If you relapse, at least don't relapse to "boy-girl/regular" scenes, do it to solo women

The difference

If you're midway through a relapse, finish as quickly as possible. exit the page, brush yourself off and keep on going. I can guarantee that if you do that you wont have lost all your progress. If you learn from it, stay positive, you can see it as a learning experience and keep on going. Its just a slip, you're not back at SQ 1.

however, if you get depressed that you relapse, edge, binge etc, you're doing so much harm to yourself. not only do you really feel shit after the fact, but you feel hopeless and you've fried your dopamine receptors. its the attitude of streak mentality that causes this. its like a highscores contest. if you even peek, you feel like youre back at square 1 and then you feel depressed and sad and just end up binging. its a journey, not a highscores contest.

 

Indeed. I think this mentality mainly stems from the thinking in streaks, which a shit ton of people on the forums are doing either conciously or unconciously.

A lot of times people here - and I don't exclude myself - tend to assign too much value to "a streak". But the streak really means nothing. You can have a 100+ day streak with little to no actual progress. Recovery should not be measured by quantity, but quality. It's a lot better, if you have spent 14 days working hard on your recovery and actively trying to better your situation, than having a 90-day streak of pure abstinence, in which you did nothing.

Strongly connected with the first point is the believe, that you threw away all your progress just because your counter says "0 days". That's stupid and doesn't help you at all. Do you really think you are back at day 1, when you look at porn for 5 minutes after 100+ days of sobriety and active steps to recovery? That's nuts! Yea, maybe it threw you back a little bit, but to tell yourself you failed utterly and you have to start all over again is destructive. You'll only corrupt your self-esteem and sense of control over your life. That's not good.

Another important point why I got rid of my counter was, that whenever I relapsed, I edged for hours because I subconsciously thought as long as I don't cum, "my streak" is still alive. This obviously is bullshit and I knew it, but that didn't stop me from doing it again and again and again. And from what I hear from others, a lot of people do the same thing. By such rationalisation techniques, you do more harm to yourself than good. When you spend hours at a time edging to porn, because you don't want to "break your streak", you'll do a lot more damage than if you just rubbed one out in five minutes and kept going. I feel like most people know and say that, but don't live it.

Another thing, which I see more these days (especially on the forum), is that people use their streak as a way to contrast themselves from others, to feel better than the others, to show off kind of. It's the same with the likes as well. People sometimes tend to post things not to provide value to others or discuss a topic, but with the sole purpose of getting likes.

Of course a high number on your counter can provide motivation or a sense of accomplishment, but I honestly think it's destructive more often than not. I suggest, we should find a new system of measuring our success. As I said already, I believe it must be quality-orientated, not quantity-orientated.

 

I don't why a lot of guys misunderstood the post..this insight is very true
Everyone is talking like you "justified" relapsing even though you clearly didn't
What the guy is saying is if you know that you're 100% going to relapse and you actually decided that you can't take it anymore then at least watch a solo girl becuase it's less bad and that's true..it's still bad but 100% better tham watching some messed up shit
It's like redirecting our brains to a less damaging way that makes the relapse less damaging to our nofap journey
Come on men..all of us did this in this journey..of course we should always try to distract ourselves and try at best not going to porn but sometimes our will power just weakens especially when we are new to nofap
It's hard..so please stop talking like we have unlimited discipline and self control
By the way I'm on a long streak right now..so I'm not being permissive about relapsing

 

If you relapse at least masturbate yourself, urge for porn will fade away,
but most importantly NEVER watch porn.

 

But here’s the thing: Edging is breaking your streak anyway. Because you are M’ing anyway when you edge... So in that case, you already “relapsed” if you wanna take it there.

There are plenty of forums about this too. About what constitutes a “relapse”. The counter is for a reason. Christ the whole point of this website is basically about a 90 day PMO free challenge.
I’m not trying to get upset but I feel like there does need to be a consensus on this argument. For better or for worse. On the addiction side of it. Like yeah idk if they tell alcoholics it’s okay to have a little drink and if you mess up you mess up. That little sip can be detrimental to a heavy, lethal alcoholic. Sure, there may be stuff like methadone to get you off of heroin- but how many forums on here do say that substituting one drug for another is bad. Especially when it comes to this (PMO)...

It’s kinda like you guys are basically advocating a “nicotine” patch for PMO. Let’s say that in this case “nicotine” is the trifecta of PMO. Or your dopamine levels perhaps. When it comes to nofap, we are trying to stop all of this crap and re-wire our dopamine levels. We are trying to remove the “nicotine” (PMO) completely. There really is no middle-ground or gray area for this. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s successfully gotten out of this by not abstaining completely, and positively made changes in their life. As in I don’t think anyone has gotten through this bu just masturbating occasionally during a 90-day segment.

Of course you should never feel guilt or beat yourself up if you do relapse or get close.

