My lifelong struggle with masturbation and porn (trigger blocked)

Spoiler: TRIGGER WARNING

I began touching myself at a very young age. I can't remember exactly how old I was when I started, maybe 7, but it was well before I knew anything about sex or had started going through puberty. I would most often touch myself under my blanket while watching Saturday morning cartoons. I would stretch my legs out rigidly, which would cause me to strain and sweat, and then sort of rub and dig into my penis with my fingertips through my underwear. It had nothing to do with the subject matter of the cartoons and other TV shows I was watching. It was an absent-minded activity that I did simply because it felt good (in fact, to this day, I still absently touch myself through my pants or underwear while lying down in bed or watching TV alone, etc. as a means of stress relief, I suppose; I'd like to stop this habit, too).

Touching myself in this manner was physically damaging. I wore holes in the crotch of my underwear, got blisters on my fingers, and put nail marks in my penis. It was the latter that eventually clued my parents in to what I was doing to myself. One day, my dad took me to the bathroom in a K-Mart and let me stand on top of his feet so I could use the urinal. It was then that he noticed the nail marks in my penis.

Naturally, my dad thought the worst and assumed I was being molested. It was only after going to the doctor and talking with her about it that my parents learned that I had been doing this to myself. The doctor asked me why I did it and I simply said I did it because it felt good. The doctor also asked if I had learned this from someone or seen anyone else do it, and I matter-of-factually told her that I had seen my dad do it. To be clear, I had seen him scratch himself in his underwear - I had never seen him masturbate. All the same, this briefly got my dad into some hot water.

Sometimes, I wonder if I did learn this behavior from someone else; that maybe I was molested and simply repressed the memory. But I have no idea when or how this could have happened, and, like I said, I have no memory of such an event, so it's purely speculation, at this point. I don't know how common sexualized behavior like this is with prepubescent children, which is why I even speculate as to my possibly being molested. It could be that this type of behavior is more common than I realize.

In any case, I always have had an active libido. There were many instances as a child when I would be aroused while watching cartoons, although I wouldn't typically touch myself at these moments. The arousal and the touching are mostly separate in my memory. This arousal wouldn't affect me in my genitals, but would produce a warm, heavy feeling in my stomach. Typically, what I would be watching wouldn't even be remotely sexual - although, there are instances, such as Bugs Bunny in drag clipping off Elmer Fudd's pants with a pair of scissors (yes, I have the same issues as Garth from Wayne's World), that produced this feeling which do have a sexual connotation.

Anyhow, after the discovery of my touching myself and enduring the subsequent awkwardness of my mom having to apply daily antibiotic ointment on my genitals for a while, I stopped touching myself for a few years. Then came the night before Easter in sixth grade - my semenarche. I had probably been touching myself before this, but, in any case, I was fondling my testicles when, to my shock and horror, I ejaculated. In my ignorance, I thought it was pus and that I had some sort of infection, so, for about a month, I would masturbate in the shower every night, hoping to secretly get rid of all the "pus" so my parents wouldn't have to know that I had been touching myself. Eventually, I remembered what I had learned in the short sex ed lesson I had the year before, and that what had looked like a spray in the graphics they showed us in class was actually this substance that I so foolishly mistook for pus. Thus, began my habit of masturbating in earnest.

My first exposure to porn occurred at my uncle's house around the same time of my semenarche. My uncle had HBO and CineMax, so, while surfing channels alone on the TV in his office while the rest of the family was doing other things, I stumbled upon some of the softcore porn that they play on these channels. Every time I went over to my uncle's house, I would secretly watch these softcore movies, always with the fear that I would be caught in the act. My first encounter with hardcore porn also occurred at this same uncle's house when I found a DVD he had accidentally left out. I put it in and was shocked and reviled by the first images I saw of erect and ejaculating penises. I took out the DVD and stuck with the softcore stuff after that.

Also, during my middle school years, I started to go through my parents' DVDs and skim through all the R-rated movies when I had the house to myself, in order to find any sex or nudity scenes and masturbate to these. I also discovered the internet at this point, and, on a few occasions, would search for images of naked women and masturbate to the thumbnails, though I didn't yet watch internet porn. In both of these acts, there was always the threat that someone would come home and I would be caught in the act.

