Why fapping without porn could be helpful

I did 5 months or something without fapping but then decided to start again and I practice that mindfulness meditation. No porn or fantasies, just to sensation, and I have found it's been good honestly. I feel more in touch with my sexuality. A bit more than once a fortnight I guess. I might do another month without though just to test it out. Hope that helps

 

Exposing yourself to porn and fapping are two completely different categories.

Fapping without porn doesn't make you sick person exposed to a devil, where you also damaging your brain and views of women as body parts. But fapping can damage your rewarding circuit as you constantly have an orgasm and loads of dopamine, so you are not happy with normal basic everyday rewards and you can become heavily depressed where fapping will become your medication from depression, so therefore very bad decision.

Also, you are depleting your body from vital creative energy, so if you haven't created your dream life yet please rather work on this than constantly touching your tralala.

 

P isn't helpful.
M isn't helpful.
O isn't helpful.

A life without P or M or O is really helpful

 

Trying to help you.

 

Hmm yeah you can do this once you drop out of the porn habit youll only have to tackle masturbation habit after dat

 

I'm sorry but that's pseudo-science at it's best. You can't "damage" your reward circuit with loads of masturbation. If that was true I, an almost 27 year old male who's been masturbating A LOT for 16 years, would be nothing but a drooling mess right now, who needs to get his ass wiped by a nurse (because you actually need a functioning reward circuit to be able to wipe your ass..).
I've got a gf, no erection problems, I'm focused on achieving my dreams everyday and turning myself into a better person. And I'm much better than I was 5-6 years ago. How is that possible if masturbation would actually DAMAGE your reward circuits?

What I'm saying is that that's bad language which inaccurately describes what is actually happening. You don't become depressed by fapping too much either. You can become depressed by either having no goals or not achieving any goals for prolonged periods of time.

I'm doing the same thing at the moment. I'm two weeks in and never been on a more stable path to quitting porn. Extreme goals like "I'm never going to touch myself again, no lust, no porn, no masturbation, i'mma be a monk and at some point super powerful and then I'll have a great relationship with a woman" are not helpful. Tackle your issues one at a time. First get rid of porn. Step by step. Meaning with a fixed date aka. no porn until eg. 1st of March. Reach it. Reconsider if you want to continue. Make a new goal that's slightly larger. And so on. Until porn is gone.
Then you can think about whether you masturbate to much. Again, make small goals. Achieve them one by one. Small steps, bigger steps, etc.

That's way easier and more efficient than aiming too high and constantly failing.

 

Agreed 100%

 

If you have goals and you working hard on your goals every day even watching porn 7 hours a day will not do that much difference. You can still become a millionaire and have fucked up brain and vision of women. Too much fapping is not good for you as you will not enjoy normal things in your life as much as you will be desensitized. Same as if you have too much sex with your woman that's the only thing that drives you. When you lose her you will experience that something big is missing. Too much fapping makes you dependent.

 

Well you can't be successful if you waste 7 hours a day watching porn. ^^ But yes, I like your reworded point better than the last. I'm simply opposed to using pseudo-scientific language like "masturbation damages the reward circuit".

As you say it creates a dependence and that can take time out of your day that you'd like to spend otherwise.

Now the other point of it desensitizing you to all other positive emotion I doubt that to be honest. That change is highly subjective and you can't really test that. For example if you managed to quit porn for 8 month and feel like everything is more intense and amazing, it might just be you being excited that you're CAPABLE of controlling your life and that in turn boosts your confidence and overall mood. There's no way to tell if that's because of your "regenerated brain" or because of excitement of leading a different lifestyle. But then again, that doesn't really matter as long as you have a better life.

The woman image is also a complex point. If you're a young man and might not interact with many women, your INTERACTION and your thoughts about them might be too one dimensional if you're a porn addict, because your brain is too often in horny mode than is healthy for you.
But to suggest that seeing women as a source of sexual pleasure (object is too simple a word) is somehow wrong seems weird to me. Of course they're not only that. But when you're horny they are that, porn addict or "clean".
What, do you think about how well your wife is able to take care of her parents and is a fun conversational partner while you have sex with her? Or do you think about how hot she looks and how good she feels?
The difference between an addict and a normal person, I'd say, is that the addict will think about naughty things when he's with women more frequently than a normal person, which makes them less sociable.

 

My experience has been pretty good. I did No PMO for 2 weeks, then switched to No PM for 2 weeks (so I was having sex), then switched to No P. I now M 1-2x every 1-2 weeks and all my problems have gone away. When I M, I never look at P, I never think of P, I don't fantasize. I believe it's a healthy way to go, but it will be very difficult for many people on this site because everyone's level of addiction is different. The underlying and unnatural poison is P. M is natural and found in nature and I believe it is healthy if not overdone. Even the scientific/medical community agrees. See WebMD: https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/guide/masturbation-guide#2

 

The primary goal, in my opinion, is to get rid of p addiction. You want to re-wire your brain, so you can enjoy normal sex and mo by having great selfesteem, instead of the supercharged pmo with unrealistic standarts and fetishes causing crippling depression.

 

My own experience - I went P-free for 6 months but allowed myself to MO at will, and experienced no lasting progress. I restarted with a goal of no P or MO at all and I think it's been a lot better for me.

But I wasn't separating my MOs from fantasizing at the time. I find doing that extremely challenging. In fact, I think MO is my real addiction, and P is simply an enabler.

So for me, it's hard to see a path to healthy MO, at least not until I've done a lot more healing. Maybe you're in a different place.

Bottom line, I wouldn't recommend anyone do it just because "they say it's healthy." However, if you have a real reason - connection with a partner, self-exploration, etc. - then it could be worth experimenting. The goal is to be free of compulsion and addiction, not sexual pleasure.