Giving Up Porn Addiction

Matthew Gates 54m 13,473 #pornaddiction

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

The contents of this confession have been deemed for a mature audience only.

The Dangers of Porn Addiction

This content is marked for mature audience only.

Pornography has existed for as long as man has had an imagination. It is driven by man’s sexual fantasies and desires. While pornography was only acquired several decades ago by going to a porn theater, watching it in black and white, and without sound, it has progressed into photography, magazines, and movies, and eventually, video clips on the Internet.

Most people, specifically males, discover pornography as teenagers, and it only escalates their fantasies, fulfilling serotonin and dopamine levels, as one achieves their goal by acquiring, watching, and masturbating to porn. Unfortunately, all feelings of pleasure and orgasm are just temporary, and the feelings of needing and wanting to watch porn again arise, for that satisfaction, and joy that porn delivers to our brains and our bodies.

As porn became more prevalent, available 24/7, on every computer, in every home, with 56k speed Internet access at first, where most young boys would wait for their pixels to load, and then high-speed Internet gave way to streaming videos, which then made porn easier to make, easier to distribute, and easier to consume. Prepubescent boys and girls, and teenagers, who had Internet access, a lock on the door, and remained unsupervised, had unlimited access to pornography as long as they were by themselves, with no one to bother them. Night time provided the most comfort.

Porn is a best friend to every boy who experiences it. It may even become a best friend to some girls. Porn is as addicting as smoking, gambling, drinking, doing certain drugs, eating, or sex. When depressed, sad, upset, or even mad, porn is there. Porn is something that can be done (watched) in private or even among friends. Porn allows anyone to remain anonymous in the comfort of their own homes and in their own bedrooms. For the majority of people, porn becomes the norm, but to a small percentage of people who do see the truth for what porn truly is: porn is far from normal. When you find yourself making excuses to stay at home instead of hanging out with friends or going out, arriving late to work, looking at porn at work, building up a porn collection on your computer, using porn to numb yourself from pain or using porn as a reward for good deeds, staying up at all hours of the night on porn websites, using porn to get an erection so you can have sex with your partner, fantasizing about a porn scene or a porn star while having sex with your partner, or even turning down sex from your partner so you can watch and masturbate to porn, than porn is a major culprit that is controlling and ruining your life. This is a real porn addiction and it is definitely not normal behavior.

Whether you are religious or not, looking to improve your personal sex life with your spouse, looking to improve your relationship, looking to become more confident, or just looking to give up porn, and focus on being more productive, there are all kinds of reasons to free yourself, free your mind, and give up pornography. Whatever the reason may be, you already know that porn is an unhealthy obsession that no longer feels normal anymore. If you are seeking help, this article will provide insight and lead the way for you, but it is you who must take the steps of giving up your porn addiction.

Why Porn?

Porn is exciting naked bodies of one or more people, penetration, and fantasy that gives into our sexual curiosity, desires, and nature. What we see, we believe is real, and that it is the way it is, not realizing that porn is really just a bunch of actors and actresses, waiting to be done with the scene, so they can all go and eat lunch. Many porn stars are trying to put on a show, giving their best performance, trying to become beloved, because after all, there are Adult Video News (AVN) Awards to be won, which are just like the Oscars, but for pornography, and the more in-demand the porn star, the more money they can make.

With the variety of porn and the amount of people, especially women, looking to get into the business, for “easy money” and “free sex”, there is no shortage of new faces, new bodies, young, old, black, white, Asian, Indian, Hispanic, Muslim, Arab, Christian, or Jewish. British? Australian? Malaysian? Russian? Polish? Dutch? Czechoslovakian? Serbian? Canadian? Brazilian? Portuguese? Puerto Rican? If a porn addict has a certain liking for blondes, brunettes, redheads, purple hair, pink hair, blue hair, green hair, or any type of hair color, there is a porn that focuses on it. Love feet? Butts? Breasts? Toes? Knees? Hair? Ankles? Hips? Wrists? Fingers? Teeth? Mouths? Noses? Ears? Belly buttons? Piercings? Tattoos? Midgets? Tall? Short? There are even categories for things I will not mention here. No matter what you are into or what turns you on, there is a pornographic fetish for you.

