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The Joy of Looking

Discussion in 'Porn Addiction' started by AmazingFapMan, Feb 16, 2014.

  1. AmazingFapMan

    AmazingFapMan Fapstronaut

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    One of the things I enjoy most about porn is looking at the women. Sometimes when I'd surf for porn I'd just look at the girls, admiring the curve of their hips, the pertness of their breasts, roundness of their bum, for an hour or more before I even put hand on cock. I have to admit, this is something I find myself really missing.

    This may sound arrogant or egotistical so I apologise if it comes off that way. I'm a trained artist specialising in illustration. I LOVE drawing the human body - men and women, be it portraits or full figures. This is what I've concentrated on for the majority of my art career, so my brain works somewhat differently to the everyday person, especially when it comes to looking at the human form. If, for example, I see a naked body it isn't an automatic turn on for me. A woman might be standing naked in from of me, but rather than thinking "ooooh, boobies" my brain is looking at the anatomy, seeing how the muscles fit together and move under the skin.

    For example, I have a photo of Bettie Page on the wall of my study. I've been a Bettie Page fan for years, so I have many posters, books, DVDs and so on. When I look at that photo, yes I see a sexy, beautiful woman. But I don't get an immediate reaction "down there." Rather I look at her face, then usually down the body from there. I don't so much look at her body as her form. While I still find her sexy, it's not in a sexualised, wanna-have-a-wank way. It's more appreciating the exquisiteness of the human form.

    However, if I look at that same photo of Bettie with the intention of wanking, be it over her or someone else, it DOES get me going. Similarly, if my favourite pornstar is standing there naked, nothing really happens. As soon as she starts showing off her pink bits, I get "the urge."

    I guess what I'm getting at is that it feels my brain is able to disconnect sexually when the image isn't of an overtly sexual nature or I'm already in the mindset of wanting to wank. Perhaps this is why I've been drawn to harder porn (or at least harder than you'd find in Playboy) because naked female bodies are something I'm used to seeing from art school and my various illustration gigs. They have become just a part of "work" for me, so I need that sexualisation to become revved up.

    I mean, sure, sometimes if I see a very attractive woman naked in a move or whatever it'll turn me on, but this is very much the minority of the time, and usually only when it's been a while since I last orgasmed.

    So, what do you guys and girls think? And I on to something here or am I talking out my proverbial? I've be interested in your thoughts.

    Cheers.
     
  2. CrazyGopher

    CrazyGopher Fapstronaut

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    I guess I am the opposite, because I start to feel arousal even when looking at fully clothed women for very brief periods of time.

    I wonder, what's the maximum number of days you've gone without any kind of artificial stimulation?

    I ask because this could possibly change for you once you start getting up in the days.
     
  3. William

    William Fapstronaut

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    Hi Amazing, thanks for posting. Reading posts and replying are part of my recovery. They offer me a chance to explore what I am doing, and why, through the perspective of others. So, thank you.

    I found your post compelling. I went through and read your previous posts, all of them.

    I am a very visual person myself, and though not a visual artist, I, too, love the look of women and have extensive experience in photography, much of which involves beautiful women. What I take from your posts is that you love women, romanticize them, and feel sexuality is to be celebrated as an aspect of living vitally.

    I feel exactly the same way. I could go on about the beauty of women, and how exciting they can be, but I am not here for that. I am here because, despite loving women, I became addicted to high speed internet porn, which is not exactly the same as loving women.

    My problem, and I think your problem, is not with repressing our sexuality, and we could write poems about the shape of a woman's hip, the pout of her lips, or how her hair hangs over one eye, or even how beautiful she is when she is angry, or how she breaks our hearts when she is sad.

    Our problem is not being in love with women. I think it is perfectly appropriate to be in love with women. And, yes, I too, think Bettie Page is the berries. Thing about Bettie, though, is that she was the kind of porn that was not addictive. She existed before HSIP, high speed internet porn. She was a pin up girl. I have fond memories of Betty, but I do not access her now. Before HSIP she was a beautiful amusing distraction, but now, after having quit porn, she is a trigger. Bettie is a great teaching point. She was porn before I lost my innocence, so to speak, before HSIP.

