The Final Frontier: Depersonalization in the Real World and Fighting the Urge to Talk to "THEM"

Greetings from the Frontier
A query: Is talking to 'them' just as bad?
We'll get to that...

Intro: I'm 26 and on my first real NoFap journey - 22 days in, no MO and one great big internal confrontation over what "P" has come to mean in my life.

Now you're probably wondering, who are 'they?'
That requires some explaining. Like a lot of us, I got wrapped up in porn from an early age, probably around 11, having no idea what that level of stimulation was doing to my system. The intensity of the porn I sought staged up rather quickly from the surface vanilla to the intense, often violent BDSM and self-esteem destroying sissy rabbit hole. I could spend hours flooding my brain with dopamine - I could sit and read epic-length stories of erotic perversion, edging for longer and longer as each new chapter unfolded. Any sense of sexual reality had been obliterated by high school, but the freedom of college brought with it the opportunity to turn the hyperbolic into the hyper-real, seeking out partners via fetlife, craigslist, and sites far more fiendish is their corruption of young minds. You name it, I went there. Who have been with? Men, women, groups, OLD men, trans, and more... performing bondage, assorted fetishes, even sissy play... you name it, I've tried it (or at least seriously considered it before wimping out). I have a great bevy of ridiculous and dangerous stories (letting myself get tied down and used by strangers in their homes without telling anyone where I was going, etc) from my recent past, all of which I experienced in a completely depersonalized state. The human beings on the other side of the scenes were always irrelevant. For instance, I honestly don't find older men attractive, not at all, but their willingness to let me play out a scene totally outside the reality of my own life was too intoxicating to ignore... Just one more step up the ladder of over-stimulation that began with pornography. It gotten so bad that I can't even really get hard for THESE scenes anymore and often find myself playing the submissive and just being used up.

Is it any wondering I find it so hard to experience pleasure with people I actually love?

Since starting my reboot I've been able to reflect on so many aspects of my sex life that I had been blind to since i began. Quitting porn was EASY, stopping masturbating and not orgasming was EASY... but I quickly realized that the thing I am perhaps most addicted to is talking to these strangers who have provided me with so many sexual experiences through my formative years. My reason for starting the reboot is clear - I have trouble becoming aroused enough to have sex with girls (or boys) I'm actually emotionally invested in. I've read a lot of Your Brain on Porn and NoFap materials, enough that I figured, "sure I can quit porn and maybe that'll solve my problem." Three weeks in, just after my first terrifying Flatline (zero libido and some slow simmering feelings of hopelessness), I found myself checking my "sex" email, reading some things that people had emailed me: offers for me to do this or that, perform or be used. I read, responded a little, even admitted I was on a NoFap regimen to a few before i realized how I was sexualizing my experience!
The next day, though, I went back and did it again, and then again. It's been a few days since this started, and I'm starting to realize that this act alone - just talking to these people who represent the Final Frontier of my Sexual Depersonalization - is in fact triggering the dopamine flood I've been trying to avoid.

I started writing this to ASK if talking to "them" is a trigger to be avoided, and clearly I've ended it with an answer as clear as day. I'm incapable of real intimacy with people I love because I've conditioned my mind for years to be significantly more comfortable with the inhuman and utterly mechanical orgasm factory of impersonal encounters. I almost let myself be fooled into thinking that talking to these people is OK, just as many NoFap users describe being close with their wife/girlfriend as being "ok." But here's the reality: these sad phantoms are just another arm of the mind virus with which we are all at war, only now conjured into the real world by my own impossible insecurities.
Avoid this meaningless sex at all costs, lest you never return from the Frontier/

see you all out there,
ZB

 

Another glorious morning, masturbation replaced by meditation!
I was wondering, others experienced what I described in above ^ ? Does this ring true?

 

Thanks for the info about P-subbing!
Perhaps the hardest thing for me right now is finding that line that I personally shouldn't cross. What is something that is actually contributing to my ED problems and what is something that might help in that it is is intate? Do I need to just go monk mode (not actually clear what this is) and cut all sex, even fantasy or conversation, completely out?