But there is strict terminology to help you along your way whether you have a “mess up” or not. So I reiterate, if you edge at all it’s basically messing up. So you should just do your best to avoid PMO at all costs. That is the whole point. I do like what you said about quality over quantity. That’s so true in almost all aspects of life.

Honestly, I don’t think there is (or should) be anyone here on noFap showing off. At least if it has to do with their counter. I think by you thinking that, that is trivializing others who are doing great work and making a vast effort to turn their life around and make major changes and acquire strength and discipline.

There isn’t a direct cure for this or end-all be-all. But the 90 days of nofap is a good guideline and jump-off point.
Surely the mentality of, “Oh, it’s okay to relapse just to women solo”, or “Oh, it’s okay to relapse or masturbate every week.” This all kind of sounds enabling.

I understand you need to start somewhere to ween yourself off of PMO maybe. But do yall not think that by “edging” or using any type of P or M’ing (or peeking) won’t lead you back down into the rabbit hole??! I mean gosh again the whole point of this thing is to free and rid yourself of all P and personal M. Anything short of that you are fooling with and playing yourself and others! So I just have to strongly disagree.

 

Of course. Who said something different?

If you really believe NoFap is just a "90 day PMO free challenge", you did not really understand the core concept of NoFap. And actually, that's exactly the kind of mentality I was talking about in the first place. You think in streaks, in days, in abstinence. That's not recovery.

Yea, you say that. But the reality we see every single day on this forum is the exact opposite. People do beat themselves up. People do feel guilty. Unfortunately, some people are even suicidal because of it. And a huge chunk of this guilt and shame stems from a streak-mentality. By constantly failing to build a streak, you're corrupting your mind. I'm observing this for a couple of years now and felt it first hand. It sucks.

No, there shouldn't be. But there are people, who do. Don't get me wrong, it's not like they come in and say "Look at my awesome streak, I'm better than you guys". But you can certainly "feel" a kind of entitlement from some people and sometimes you can read it as well. After 3 years on this forum, I've seen some shit my man.

Is it? Why would that be so? As far as I'm concernced, the 90 day mark was picked arbitrarily and doesn't really serve any purpose at all, other than giving people random goal. It certainly is not the "magical number" and you're certainly not recovered by abstaining for 90 days.

Nobody suggested that, so what are you talking about?

 

This sums up one of the emotional problems that affect porn users.....the ego. Most of us early on will never admit it, but porn use creates in us an egocentric attitude that is greater than the big outdoors. The fact you say 'you're the star' and they're 'there for you' tells me there are deeper issues that you need to overcome such as the ones i have had to and am still learning to deal with.

It's the sense of being 'wanted' or being adored and porn gives us the illusion that we are front stage and center. In reality these 'solo' girls are not there for you, they are there because someone is paying them (whether that's you or their pimp) or worse, coercing or forcing them.

Remember...no amount of porn will ever love you back

 

I’m not gonna argue any of this @IR254
It’s counter-productive to do so and only hurts other people on here trying to do the right thing and better themselves.

You are claiming to have a better solution than what this platform (nofap) is built upon. It’s taken years for me to even get to this point, to get on nofap the site, and learn all these crazy things I thought were happening just to me...

Every day I am learning more. I did not take nofap seriously until maybe a month ago. I’ve known about it for maybe less than a year. I didn’t want to nofap at first. I guess I wasn’t ready. Even before that, you do have to hit rock bottom first. Almost like with most other addictions. Maybe that’s why people edge and relapse with this until they have had enough. Until they are motivated and educated enough to consciously start turning things around.

Like I said, the goal of this is to (not masturbate). At all. You want to get yourself in such a good positive place where you can handle those temptations and channel the energy. You don’t want to plant the idea that if you have a long streak and feel an urge, you should just give in. That it’s ok. How does that help?
I mean, I know it’s not the end of the world but so far that mentality has not worked for me. And I believe it doesn’t work for people as heavy into the addiction, etc.


I’ve heard of people on long (100+ streaks) that notice no change or re-wiring/re-booting because they believe they might have edged or have done some “peeking”. A relapse or reset may be different for everybody. But still, you don’t want to fool yourself.

So why waste your time with this if you’re not going to be 100% and all in???

Usually cold turkey is the best route to go, unless you are quitting a drug that can kill you from the withdrawal. It may take a while to get to the point of cold turkey, yes. You may stumble along the way to nofap. I know I have. But now this is the only way I know.

And if you kindly have answers and a new strategy that you are positive that works, please share it.

Hey if it’s worked for you so far, great. It is personally too early for me to say more, but I have seen plenty of success stories on the conventional nofap method. Of to which I don’t know any other method that has been proven...

 

@pmoverit I'm not trying to sound like a dick, but I honestly have no clue how anything you just said has anything to do with what I said. Maybe you could explain the connections of your post and mine in greater detail, because I don't think I ever said anything which contradicts your points.