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Need help with women, im going insane

Discussion in 'Dating during a Reboot' started by Jizzcules, Mar 5, 2019.

  1. Jizzcules

    Jizzcules New Fapstronaut

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    Hello there fellow travellers,


    I've done nofap back and forth for some time now because I’ve failed to see the benefits of it. At most I’ve reached about 30 days and I haven’t really experienced any ground-breaking changes, except for being extremely horny. I can’t say that PMO have been to much of a problem for me earlier, but I got curios because of all the success stories. Normally I did PMO once everyday before going to bed. Still feeling horny and energised the next day, so it wasn’t really draining me in a sense that other describe. But I’ve experienced some problems during sex recent years with my dick going limp. Which haven’t been a problem before, this was one of the reasons I started with nofap. But also because I wanted to increase my self-control, get a more realistic picture of girls and sex (since porn kind of fucks this up), become a better version of myself and possibly get better success with the ladies in general.


    So now to the problem at hand. I have had mixed success with women during my days, I feel like I was more successful during my younger years. Even though I feel like I’m a better version of myself today. But for some reason I keep fucking things up and I don’t understand why.


    I’ve been using tinder a lot and I have no problem getting matches. The problem comes later when we are supposed to set up a date. About 80% of the time they say yes to a date, but when the time comes at least 90% of them flake. Those that doesn’t flake usually gets very passive after our first date. I’ve tried asking many of the girls what the problem is since I really want to know what I’m doing wrong. When I ask them If they really want to hangout anymore, they usually say something along the line with: ’’I just have so much in school and work right now, I need to take care of myself first’’ etc. I know that its impossible for so many girls to have this exact same problem, it must be because of a lack of interest. But when I ask about it they just give me these elusive answers every time. It makes me insane because it happens almost every got damn time, even though I feel as if I get a great connection with some of the girls. On top of this nofap makes me extremely horny and my patience is growing thinner, so Is my confidence due to all the failure I’m experiencing. I feel unable to find a relationship.


    When it comes to flirting outside of tinder I usually go out with my friends clubbing during the weekends. The problem here is I usually lack the courage to walk up to the girls I find really attractive. And most of the times it feels like I only get the attention from girls at the club that I’m not interested in. If the attractive girls only gave me a hint of them being interested, I wouldn’t have any problem of approaching. Even when I am successful with a women I like it usually doesn’t last very long because they ’’don’t know what they want’’, which is about the same excuse as the tinder girls.


    Sorry for the long post and my bad English, it isn’t my native language. If some poor soul have the time and will to read this, cheers to you.
     
  2. Ridley

    Ridley Fapstronaut

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    My first piece of advice is to be a bit more patient. in recovery from pornography addiction, it can take a very long time before you really start to feel better. Take it from me: I haven't watched any porn in almost a year and I'm still an addict. I still have urges to watch porn, I still have a skewed view of myself, and I still deal with shame. I still have to work hard at my recovery.

    My second piece of advice is to evaluate your expectations. What, exactly, are you hoping would have happened by the time you reached 30 days? You mentioned you weren't experiencing any ground-breaking changes. Well, what ground-breaking changes are you looking for?

    I don't think I buy that story. I don't think you would be here in the first place unless PMO was a problem for you.

    Additionally, keep in mind that there is a lot of exaggeration that gets tossed around in the "success stories" section of the forum. Some people claim that they have a deeper voice after NoFap. Others claim they are "more masculine". Others still claim they are more attractive towards women. I've even seen some people claim that NoFap cured their baldness. If you ask me, I think all of that stuff is probably false anyway, but even if it were true, I don't think any of those are good reasons to motivate yourself. To me, NoFap is about accepting yourself for who you are, not about reaching for some extreme change in your body or internal chemistry.

    Again, I advise you to evaluate your expectations with NoFap. Why do you want to do this in the first place?

    Indeed, this is a common problem for men who have a problem with PMO. The good news is that there are many men who have had success in treating such conditions by rebooting for at least 90 days. Having said that, I should mention that 90 days is really just the beginning of your recovery (especially if your addiction has progressed to the point where you are losing an erection during sex because of PMO). It is possible to heal, but it can take a very long time and a lot of hard work.

    I think those are good reasons to do NoFap, and I think you can achieve those goals by committing to your recovery.