Want to change up the scenes? Sex in a library, a car, a bus, a beach, a shower, kitchen counter or table, bedroom, at the office, a construction site, inside of a jail, on top of a roof, in a classroom, or in a swimming pool? Jacuzzi? On a roof? In public? Every possible pornographic scene you can think of exists for you already! Want to have sex with an alien? How about your favorite character from your favorite show? That porn exists too. Have a fetish for teens? MILFs? GILFs? Latinas? Polish? German? Australian? British? American? Japanese? Korean? Russian? Creampie? Cumshots? Bukkake? Doggystyle? Upside down? Ass to mouth? Groupsex? Threesomes with two males and a female? Threesomes with two females and a male? Threesomes with all women? Threesomes with all men? S&M? Bondage? [Fictional] rape? Foot action? Tip only? Anal? Pregnant? Skinny? Fat? Obese? Food? Dirty? Clean? Step-parent or step-sibling? “Pretend” incest? There are also plenty of your favorite childhood television shows being turned into porn, known as XXX Parodies. Love a particular porn star and want to see her perform every sex act? She probably already has. Want to see a different girl every time? There are so many girls in porn that the variety is endless. It is like going to a buffet table and having your pick of everything you want. Best of all, you can find it all online for free!

For every girl out there, she most likely has a porn equivalent, known as a porn doppelganger. If a porn addict cannot get the girl he is after, at least he can masturbate to her using a very similar lookalike who is performing sexual acts. The brain can become overly excited by all of these things. It is like unwrapping gifts and getting exactly what you wanted, fulfilling a craving, satisfying a need, winning the lottery, and experiencing pleasures everyday and all day every single time you want without having to use much of the imagination or having to do any hard work to obtain the pleasurable rewards. Anyone can have it all in seconds of opening up a laptop!

The setup of porn for each scene is carefully calculated, from the lighting, to how she looks, to making sure his face is barely seen, to both parties involved not being the least bit romantic or intimate, but rather, it seems to be all about penetration, licking, sucking, and fucking. Porn could not be further from the truth of how sexuality and sex are supposed to be. Porn is a complete fantasy, from the easygoing girls to the stud-manly guys, who seem to be able to keep an erection for hours while holding off on cumming for what seems like forever. The women in porn seem to love a hard dick inside of them for long periods of time and love to follow suit of the porn routine : eating out, sucking dick, or vice versa, fucking, doggy, cowgirl, reverse cowgirl, with some anal, followed up by a cumshot. He magically does not cum for the entire time. The girls have an orgasm every time, even during anal sex, and afterwards, they love it when men cum inside them or all over their face or breasts. This is a performance and is hardly the reality, especially every time. This is not to say that some people don’t schedule a marathon for sex, especially in the beginning of their relationship, but sexual escapades like this are far from the norm.

This is also not to say that some women don’t enjoy the kind of things you see in porn, and there are plenty of women who are even turned on by it, but there are also many women who probably prefer to have more of a sexual connection with the man they are sexually intimate with. Men, on the other hand, though they might prefer to re-enact the things they have seen in porn, do not realize how much effort it takes and how much it affects them and their imaginations. Ask a male porn addict to masturbate without any porn, in a room by himself, and he will struggle to actually do it, unless he is really horny, or still has access to those parts of his imagination. Over time, as men are visual creatures, his learned behavior of masturbating to porn will render his inability to achieve orgasm or erection through his own imagination or while he is with his partner.