By the time I entered high school, I had an entrenched masturbation habit, though my secretly watching softcore porn and R-rated sex scenes and looking at thumbnails subsided a bit. By this time, my female peers occupied my fantasies and desires, so I didn't need external sources of arousal as much. However, though I liked girls and there were many who liked me in return, I was filled with anxiety surrounding relationships. For whatever reason, the moment it seemed that a girl and I were starting to become too close, I would sabotage the nascent relationship and put an end to it. Thus, I never had an actual girlfriend while in high school.

I came to regret this after I graduated, but, by then, I had my own laptop, which opened up a whole Pandora's Box of porn addiction that would keep me from being able to have a girlfriend for years to come. The worst influence that I encountered at this time was the website 4chan. This introduced me to content that I would never have imagined and perverted and corrupted me in a way that has engendered intense self-loathing and regret that still pains me to this day.

My use of 4chan started out innocently enough. At first, I only looked at the forums based around images of tastefully nude anime girls or real women. Then, I started looking at images of anime lesbian porn. Eventually, I found myself on the infamous /b/ (or "Random") forum, and, after a year of regularly visiting 4chan, was drowning in a sea of depravity.

As I mentioned, I found myself looking at and aroused by things I never would have imagined, things that didn't reflect my natural urges or what I wanted in reality. I found it more difficult, if not impossible, to masturbate to the relatively tame images that used to satisfy me. I found myself masturbating to transwoman porn and, eventually, even gay porn. This was extremely troubling and confusing to me, since, in terms of real world attraction, I was exclusively attracted to women, yearned for a relationship with a woman, never once wished that a woman I was attracted to had a penis, or was ever attracted to a man. This cognitive dissonance between what I actually wanted in terms of a romantic relationship and what I found myself looking at online produced intense feelings of self-disgust, self-loathing, despair, and ultimately kept me from getting out of my head and forging real, healthy relationships, both platonic and romantic.

My lowest point was my first year at university after I transferred from community college. It was my first time living away from home (though, I was not far from home, visited often, and eventually moved back for my second year), and I was feeling incredibly lonely and depressed. I spent most of my time alone and masturbated nearly every day.

When I was not home, wasting time online, I went out to eat and drink by myself at expensive restaurants and bars, frittering away what little money I had and not making friends or doing anything productive or communal with my time. I continued to watch porn that had nothing to do with my actual sexual desire while desperately yearning for a relationship with a woman. I saw young, attractive women everyday at my university but they all seemed so far away, completely separated from me and any chance I had at simply talking with them. I had no confidence, no hope, and hated myself intensely, while doing nothing to improve my circumstances.

Things eventually got a little better during my second year, and, shortly after graduating, I met my girlfriend who I am still with to this day. Meeting her inspired a level of confidence and a sense of happiness that I had never felt before. Although my meeting her did not cure me of my looking at porn and masturbating, porn has had much less of a hold on me than it did before I met her. I eventually moved in with her and we have been living together ever since. Nonetheless, things aren't perfect. I still watch porn and masturbate, though, like I said, not with the frequency and intensity that my addiction had before. I still feel dissatisfaction that who I am does not reflect or match up with who I want to be.

To complicate matters even more, within the past year, I have returned to the Catholic faith of my upbringing, after many years of agnostic listlessness. Because of this religious revival, I find myself mired in yet more cognitive dissonance, given the fact that I am still addicted to porn and am cohabiting and engaging in premarital relations with my girlfriend, all of which the Catholic Church deems sinful behavior. My girlfriend does not share my religious inclinations, which adds another layer of difficulty to my circumstances. That said, my primary focus is on improving myself first.

I want to finally kick the porn habit, which, with the PMO approach, has the added benefit of precluding engaging in a premarital sex (which my girlfriend has agreed to and supports, at least for the purposes of ending my porn addiction, if not for religious reasons) and finally become the decent, competent man I have always aspired to be, a man who is no longer mired in self-loathing, lethargy, and hypocrisy but who is forthright in all he does and practices what he preaches. I want to finally live in light instead of hiding my shame and spiritually and psychologically deformative habits in the darkness.