    Well there's your problem, friend. Tinder is not going to bring you any piece of mind whatsoever. Tinder is all based on looks. It's very shallow, and it's not a good way to develop relationships with people.

    You aren't doing anything wrong. The problem is not you, it's Tinder. The reason these women are flaking on you isn't because there's something wrong with you. The reason they're flaking on you is that they already have what they were looking for by the time you've set up a date with them: validation. As I already mentioned, Tinder is based almost exclusively on looks. The women who use that application are simply looking for validation that they are attractive enough to be approached for a date. Once they receive that validation, they don't need anything else from you. It's not a good way to meet people. It's just an online application that makes some people feel better about themselves.

    All the people I know who have actually met up with people they approached via tinder ended up just having one night stands that didn't go anywhere. If that's what you're looking for, then I guess I wish you better luck in the future. However, I'll still say that I think you'll be a lot happier if you just delete that application from your phone and just focus on doing things that you actually enjoy doing with your time. Just forget about trying to meet women to date and focus on what makes you feel alive.

    Here's my advice on how to find a relationship: stop focusing on it.

    I wish you could have exactly the kind of relationship you're looking for. I wish you could have it right now so that you could realize that that's not the answer. Being in a relationship will not magically fix all of your problems. You will still be an individual even when you find someone. So, stop trying to find someone else and try to find out what kind of person you want to be. Who do you see when you look in the mirror? If it's someone you're happy with, then great. Keep doing what you're doing, and you will probably find yourself in a relationship at some point. However, if it's not someone you're happy with looking back at you, then I think you have deeper issues than finding someone to date.

    When you're involved in a relationship, you really share your true self with someone else. So, what's the point of being in a relationship if you aren't happy with your true self? Wouldn't your partner deserve better than that?

    I think you have some confidence issues. Even your language here suggests that you think I'm a "poor soul" because I read your post, even though this is a support forum for sharing these sorts of thoughts. It sounds to me like you aren't happy with who you are, so my advice is to figure out why that is.

    No, NoFap will not help you find a relationship. Relationships are so much more complicated than that. However, I believe that if you truly commit yourself to recovery from your problems with PMO, that you will find out that you don't need to be in a relationship to be happy with yourself. You already have everything you need to live a full, human life. The answers are within, not within someone else.

    I hope that helps.
     
  3. Jizzcules

    Jizzcules New Fapstronaut

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    Thank you for the reply, Hell of a streak you have btw! Impressive. The reason for me saying ground-breaking is because of all the stories I’ve read haha, haven’t really experienced anything like they describe. Such as increased confidence, more creative, less anxious, having an aura about them attracting girls etc. I not sure exactly what I was expecting when I started, but the stories made me curios. And yes, the stories might be exaggerated…

    Well I guess PMO might have a bigger impact on me then I realise? I’m not entirely sure… when I relapse, I don’t really feel any different. The next day after relapsing I almost feel as I did on a streak, except less horny. The only big impact it has that I’ve really noticed might be the sex related stuff and my view on women. I’m sexualising them way more then I should I guess, I never tell them of course but I’m thinking stuff every day when I see an attractive girl.

    The main reason for me wanting to do nofap is to rewire myself from porn. Which might solve me getting limp sometimes during sex and change the way I view women. Porn makes you crave more and reality can’t always meet those demands. But even if I did rewire, I’m not sure it would solve the problem… I’m feeling sceptical. All these problems I mentioned before, I’m not sure how many of them really exist because of PMO.

    Haha yeah I guess you’re right about tinder… haven’t really thought about it that way. But I’ve heard about people who have met their partners on tinder, might be rare as hell though. I’m trying to focus on other stuff, but its hard when you’re craving them so damn hard because of nofap. When I relapse, I regain a lot more self-control, but I don’t want to give my brain dopamine for wanking to porn. Feels kind of destructive when you think about it. So both ways seem to come with their own setbacks.

    Yeah I’ve had a lot of confidence issues in the past, some of it still lingers with me. I’m not sure what I think about myself, I feel lost when it comes to life in general. How I should act or not act, be or not be etc. But I don’t think that badly of myself, I think I deserve someone good and attractive. My opinion regarding my real market value is high so I’m not uncertain about my worth. However, I do think I have a lot of weaknesses, but so do we all.

