Do we masturbate because we are not assertive enough to ask women what we want?

The question refers to what you want from a woman, both outside the bedroom and inside the bedroom. It's not just about your sexual attitude (although it's mostly focused on it) but rather your overall attitude towards women.

Basically are you a people pleaser and you're mostly concerned about pleasing her or can you be assertive and voice your own needs and desires?

So for sex it's mostly can you just tell her to give you a blowjob and not feel obliged to reciprocate all of the time? Can you make sex about your pleasure or it's mostly focused on her pleasure?

Outside of sex, can you ask women to do things for you, can you state your stance/opinion without worrying you'll offend her or upset her? Can you demand things from her or you're only focused on giving?

I'm asking because it feels to me like masturbation (to porn/images/sex fantasies/whatever) is more like our inability to voice our own needs and we proceed to fulfill them for ourselves and/or since we can't voice them we are more comfortable seeing the actors doing what we can't to and this relieves the guilt (that we would demand things from women). So we masturbate and we "get" what we can't do in real life.

What are your thoughts?

 

This is a fair point but ultimately you will definitely know. It's in your instincts, it's just that your instincts got corrupted. I've stopped porn/masturbation/sex fantasy completely and i can feel my actual desires slowly resurfacing, even if it's far from normal.

Surely porn creates very unhealthy expectations, but all those things described there are about poor practices, anal is not necessarily a bad experience, but it is a very delicate process. I for one was never ever attracted to anal even if consumed porn for almost 20 years. I've even had a girl ask me to do it and I did it to her and I was like meh. But who knows, under the right circumstances it could be a good experience.

Not necessarily. Some yes, some no, but a desire is not inherently bad anyway. When you want to do it just to replicate stuff then it's definitely not good.

As the OP mentions, being able to ask and say what you want is part of healthy sexuality (if your needs/wants are genuinely and not corrupted). Not being able to voice them but living them vicariously though masturbation/sex fantasy/porn is not healthy at all.

Because if you DO have sex fantasies and masturbate to stuff that you don't have the courage to ask or that you know it's inappropriate, you have to either start doing it in real life (if it's normal/natural need) or stop doing it in fantasy/masturbation altogether (if it's an abnormal or perverse need).

Basically your fantasy life has to be a match to your real life. I feel most of us had resorted to fantasy/masturbation because we were not assertive enough with our basic needs/wants.