Hi guys I want to share with you a great webpage about withdrawal symptoms . It is very useful to learn about them, how long they last, how to overcome it, etc because they are one of the main reasons why we relapse: http://www.addictionsandrecovery.org/post-acute-withdrawal.htm I remember how bad where the withdrawal symptoms at the beginning of my reboot. I had a very painful blue ball and sudden changes in mood. One day I started shouting to somebody in the middle of a business meeting, in front of 20 people. I could not stop and was escalating my voice and excitement without control. I ended up leaving the conference room, went to the restroom and started crying. Our brain makes us do crazy things Fercho BTW: if you have blue ball, you need to fill in the tub with very warm water and stay there during a few minutes, it will completely disappear. The first advise I got was the opposite, cold water, and it made ir worst
Hello Fercho, thanks so much for your story. It’s really encouraging. I’d like to ask you something about your sexuality… if you don’t mind..... I wonder if you have considered yourself as bisexual, so you might have ever felt any affection feeling for another male, or … yours was not more than a compulsive kind of behaviour. I’m asking this because I’ve always struggled to find my real sexual orientation. Before my sexual abuse by a teacher at school at 16 I already felt attracted by older males. However, it was only after that event that I started to feel compulsively drawn to having sex with other men and I even had a few boyfriends, but nothing serious… and this behaviour prevented me to try to have an affective relationship with a girl. I did have a girlfriend when I was 30, but this lasted only 3 months, after I felt so much attracted by another passing-by male… which made me think I could no longer cheat on women about this. I’m now 50, still single and longing to have a relationship with a lady again, because I find that I could be happier with a woman in the sense that I would not be obsessed with sex as it is the case when I’m in a relationship with a man… would you mind your take on this??
Hi @Julian2016 . This is not an easy question You have probably heard about the Kinsey scale, right? This was created by a sexologist and biologist named Alfred Kinsley, who said that men are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual, and there are several "shades of gray" in the middle. He uses a scale from 0 to 6, although I read other researchers who increases the "palette". I was envolved in two relations with men which were more than sex in my life, both lasted around 9 months and there were a lot of love and emotions (and drama involved. I was already married, so I always had a lot of guilt about them, this was probably the reason they did not last. Who knows how it would have been if I was single? Outside those two, I just felt lust and never love in my relations with guys. Most of them were one night stand, random hook-ups in the Internet or just hiring escorts. Escorts allowed me to have zero compromise and strings attached, which played well with my circumstances. But on the other hand there was a lot of humiliation in those encounters, obviously they just care about your money and nothing else. Actually, I reached the lowest point in my self esteem and started my reboot after meeting a famous porn star from Bel Ami, a renowned European gay porn studio. I hired him as an escort (they come often to Miami for this), but instead of being a "give me your money-rush sex- get out from here" encounter, he started talking about his life. He told me that he was not even gay, had a girlfriend, and was working on this because he came from a very poor family from Hungary which he needed to support. He said that almost all of the porn stars are drug junkies, with pimps that takes most of their payment, and that the studio director "has the right" to sleep with any of them any time. He was forced to become passive against his will because of the contract he signed. At last he quit the studio, after his contract expired, because they wanted to force him to have unprotected sex (if you have watched gay movies you know that they promote unprotected sex as way to get more idiots like us watching their movies). Anyway, after listening to him i still decide to have sex with him. When i left his room I felt like a monster. I sat down in my car and started crying, could not stop. I felt so ashamed of myself! I realized how the addiction took all my humanity, just leaving an animal behind. Two weeks later I found noFap by chance, and started my reboot that same day. I thank to God for this new opportunity he gave me to straighten up my life. As you, I also blame a traumatic sexual episode as the beginning of my addiction. Actually before that I never had any desire for men, i was just attracted to girls. One of the most shocking things that happened during the reboot is that I did not remember any of what happened that day. I hide everything behind PMO and my fantasies with men. I thought that that episode was one more of this fantasies. During my 8th month of reboot, my PMO counselor told me that i should think about when all this started and visit the place. I do not leave in that country any longer, so I returned to that school on my first visit. As soon as i entered I started having chills. I walked straight to the restroom where everything happened and all the memories came back immediately. I was in such a shock that needed to sit down. Some recurrent nightmares from my childhood started making sense. Anyway sorry i extended so much. To reply your question: as long as you continue your reboot and put distance to gay porn, escorts, cybersex, or whatever you are doing, you will be able to learn more about yourself. Do not pressure yourself with questions now. Every month it goes by without PMO and escorts, I can understand more my values, what I want and what I don't. You will become more rational, you will think more with your head and feel more with your heart, and less with your dick. By then you will be able to make wisest decisions about your life, who you want to share your life with, etc. As a good test, you should think: do you feel more comfortable waking up the next day with a man or a woman next to you in bed? Daylight give us more rational behaviors than the night shadows. We have hidden so long behind PMO that coming out to the light it is painful, but the only way to heal. I hope that this long post makes any sense to you Keep on fighting Fercho
Thanks for posting this. What an achievement! congratulations man, it's inspiring to hear success stories like this; very affirming
Thank you so much Fercho! I really appreciate your time on writing this rich response to my message. I've got a lot from it...