    Wise words, I understand that nofap won’t make a girlfriend magically appear before me. I’m just so frustrated and tired of all the setbacks I’m experiencing. It makes you lose hope of ever finding someone. I just want to feel one success, at least one… otherwise its like I’m walking in the same path over and over. I don’t know what to do anymore to makes things work. And PMO makes life feel a lot harder, trying to get girls feels more frustrating. I’m less focused, I get angry for less, more anxious and I even feel depressed at times. I’ve tried mediating and cold showers, they give me some relief, but it isn’t much. Other than that, I live a healthy lifestyle (except for my sleeping patterns) and I go to the gym once a day.
     
  4. Ridley

    Ridley Fapstronaut

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    No problem! And thanks for the encouragement.

    Even if those stories aren't exaggerated, the main problem I have with them is that, for some of the stories, the benefits aren't really worth pursuing in your life, and I actually think some of them are still rooted in skewed views of sexuality and identity induced by porn.

    I think increased confidence, less shame about yourself, and feeling less anxious are all worth pursuing and I think NoFap can help with those. If you haven't experienced any of that yet, I guess I'd say give it some more time and continue looking for other ways to boost confidence in yourself. NoFap alone isn't enough to make you confident in yourself. You really have to be someone you're proud of when you look in the mirror, and sometimes that can take changing every aspect of your life.

    As for creativity, I think that's more difficult to pursue in general. In my experience, creativity is not just something that gets activated by a switch or by a series of actions you do. Creativity behaves more like the weather than it does like a light switch. You can't make yourself more creative, but you can learn to maximize your creative output when that storm comes along, if that makes sense.

    I guess I'm more concerned about the benefits people talk about when it comes to having sex and meeting women. I get the feeling that a lot of people haven't really recovered from their unhealthy sexual habits and are just replacing PMO with sex. Sex, of course, can be very healthy for you, but I don't believe it's always healthy. Sometimes, I get concerned that some people are just using women to make themselves feel good (the same way they just use PMO to make themselves feel good), but it's hard to know people's true intentions. Overall, I don't think that making yourself more irresistible to women is a good goal to keep in mind. It sounds manipulative, honestly. I think it's far better (and much more realistic) to just focus on bettering yourself as an individual. If you do that, it won't even matter whether or not you're irresistible to women.

    I don't think I (or anyone else) can answer that question for you. You'll have to look within for insight on that. I was just pointing out that you probably wouldn't have come to this forum unless PMO was impacting your life in some way.

    This was probably one of my biggest problems with PMO, and it's something that has started to go away as I've distanced myself from porn more and more. If it's something that causes you some distress, maybe quitting porn can help you with that.

    Those sound like good reasons, and I think you can achieve those things with prolonged recovery. It's not going to be easy, though. It takes a long time to recover, depending on how long you were using porn. As I've been mentioning, I've been clean for almost a year and I still have issues to deal with. It might be one of the most difficult things you've ever done.

    As I mentioned before, NoFap alone isn't enough to boost your confidence in yourself. If you're unhappy with who you are, it's likely for a number of reasons (PMO being one of them). For most of us, PMO is just the tip of the iceberg. We developed our PMO habits to medicate or numb some other negative feeling in our lives, and a lot of your recovery is going to be diving beneath the surface and taking an honest look at yourself. That's probably the hardest part about all of this.

    For me, the "beneath the surface" stuff was an intense feeling of shame and doubt about my own experience. I'm a child abuse survivor, and it took me a long time before I realized how intertwined my abuse and my pornography addiction were. Exploring all of that with myself and with other people I trust was wayyy harder than simply abstaining from pornography.

    Here's the best advice I can give anybody for finding a romantic partner: just let that shit go and stop trying. Focus on yourself. Being in a relationship with someone isn't going to solve any of your problems (in fact, if you aren't careful, it can end up creating even more problems). When you're in a relationship, you really share your true self with someone else. If you're not happy with who you are, how can you justify sharing that with someone else? Wouldn't your partner deserve better than that? Just uninstall Tinder and focus on bettering yourself as an individual. It might not help you find a partner, but if you're at peace with yourself, then why do you need a partner anyway?

    Craving intimacy and connections with other human beings is healthy. However, I think you might be confusing intimacy and connection with sexual release. Think carefully about what you are craving. Is it really love and affection, or is it just the rush you get from orgasm?

    I think this sounds like a good place to start. This is what I'm talking about when I talk about looking beneath the surface.