    You talk about the harder stuff. That is where pornography addiction inevitably leads. Why? Because the softer stuff no longer rewards us with the dopamine release it used to.

    At the height of my addiction I, like you, thought I needed porn to become sexually motivated. I thought I needed porn with my coffee in the morning to wake up, get motivated, to feel vital. But what I have learned is that was just a counterfeit vitality; it was a dopamine release which gave me a momentary high that satisfied for a minute and then was gone, leaving me wanting more.

    I am almost 7 months PMO free, MO free, and porn free. I still love women, I still see women, I still admire them. But I am not using porn to abuse my dopamine addiction anymore.

    So, my opinion, get rid of HSIP, and you probably need to take a break from hypersexualized thoughts and images for a while too, just to get your dopamine levels back down. I would take Bettie down for a while. Not that she's not great, but...if she has become a trigger for you, and she probably has, you need to get rid of her until she is no longer a trigger.

    Yours is a tough position. I would hate to try quitting HSIP while working consistently around beautiful nude women, but then again, beautiful nude women are not the problem, per se, HSIP is.

    By the way, my story:

    http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2402-Get-educated-get-tools-and-learn-to-love-withdrawals

    For a guy like you, a difficult choice is presented. There are two types of guys here. On on the one hand there are the guys who are here trying to control porn, but they do not want it out of their lives. I have consistently seen them fail because HSIP addiction is not a pet one can keep and play with whenever the urge hits. To beat it it has to be completely gone. On the other hand, there are the guys who know they cannot control HSIP and have elected to totally eliminate it from our lives. I am in this group.

    I have not given up the beauty of women, but, let' face it, just how beautiful did HSIP ever really make women look?

    Good luck on your journey.
     
  4. AmazingFapMan

    AmazingFapMan Fapstronaut

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    Than for the reply, guys. To answer your question, Crazy, the longest I've gone is 4 days.

    William, your post is a really interesting one, thanks for that. Even now I really want to go look at some porn, even if it's not hardcore. One fetish I have that really sets me off is panties. I've been tempted to look at girls in panties for the last few days, justifying for myself that it's OK because it's not hardcore porn. I'm trying to resist, but it's getting very hard.
     
  5. William

    William Fapstronaut

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    Hi Amazing. Yes, early in my journey I quit watching hardcore and went to softcore or vanilla porn as some of the guys call it. Told myself I was making progress. I wasn't, I was just stringing out my addiction. It was just another way to get a dopamine fix.

    It is your call of course. Ultimately, we all have to make a choice. I have no moral qualms about porn, and I do not believe it is necessarily "bad". I just came to understood it was a button I had come to push--every day, multiple times per day--to get a dopamine fix, and I reached a place where I wanted to control that situation rather than have it control me. That is why I am porn free now; so it no longer controls me.

    Good luck on your journey.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2014
  6. upside

    upside Fapstronaut

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    Hi Amazing, to answer your question, I think you are partly kidding yourself. I'm involved in fine art too and know what you're saying about the way you look at a nude body when you're drawing it, it isn't necessarily a sexual experience for the artist, but I'd be wary of it, I'm not sure it's 100% non-sexual. Artists down the centuries have been adding sex into this mix - Klimt, Rossetti, Picasso, all the way back to guys like van Eyck. I think ordinarily it's not an issue for artists, but if you're trying to quit porn and 4 days is the longest you've managed, then for the time being I'd take the view that everything you describe should be avoided - nude drawing, pin ups, panties, etc... - coz it's all getting in the way of you making a successful recovery. If you must draw nudes, draw wrinkly old men ; )
     
  7. AmazingFapMan

    AmazingFapMan Fapstronaut

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    Glad to see someone understands my panty fetish, Glypyodon. Most people just look at me weird when I tell them. ^_^
     
  8. CuriousFem

    CuriousFem Fapstronaut

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    Wow, interesting post.

    It's actually got me wondering if taking up illustration and studying the female form from a more technical, artistic perspective might actually help some guys here desensitize themselves slightly more to the female form.
     
  9. AmazingFapMan

    AmazingFapMan Fapstronaut

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    It can certainly do that. You start appreciating the negative space the curve of a hip makes rather thanthe hip itself. ^_^
     
  10. Mark

    Mark Distinguished Fapstronaut

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    Thanks for posting this, I've really enjoyed reading this everyones comments.

