To Fap or Not to Fap
Is NoFap really the solution to your problems?
Jerking off in the shower is no perfect crime.
When you ejaculate into the flow of water, a portion of the semen streams down the hand that you are using to masturbate, covering the top of your fingers as the water carries it down onto the tile floor and into the drain. If you don’t thoroughly clean this hand and merely spray it with the shower head, some of this viscous mixture of semen and water will linger, sticking to your skin. Once out of the shower and after a while, when the goo dries up, what’s left are scraps of a white substance that cling to your finger hairs and are pretty tough to pull up.
I would call these cumflakes, and they’re a trademark of the wanking teenager I used to be.
There was a time when my penis and I were inseparable friends.
The kind of friend you hang out with once, twice, or even three times on a single day without the need for an excuse, just for the pleasure of spending quality time together.
That honeymoon phase ended as soon as I discovered porn.
Getting my own computer as an early teenager led to the collision of two massive forces: my horniness and the Internet’s. Needless to say, the Internet won. What started as curiosity soon grew into something closer to an obsession. Porn sucked me in entirely, and the spiral of longer and longer binges turned my sexual patterns upside down.
Those drawn-out sessions would drain me to the core, leaving me an emotional zombie for days. In just a couple of months, I went from a teenager that masturbated at least once a day for just a few minutes, to one that did it only once or twice a week but for a few hours at a time.
The act of masturbating itself radically changed. What used to be an opportunity to use my imagination and reconnect with my body became an excruciating hours-long process of delayed ejaculation in front of a screen. I didn’t enjoy my body but rather mistreated it, and sexual release was almost an afterthought.
Not long after discovering the wonders of sexuality, I had managed to turn my penis from a dear friend into a grudging tool for my self-destructive coping mechanisms.
It’s amazing how much heat you can get without realizing that your ass is boiling.
For years I continued to indulge in long sessions of porn never questioning what I was doing. It wasn’t until I first stumbled upon the NoFap community that I was forced to contemplate my masturbation habits and admit that maybe, perhaps, I might have a problem.
Browsing through those posts felt a bit like an out-of-body experience. I saw myself behind many of those ridiculous Reddit usernames, pieces of my present and scraps from my past reflected on their words with uncanny accuracy.
I confessed my sins and embraced the sacred NoFap Word, but not without suspicion. The movement promised the moon to the converted: increased confidence, greater focus, some sort of sudden new sex appeal — exactly what a porn-addicted incel like me wanted to hear. It all seemed a bit too fanciful, but I could definitely relate to the struggle so I decided to give it a try.
Going NoFap was like running headfirst into a wall of bricks. Your addiction to porn is never more obvious than when you try to quit it. The success stories and the many self-reported benefits that you read about in the community get you all pumped up, then you start relapsing every two days despite your best efforts and you are left feeling like a crackhead.
My first few weeks trying not to masturbate were pretty hard. They were a bit confusing, too. Because NoFap was all about, well, not fapping, I found myself looking at porn without masturbating to it, thinking without much conviction that “it didn’t count”. Of course, that’s a blurry line to draw, I mean, does touching the tip of your penis just a little bit count as masturbating? Soon enough you are telling yourself that it’s ok as long as you don’t come, and suddenly edging to porn for hours can be part of a successful NoFap streak.
It was at that point that I figured I needed a better strategy. So I decided to stop doing NoFap and focus instead on abstaining only from porn, which I considered to be my main issue. Once I reintroduced masturbation into my process, I noticed two things.
The first one was something I once knew but had long forgotten: how great masturbation could be without porn. Admittedly, it felt weird in the beginning, but little by little I was able to rekindle the fire that porn had extinguished years ago and rediscover the power of imagination.
The second thing I realized was how much easier staying away from porn became. Even though the struggle of the first few days was still there and just as strong, there was a switch somewhere around the seventh-day mark. At that point, when my horniness and my emotional triggers would join forces to push me towards porn, being able to relieve myself often made the difference between relapsing and extending the streak.