    I encourage you to just let go of your goals of finding a relationship. In all likelihood, you will have some relationships in the future (just from a statistical standpoint). There are all sorts of beautiful sights, sounds and smells in this universe. If you spend all your energy focusing on how you're going to find a mate, you might miss out on all that other stuff. Don't let your life pass you by.
     
    dukesoup likes this.
  5. Jizzcules

    Jizzcules New Fapstronaut

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    You sound like you got a lot figured out, many wise words. I agree with you, maybe the cravings I feel isn’t always what they should be. Replacing PMO with sex might not be a good idea after all. But the feeling of loneliness also strikes hard which also makes it difficult to ignore perusing women. I don’t want to be that guy that’s just ''using’’ women to feel good, it's just so hard to resist trying. It's like being in a desert and you come across a cold glass of water and you’re not supposed to drink it because then you’re only ''using’’ the water to reduce the thirst. I’ve been single for a couple of years as well, so being alone is something I’ve endured for a long time.

    I’ve been doing PMO since I was about 14 years old until now when I’m 23. This last year I’ve been on and off though because I’m trying to maintain a streak on nofap. About the beneath the surface stuff I’m not to sure where my problem comes from… I’ve always been a shy person. I met a therapist in the past when I was 19. Didn’t help me at all, he just talked about stuff I didn’t feel like the problem was coming from. And I can’t really find out myself where the root to the problem lies, all I feel when I dive deep in to myself are the bad feelings. Not the cause that lies behind them. It’s like the answer is behind a wall I can’t reach. I have also experienced a lot of mind fog lately, feeling a loss of meaning and sometimes losing grips with reality slightly. It feels as if I’m in the middle of a labyrinth, none of the ways around me feels better or worse than the other. Which makes it hard to know in what direction I’m supposed to push.
     
  6. Ridley

    Ridley Fapstronaut

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    For me, my addiction to porn was really just an addiction to the chemical reaction in my brain whenever I had an orgasm. In that way, PMO is really more like a drug than it might seem at surface level. I think there was a while when I first started in my recovery that I was pursuing that same chemical reaction in my sexual relationships. The first time I seriously tried quitting (long before I joined the forums), I was in a committed relationship, so I thought to myself "it shouldn't be too difficult to quit PMO. I'll just have more sex with my girlfriend instead". At first, it felt like things were going to be okay. She had an even bigger libido than I do, so there was no problem with having sex. However, we didn't live together or anything, so sometimes, she didn't stay over. Guess what I did the first night we spent apart? I opened my incognito browser and I was back into porn immediately. She was satisfying my desire for orgasm, but it wasn't sustainable (due to the fact that she wasn't always going to be available for sex). I didn't realize that the problem was my insatiable desire for orgasm. It had basically gotten to the point where orgasm was one of the only things that made me feel okay with myself.

    Eventually, when I gained the clarity I needed to quit PMO, I started to realize just how important it was that I take the focus off of orgasm for pleasure. I was so focused on it that I had almost forgotten about all the other aspects of sex that are enjoyable. Yes, there's orgasm, but there's also emotion, there's trust, there's breathing, there's touching, there's foreplay, there's all the pillow talk that comes afterwards. Porn only gives you orgasm and leaves out all the other stuff. That's why I think there's a risk of replacing PMO with sex. You can have sex with someone and still be solely focused on getting your orgasm fix. That's not fair to your partner, it reinforces the chemical dependence in your brain that sustains a pornography addiction, and it's not fair to yourself either because of all the other amazing aspects of sex you'll be missing out on.

    I'll quote existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: "If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company."

    Take that as you will, but here's what it means to me: if you depend on other people for validation, you'll never be ultimately satisfied with yourself. You can't rely on your boss to tell you that you're a good employee. You can't rely on your friends to tell you that you're a fun guy to hang out with. You can't rely on a woman to tell you that you're a worthy mate. That sort of validation has to come from within. It has to come from yourself. If you don't have confidence in yourself, you're always going to feel like something is missing. You don't need a woman to make you feel like a complete person (even though human connection is a very beautiful thing indeed). You already have everything you need to feel like a complete person: yourself.

    I don't buy into that analogy at all, for one simple reason: if you don't drink water for a few days, you'll die. If you don't have an orgasm in a few days, you'll survive.