For every possible sexual act imagined, from bestiality to child pornography to incest (which are illegal in almost all parts of the world) to BDSM, S&M, bondage to finally, what most people would consider normal fantasies of amateur, missionary, doggystyle, cowgirl, reverse cowgirl, standing up, anal, and more, if there is a demand, there are photographs and videos that exist to capitalize on that demand. The need and want to fulfill sexual desires and fantasies, even if only in the mind, drives the demand for the porn, and when there is demand, there is big business and money involved, and when there is money involved, there is an entire industry built to do whatever it takes get that money.

Porn websites are popping up by the hundreds each day with more visitors to these websites than any other place on the Internet. If we were able to see how much physical data and storage the Internet holds, the majority of it is dedicated to pornography. It is impossible to track down every single trace of the Internet, but it is estimated that of the material focused on porn  on the Internet, the figures run almost 40% (in 2010, but almost a decade later, this figure is likely to be nearly 50%). Of the dominant most frequented porn websites on the Internet, the ones that get the most traffic, are just around 5%.

Most people think the porn industry is a wonderful place where men and women can make money to fuck all day long. Many men and women say they would love to make porn for their dream jobs, but the demands and the lack of respect in porn make the reality of the job far from a dream. The porn industry for the actors and actresses is not the perfect workplace and is not as wonderful as it seems, with many risking their lives while having unprotected sex, and being exposed to diseases, including but not limited to Herpes, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, HPV, Hepatitis A, B, and C, Syphilis, and the incurable HIV and AIDS. At least 25 cases of HIV have been reported since 2004 in the porn industry. Drug and suicide-related deaths are more common among porn stars. The average life expectancy of a porn star is just 37 years old.

Men are expected to become erect on command, hold off on ejaculation for hours, perform in front of an audience, especially if a vibrating toy is used, and are paid very little money, about $200 per scene, while women can make up to $800 or more per scene. Gay porn brings in more money so many straight men turn toward acting in gay porn films in order to make a living. There are certainly some male porn stars who rose to the top and love their jobs, but for most male porn actors, they struggle to make it in the porn industry.

Women, on the other hand, are expected to perform all types of sexual acts they probably would have never considered before, including threesomes, gang bangs, anal, bukkake, and other acts that are taboo, fetish, or extremely demanding. The more types of acts they are willing to perform, the more in-demand they might be, and the more money they can make. With more money brings in more demand and more risks. For every woman who turns down doing a specific act asked of her, there is always another woman who is willing to do it. Not only do women have to deal with acting for those scenes, and acting as if they enjoy it, but they still have to perform, even if the men have poor hygiene. Women, just as well as men, can be cast out in an instant. There is no sympathy from the director or any higher-ups for actors and actresses, as they are just sex workers capable of bringing in a huge payload of money to meet demands.

With porn, the brain itself cannot determine whether the encounter is real or not, as it is visually stimulated by what it sees, causing sexual excitement and a rush of blood to places it needs to be. Porn holds for many people the ultimate fantasies or some mysterious power over us that allows us to pretend as if we are there, and it feeds our desires for pleasure in a matter of minutes. We can navigate to any porn site and have our pleasure in an instant.

The Routine Access of Porn

For most people who masturbate to porn, it becomes a learned behavior that is routine to everyday life. Before work, after work, before bed, in the morning before or after a shower, a few minutes home alone and before any event, or even a thought, or the direction of the wind could bring on the desire to watch and masturbate to porn.

It takes time to watch porn, find and fulfill a sexual fantasy, and masturbate until orgasm. The routine of porn might take a few minutes to hours, which added up over the course of a week is basically a part-time job watching and masturbating to porn. From finding the right websites, to opening up the videos in browsers tabs, finding favorite scenes, and ultimately deciding on a scene and video to masturbate to until completion of an orgasm.

Added up over a lifetime, of about 50 active masturbation years, and if we were to assume that a man began masturbating at the age of 12, with an average of 2 sessions per day, at 15 minutes each session, than it comes out to over 1000 hours of masturbating, or over 40 days of non-stop masturbation. Imagine what a man could do with over an extra month of his life that wasn’t dedicated to his masturbating sessions. For many men, it comes out to a lot more hours and a lot more days than what is calculated here.