It was only thanks to this new strategy that I managed to go without porn for almost two months — the longest streak I had ever achieved. Unfortunately though, at the time I was relying almost completely on willpower. Without any true insight into my addiction and the issues underlying it, my efforts to quit porn were doomed to fail.
As soon as I ran out of steam and lost motivation, my old habits kicked in and I found myself masturbating to porn for hours again.
A few more years of unrelenting porn binges eventually brought about a new era in my relationship with masturbation.
When I started dating in my mid-twenties, masturbation became a sort of calibration tool. In the beginning, very much afraid that I would come instantly the moment my penis entered a vagina for the first time in its life, I took the habit of masturbating before my dates, thinking that would give me an edge when the time came to lose my virginity.
As soon as I got my first chance and found out I actually faced the exact opposite problem (namely erectile dysfunction), I began to do NoFap for days before a date, thinking that would give me an extra physical boost to help me overcome my performance anxiety.
In the meantime, porn remained a constant. It would keep the party going when swiping Tinder became too frustrating, replace sex when dates went wrong, and offer its support after a disastrous hookup.
By the time I met my current partner my masturbation habits were everything but healthy, and the baggage that came with that wreaked havoc in our relationship.
Masturbation became the cause and the solution to all of my problems with sex. It was my refuge when erectile dysfunction denied me the opportunity to enjoy through intercourse, and at the same time what robbed me of the libido that I needed to work on my problems with sex more effectively.
After a long period of struggle, it became obvious how my masturbation habits were hindering our progress. Determined to make things better, I decided to give it up completely again so that I could focus on improving our sex life.
This time around, without porn and masturbation but being sexually active and in a relationship, I was able to finally break through and leave my problems behind.
Years after I made that decision, having overcome my addiction to porn and my erectile dysfunction, I can proudly say that my sex life has never been better.
For some a pleasurable experience, for others a shameful sin, sometimes a treasured ritual and sometimes an inconvenient necessity: our relationship with masturbation is complex and evolves over the years.
I belong to a generation that has grown up learning to associate masturbation with porn. As a result, many of us became dependent on a screen to fulfill our sexual needs during our developing years.
It’s hard to overestimate the dire consequences that this shift has had, the extremes of which can be seen in those who, like me, struggle with compulsive porn habits. Those sadistic, hours-long masturbation sessions, often played out for years before the person has the chance to experience other sexual practices, create a myriad of problems that eventually carry over to their sex lives with a partner.
In the search for a solution to these problems, many end up resorting to panaceas and falling for placebo effects. Semen retention followers and some NoFap advocates, for example, exalt abstinence as the answer to everything — whether it’s for a fixed period of time as a way to “reset”, or forever as a way of life. Yet for me, abandoning masturbation and/or sex altogether is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Before making that decision blindly, it’s important to understand the role that masturbation plays in your life, and whether removing it can or can not help you achieve your goals, whatever they are.
Ultimately, I believe it’s possible to have a healthy relationship with masturbation and that, once rid of compulsive habits and the dependency on porn, masturbating can play an important role in a diverse and balanced sex life.
If you’re giving that up, make sure it’s not for nothing.
What’s in your math folder?
How have your masturbation habits changed over time?
Is masturbation a healthy part of your sexuality, or is it preventing you from achieving a satisfying sex life?
A porn addict’s relationship with masturbation is complex.
Compulsive porn habits completely deteriorate our idea of self-pleasure and turn masturbation into a self-destructive process instead of a way to enjoy ourselves. Repairing this relationship is part of the journey that frees us from porn and helps us find the pleasure back in sex.
Share your insights in the comments below, on social media, or in your favorite porn addiction community, and if you know others that are struggling with porn, help them by sharing a link to this story.
Let’s start a conversation!
Hi, this is James! Thank you for reading!
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