    I used to do pencil portraits as a sideline and it does make you 'see' peoples faces in a different way so I totally relate to what everyone's been saying. I 'never forget a face' so to speak and honestly I saw a woman in a café this morning who used to live on my paper round when I was a kid (I musn't have seen her for over 30 years and I might have only seen her then about 3 or 4 times!) and I just kept looking at her face across the café (thank god I didn't draw nudes!) and I was fascinated by all the lines and the way her face had 'evolved' (which I don't think she would have appreciated!;)) and yes the human form is incredible but our perception of it has all too often been distorted/perverted (in the true sense of the word) and it feels good to be viewing the world less and less via the 'filters' that continued exposure to all forms of porn create in our minds 'eye'.
     
  11. Treason

    Treason Fapstronaut

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    Personally speaking I don't necessarily sexualise nudity - I think being naked is entirely healthy and appreciating nudity is too. However, that doesn't mean I'm unaffected by nudity - a hot girl with no clothes is a turn on, but being turned on isn't the problem, it's what I do with the experience and how I allow it to trigger other behaviour in me. The relapse I had at 30 days was more a mixture of the fantasy in my mind and insomnia - there were no visuals to trigger it off, just my own self-delusions and things I allowed myself to believe.

    I see casual observance of nudity as completely different to shutting myself away to get lost in an unreal fantasy world where I'm obsessively edging myself in a neverending quest for the ultimate filth - and subsequently trying to live out that fantasy in the real world.

    However, it's early days for me, and so that might mean a little bit more vigilance for a while - extreme measures to kick off a reboot don't have to be the end of life as we know it. It's all temporary.
     
  12. upside

    upside Fapstronaut

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    This post is descending into fantasy.

    The guys on this site are trying to quit porn addiction and the last thing they should be doing is thinking about life drawing. If you think you're going to approach this with a strictly artistic mindset, YOU ARE KIDDING YOURSELVES!

    Trust me, I do life drawing for a living. SERIOUSLY!!!
     
  13. Mark

    Mark Distinguished Fapstronaut

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    Lighten up mate!:D http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2318-Humour!!);)
     
  14. upside

    upside Fapstronaut

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    Honestly, if you were standing next to me right now I'd punch you in the fucking nuts. Da dum dum tsshhh!
     
  15. William

    William Fapstronaut

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    I like the way upside thinks. He is not playing with the addiction, not even a little. I know it can be harsh, but let's be real, this is a harsh addiction to beat, and playing with our triggers gets too many of us in trouble. There are a lot of great guys in here, but at some point in beating this addiction, everyone had to take a hard stand against using porn, in any form. Porn cannot be kept in our lives if we are going to beat the addiction. I know this, jilted knows it too. I am seven months clean today. This far out is is easy to forget the total hell I had to crawl through to get the addiction behind me. It helps to be reminded once in a while. For a porn addict, porn has to go. Period. It's a serious addiction and as serious men with a serious problem, we have to take the problem seriously to beat it.

    Let's get clean and stay clean.

    Peace.
     
  16. Mark

    Mark Distinguished Fapstronaut

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    Oh yeah! And I'd whack you over the head with a frying pan...WHAM!!
     
  17. upside

    upside Fapstronaut

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    OK, you made me laugh, damn you!!!
     
  18. William

    William Fapstronaut

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    No violence please! I will say, and I speak only for myself, that getting angry at the addiction was helpful for me, especially early on. For me, finding some way other than passively quitting, aided the process. I think that anger is OK when it is aimed at the addiction.

    Peace.
     
  19. Mark

    Mark Distinguished Fapstronaut

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    :D ;) And to concur with William, as John Lydon once screamed, 'Anger is an energy!!' so use it wisely (and thanks for my first ever cyber-slapstick fight!!!:D)
     
  20. Mark

    Mark Distinguished Fapstronaut

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    Oh wow! My names been changed! That freaked me out when I noticed! I'd almost forgotten I'd requested it! I thought it was the punch to the nuts for a minute!! That feels wierd! I'm not jilted anymore! I'm free!!!;)
     

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