Finally doing this

Hi everyone,

I am 21 years old and have been trying to cut down on PMO for almost a year, but only now am I committing to stopping. For a long time, PMO was the focal point of my life.

I started masturbating relatively late, only about a month before I turned 14. I didn't start looking at porn until a few months after that.

I was a loner for most of my life. I was cripplingly shy throughout all of high school. It got to the point that councillors were calling me out of class to talk with me on a regular basis. One suggested that I may have AvPD.

I am drug and alcohol free and have been for all of my life. I didn't used to play any sports, and my only real hobby was video games. This, combined with a complete lack of social life, meant that my only consistent source of pleasure was PMO. I was regularly masturbating 3-4 times a day, sometimes more, as well as spending hours looking at porn.

After high school I began to try to improve my social skills. I stopped playing video games as frequently and began developing other hobbies. The only result that I had was that I became comfortable making small talk. I was still unable to cultivate any sort of social life. PMO remained my primary source of joy.

Though I was dependant on PMO, I had been yearning for a real sexual interaction for a long time. As of the age of 16, the desire for sex had consumed me. My inability to satisfy this made me feel very depressed, and did so for a long time.

Last year I got frustrated enough that I made a commitment to myself to fix my life. My main motivation being to start having real sexual experiences. I cut out video games and TV almost entirely (my streaks without them are counted in months). I started using the time that I saved there to work on myself in many ways, all of which were driven by trying to become a more attractive man.

I discovered NoFap and read about it. I am an atheist and I have absolutely no moral objection to PMO, and I never have had any, but in reading articles on porn and masturbation addiction, I realized that my addiction may be having negative effects on me. I decided that I did not want to stop PMO completely. I didn't think that I had the willpower to stop completely, but I decided that I would try to cut down on it.

Last August, for the first time in my life, I walked up to a girl who was a complete stranger and started a conversation (and, as I did it, my left leg was actually shaking with fear). Nothing came of this interaction, but I realized that nothing bad had happened either. I had enjoyed talking with her, even though it didn't lead to anything else. As a result, I started approaching girls pretty regularly. My social skills improved significantly and, ironically, I developed a fairly large social circle of guys. Going out more made me less dependant on PMO than I had been in the past. I eventually got to the point that I could consistently go four days without PMO, but I would always masturbate on day five.

At the end of June, I kissed a girl for the first time in my life, though it was in a nightclub and things didn't go any farther. Regardless, this gave me a major confidence boost. Two nights later, I went out with some friends. I had not masturbated in four days, and was on day five. I realized that going out would make it easier to go one more day without masturbating, so I challenged myself to go a fifth day. While we were out, I struck up a conversation with a girl and we talked for a while. My friends wanted to leave so I asked for her number, and she gave it to me (another first). I got to a seventh day without PMO. I thought that I may have a chance of finally getting a real sexual interaction, so I refrained from masturbating. This was very difficult, but I had the motivation. I had tried to set something up for Friday, but in the end she cancelled. So, on Friday, day nine, I masturbated (without porn).

I began thinking afterwards and realized that this was the longest that I had gone without masturbating since I was 14. I had thought that lasting that long was impossible for me. That night, I set my new goal to a week at a time without masturbating. The next night, however, I went out and got the phone numbers of four different girls. When I got home, I decided to change my goal. Instead of trying to last a week without PMO, I made the goal that my next orgasm would be with a girl, regardless of how long that takes.

I am currently on day seven and have already noticed some effects. I notice that I have a lot more energy and that I have a lot more focus. I have also noticed that I am prone to mood swings. I will go back and forth between feeling great and feeling terrible regularly throughout the day. I will continue to post on this forum as updates come.

Thanks for the read,
-Caveman