Porn is easy to access, easy to get, free or paid, and just about every sexual fantasy or gratification can be filled by imagination. Porn websites are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to publicize. When it comes to porn, there is always someone, man or women, young and old, who is willing to do whatever it takes to make money. Sex is the one thing that can be given in unlimited quantities and a lot of money can be made in the sex profession. Wherever there is a fetish, there is a stream of videos helping to satisfy that fetish.

Porn Is Unnatural in Nature

If you look anywhere in nature, not a single animal is making porn. It is also rare for any species to stop what it is doing to watch other species or the same species having sex. This is not to say that during the act of sexual intercourse between animals, they are in their most vulnerable moment and could be eaten by other animals. Every animal, by instinct, is trying to reproduce, and there are just a few animals who are actually having sex for pleasure. Humans are the only ones who have a desire to watch others have sex and possibly imagine that they are involved. Humans are the only ones who are able to achieve and understand the pleasures that are associated with sex, save for just two or three other species in the animal kingdom.

Photographing and filming others have sex and watching it on screen is a 20th century invention, but watching it is something that humans have always had a fascination with throughout history. The Kama Sutra along with plenty of Asian, Middle-Eastern, and African sexual history in books and writings reveals just how sexual humans are and have been historically. Although it certainly wasn’t done in public for everyone to see, there was plenty of underground activity happening, in which men attended brothels and other places to watch men or women while masturbating, watching others, or having sex themselves. There is something about watching others having sex that turns us on, allows us to fantasize that we are that person, and with that fantasy, we can do just about anything we want with them, all without ever being intimate, romantic, or communicative.

How does a man typically get a woman? He goes someplace, she catches his eye, he walks across the room, begins to talk to her, and they either hit it off or they don’t. In other parts of the world, his parents and her parents may choose a life partner for them and they get to know each other, usually marrying after the first date. Throughout the world, there are various dating rituals, but the majority of them do involve physical contact or being in the presence of each other.

Nowadays, a man doesn’t even need to try and find a woman, because he can open up a porn website, find his favorite videos, masturbate to them, and then he is done. How is this natural? Isn’t it in man’s nature to want to be with a woman the same way that a woman might have a natural instinct to want to be with a man? Porn eliminates or lessens our worries about being with someone because masturbating to a girl we don’t know is easy, while talking to a girl we don’t know is hard. For some, it might even be harder to talk to the girls they do know.

When Porn Becomes A Problem

Porn becomes a big issue when it comes to relationships and life. A great majority of divorces are brought on because of a porn addiction. When you live for watching porn and masturbating more than not masturbating, you have a serious issue. You are certainly not a bad person because of your addiction. Porn is certainly a drug that feeds your brain all the pleasure it seeks, but you cannot die or overdose on too much porn. You might be unable to get an erection after a session or ejaculate after too many sessions, but everything eventually is restored, and erection and ejaculation are once again possible. If one is unable to get an erection during porn, it is simply that they are uninterested in that particular fantasy.

I recently came across a website in my research for this article, that told the reader to visualize a black leather couch across from a desk. If you begin to think about anything else that might be associated with that black leather couch and the desk, you might be addicted to porn more than you think. For those who are not familiar with the setting of the black leather couch and the desk, you are lucky to not know what it means. For the rest of us, who know the setting all too well, in which a man whose face is normally blocked out, and a young or slightly older female walks into the room, sits on that black leather couch, and a short interview pursues.

The man asks for the girl’s name and gains some insight about her, from what she does, or what she is studying, to asking her about her virginity, and her sexual experience, and even whether she has a boyfriend or not. She is then promised all sorts of things, from money, to more work, to becoming a famous porn actress if she performs well. In almost all cases, she removes her clothes, he removes his clothes, oral sex is performed and other sex positions are performed both on the couch and the desk. Sometimes the man will ejaculate into the woman and sometimes he pulls out and ejaculates on to her face.

