Hello

Hello to everyone on the forum. Please bear with me as this will be a lengthy maiden post.

I'm a male in my late 30s and I started masturbating when I was 13. I remember the first time and the intense sensation of pleasure as I did it in the shower with a picture of a semi-naked woman from a tabloid newspaper in front of me. I didn't actually ejaculate the first time but it wasn't long before I got the hang of it.

Since then I have masturbated on average of once a day, but it isn't unusual for me to do it twice a day and there have been occasions where I've done it four times in one day. I think I even managed it five times once. My guess is that I do it much more frequently than other men. Over 25 years I must have done it close to 10,000 times.

Internet porn was unheard of when I was in my teens but pictures of topless women were readily available in newspapers and magazines and these I used for stimulation. I grew up in a fairly conservative religious environment which meant that masturbation and sexuality generally were never discussed and if anything were topics of shame. So masturbation was something I did secretively and something I felt ashamed about. I had my own hiding places with a stash of nude pics where I went to pleasure myself.

As I grew older, I learned to feel less shame and realised that it was something that all my friends were doing, even though no-one would openly admit it, much less discuss the topic. I shook off all the religious inhibitions and baggage, I became more comfortable with masturbation and didn't see any moral problem with doing it. I had my share of once-off encounters with women during my twenties and early thirties but never had a sexual experience that lived up to my expectations. Excessive alcohol consumption had an impact on any bedroom frolics I had, but I think excessive masturbation was an issue. I ended up losing my virginity to a prostitute at 26 years of age and it wasn't the greatest experience ever.

I've been living on my own for seven years now and that has made it much easier for me to masturbate when I get the urge. And Internet porn is at my fingertips too so I generally use that to stimulate my fantasies.

I've know for a long time that masturbation is a problem for me. It's gotten so bad that in the past few years I've started get stiffness and soreness in my right arm and the right side of my back and neck. Mentally and emotionally I know it is having an even more negative impact on my life than any physical symptoms. I was in a relationship a few years ago with a very attractive woman which lasted about six months. However, things never worked out in the bedroom and I can see now that this was a consequence 'numbed pleasure response' due to years of masturbation. We never had penetrative sex during our time together, just some sort of stupid humping that would give us both an orgasm. I can't help but think that if I'd been able to perform in bed and please her fully, we'd probably still be together. This has been a problem in other sexual encounters I've had with women over the years, and I do have some form of erectile dysfunction that I think is the result of porn/masturbation.

I started visiting escorts/prostitutes soon after the relationship above ended. In fact I discovered NoFap through an escorting website that I spend a lot of time on every day. The last time I was with an escort, I failed to maintain an erection and didn't orgasm.

I have tried to quit masturbating on several occasions in the past, but have never managed to stay off for more than two weeks, in spite of trying things like self-hypnosis and meditation. I really don't want to be in a situation in five or ten years where I am still single, sitting at home alone, jerking off in front of my laptop every day. I really need to do something to tackle this. I hope discussing it with a community of people who are in a similar situation can help.

 

Martin
Thanks for your comments. To be honest, I don't regret for a minute the fact that I discarded the 'baggage' that I carried throughout my teenage years and the associated guilt and shame about sexual matters, including masturbation. Rewinding the clock to that time of my life would never present a solution for me; the moral upbringing I had was just suffocating in so many ways. I do understand what you say about moving between extremes - it is like exchanging one cage for another - the cage of sexual repression for the cage of sex-related addiction. I am looking to move beyond these extremes to a place where I can feel comfortable in my own skin and in control of my own life. That would be real liberation.