy fantasy? My position is that some fantasies may even be healthy but should still be meditated beyond as a means to reboot.