    Look, if you really think that the having sex with a woman will make it all better, then I'm not going to lie to you: you're perfectly capable of doing that. You can continue to use services like Tinder (you're bound to get lucky eventually), you can learn manipulative "Pickup Artist" methods for convincing women to come home with you from the bars and sleep with you on the first night you meet them, and you can even hire an escort if you have the money for it (and you're not afraid of STD's). All of that stuff is clearly within the realm of possibility. The thing is, I don't think that's what you really want, and I don't think you would really be happy if you had it right now. In fact, if you're really struggling with porn, I think you would be back to using porn as soon as the excitement of sleeping with her wears off. It's not a sustainable solution to your loneliness. It's going to take a lot more work if you really want to feel better about yourself.

    Celebrate your time being single! If you were suddenly in a relationship right now, you wouldn't be any more complete of a person than you are already. It's just a different phase of life. Think of it as time for your own personal development and growth. It's not a curse to be single: it's an opportunity to focus on yourself.

    Maybe it just wasn't a good match. Or, maybe you're just not that type of person. Therapy doesn't work out for everyone. I will say that therapy has helped me a lot in my own recovery. In my experience, you really have to trust your therapist and open up to them about your most vulnerable thoughts if you want to get the most out of it.

    Let me ask a simple question, which may shed some light on your situation: did you ever talk about pornography in therapy?

    I think talking through some of this stuff with a therapist might be really helpful for you.

    If that's not an option (either financially or just because you don't want to go down that road), then that's fine. You might also want to talk to friends and family members about it. Try calling a friend or family member just to say "hi". You might be surprised about what comes out.

    Another thing I'd suggest is keeping a journal in pen and paper. When you write in a journal, your brain is forced to slow down to the speed of your hand moving the pencil on the page. It's another thing that works for some people and not for others, but it really helps me sort out my thoughts when I feel horrible and I can't quite figure out why.
     
    Alaiza likes this.
  7. Jizzcules

    Jizzcules New Fapstronaut

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    That’s a good story, I can sympathise a lot with what you’re saying. The sex is really affected by porn, it’s just like you say that the focus is to much on getting to the orgasm. But it’s also partially for me because of porn making me more numb to stimuli, or perhaps it’s just me getting older haha. Foreplay doesn’t feel as interesting as it did before when I was younger, the same goes with kissing etc.

    I can partially agree with that quote, you should be happy with yourself and the validation of others shouldn’t mean to much. But I don’t think you can solely rely on your own opinion of yourself. That would make you arrogant and unchangeable to the rest of the world. For example, let’s say I confidently think I’m a worthy mate and no one can change my view of that. Even though all women might be telling me otherwise. That would ultimately make me end up alone because of my own illusions.

    Haha I can admit that my analogy was a bit extreme, but it only served to prove the point that it’s a hard to resist.

    Yeah you’re right… it’s just difficult to train my brain to think otherwise.

    No we never talked about pornography, during that time in my life I didn’t even realise that PMO could be or was a problem for me. I’m not to comfortable to talk to either my friends or family about these kinds of things. Don’t know about therapy, maybe ill give it another shot in the future. But I don’t think they can help me, I think some of my problems just comes from reality itself. I’m not content with how the world works, that’s not something therapy can change. Or maybe I’m not seeing things the right way yet, hard to tell. I’m usually kind of stressed out about the future, where ill be in 10 years. Many times when I look in to my own future I see I life I don’t want to live. I’ll try the pen and paper thing and see if can come up with anything.
     
    Jal Say likes this.
  8. about tinder, Ive met my gf there and we were 1 year together and it was great.
    girl flee because of various reasons and you absolutely do NOT have to care about those reasons
     
  9. Ridley

    Ridley Fapstronaut

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    I think it's really important for your recovery to get back in touch with all the non-penetrative elements of sex. As I mentioned before, I think a heavy emphasis on orgasm will just sustain your dependence on porn.

    I think there's a difference between being confident in yourself and being overconfident in yourself. To me, confidence in myself is really just self-acceptance for who I really am (including my shortcomings and limitations), and being comfortable with the changes that life dishes out to me. Obviously, you don't want to be arrogant, but you can love the positive aspects of your life without denying your limitations as a person.
     
    Jal Say likes this.
  10. Jal Say

    Jal Say Fapstronaut

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    Great words Ridley, haven't read everything but what I've read is completly right in my opinion. Thank you for the support :)
     
  11. Ra's Al Ghul

    Ra's Al Ghul Fapstronaut

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