I am glad you did @Julian2016 . Let me know if you have more questions, and never stop fighting nor looking to be happy in any way you want to be Fercho
I had one of this "test moments" yesterday night. I am in a business trip alone in a hotel. Since I started my reboot one and a half year ago, I tried not to stay too long in the room. The time I used to lose in long PMO sessions I use now to go to the gym. I went down yesterday evening and there was a very attractive guy working out. I tried not to look at him too much, because I did not want to get an urge, but I acknowledge that I peek him several times. Obviously he realized because he looked at me. He approached and I thought he will be upset, but he started talking with me with some lame excuse and flirting with me instead, asking me if I was just by myself, etc. My heart started pounding. In the past this was the "perfect opportunity " for a hook up, alone without my wife and far from home. I got and urge and my brain got foggy for a few seconds, and started feeling the lust and anticipation so familiar to me. I started fantasizing with going to my room with him, etc. Fortunately I stop all these fantasies, said goodbye and left in a rush. I was all shaky and my heart was pounding like a drum. I chatted with my AP @goldstein ( thank you once again for chatting and supporting me when it was midnight in your city) to be accountable about this episode, took a cold shower and did my Tai Chi practice before going to sleep, this slowed me to avoid a "fantasy relapse " ( having wet dreams or fantasies about this). I need to stay all the time alert, because "the Gremlin" will try anything to send me back to the darkness of PMO, hook ups and escorting. I know what this happened : I was all day driving from one city to the other with my business partner, and we are currently having a tense relationship, so it was very uncomfortable and stressful. My urges and fantasies show up in this kind of situations, trying to escape from reality, using deceiving dreams and fantasies that "promise me" enjoying the PMO paradise. During these few seconds únetele I left the gym I told myself:" hooking up with this guy will not solve my business problems. Even worst, it will make me feel like shit, with a low esteem, and this will be even worst". Thanks to NoFap ( and NoFap Academy) I learned how to build a shield and strengthen my will power, so I can defend myself from the "Gremilin's" attacks Keep on fighting Fercho
Thank you for sharing and congrats. You have been through some very tough times and done a great job. It's very inspiring for someone who just started their journey.
Thank you very much @Ben W. and welcome to NoFap It is a big step if you can understand what is triggering your urges, because this will allow you to be awake and kill those urges as soon as they appear. I recommend you to create your own "Emergency Toolbox" with readings that can be handy to read when you start feeling urges to screw up. I can share this post with you with my own Emergency Toolbox, it helped me a lot during the first few months, i had them in my cell and read them every time I started falling down: https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.p...y-first-320-days-of-reboot.62938/#post-473978 I wrote some tips in this post that perhaps will help you too: http://NoFap.com/forum/index.php?threads/tips-that-helped-me-to-start-my-reboot.46617/#post-330318 You can watch some interesting videos which are also very helpful in this post: http://nofap.com/forum/index.php?th...t-help-me-a-lot-during-my-reboot.39774/page-2 I also suggest you to read "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins, it is a must-read if you are serious about getting rid of this addiction. Last but not least, I would strongly recommend you to take the NoFap Academy course if you can afford it. The course is great but the best value are the weekly video calls with @alexander (the creator of NoFap and NoFap Academy) and Mark Queppet, where you can chat with them in real life and listen to other guys's stories and problems too. I hope that all this helps you to fight this shitty addiction. Let's keep on fighting Fercho
I am glad that you find my post inspiring @BrotherofThérèse Maybe we are older and we lost big time of our life in this addiction but we will never lose our hope Fercho
It is a pleasure @Steve H Actually I posted an update of my 19th months here yesterday: https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/19-months-clean.83830/#post-671768 Keep on fighting Fercho