Whether the porn is amateur or professional is unknown, but there are plenty of girls looking to get into the industry and are almost always willing to do anything to get into an unforgiving and ungenerous industry. It is just speculation, but a look on Craigslist might yield some of these job positions offering “professional adult acting that pays cash” and always tends to be looking for “teenage girls 18 and over.”

The whole point of thinking about the black leather couch and the desk is that a person who has never watched porn will have never come across those scenes and therefore, a black leather couch and a desk are just a black leather couch and a desk. For porn addicts who troll through porn websites, it is almost impossible not to come across a video portraying the black leather couch and the desk. Therefore, those objects are likely to be associated with porn.

With just about every porn fetish at your fingertips, from the subtle normal acts, to hands, feet, shoes, or food, there is always someone who has a fetish. What might cause a fetish? An obsession with achieving sexual gratification from something that may be normal or abnormal. As more porn is consumed, the individual soon becomes dissatisfied with the average porn scene and could easily turn to more exciting things in porn. Some straight men have become bored with regular straight porn and even turned to transsexual, transgender, and gay pornography to masturbate.

While it is up for debate on whether people are born with a certain fetish that turns them on or they learn it and desire it later on in life, porn fetishes can turn more dark, taboo, and illegal, in which individuals start seeking out more extreme fetishes, and while they may or may not ever act them out, these fetishes may include torture, complete domination, auto-erotic asphyxiation, bestiality, incest, and child pornography. This leads to a very dangerous type of porn addiction that likely needs medical observation and attention in order to educate and help the individual who has these types of fetishes, but for the most part, these types of fetishes, obsessions, and addictions are treated as crimes against society.

The question is: Is it normal to have these types of taboo and illegal fetishes? The answer depends on the society. Once upon a time, it was completely normal for a thirty year old man to marry a fifteen year old girl, but times have changed, and in some parts of the world, it is still completely legal, even marrying girls as young as seven to nine years old. If society deems it wrongful and illegal, than those who follow the laws must abide by the demands of the society who elect those officials who make the laws. Therefore, while these fetishes may seem harmless, they are actually harmful when they create an entire industry dedicated to making them a reality for people, as the industry may go as far as sex trafficking young children and poverty-stricken men and women, and filming in other countries to avoid any legalities. These porn addictions become extremely dangerous when those people who seek to watch these fetishes begin to act out their fantasies in real life.

Porn becomes a problem in a relationship when men start to feel their woman has to be as sexy as the women in the videos or perform all the sexual acts that porn actresses are performing on the porn actors. When men are unable to obtain an erection for more than a few minutes, or pre-mature ejaculation is common, the problem almost always derives from a pornography addiction. Too much porn may cause erectile dysfunction or other problems and while men may think there is a physical problem and seek out medical help from their doctors, though the problem may stem right from their addiction to pornography.

Men who are addicted to porn may no longer be turned on by the woman in their relationship, and her body and even the sex become passionless and lacking intimacy. Often times, he may think she is the problem, and women certainly may have a lot on their mind during sex, but before any man begins to blame a woman for lack of intimacy, he needs to really understand his own porn addiction and how much it is affecting him.

When men or women start to get turned on by things they would never do in real life, yet they keep fantasizing about it, and they do it because the routine of missionary sex or familiar sex positions is a turn off, this leads to a satisfaction that will never be met, a lingering sensation that can never be fulfilled, especially if a spouse or partner is unwilling to re-enact the fantasy. It is great if both partners are on equal kinky sex levels, but for the majority of people, the turn on by a sexual fantasy that they probably would never want to re-enact, but keep desiring it, only dulls the real sex life, and the satisfaction of “re-enacting” the sexual desire must be consumed through hardcore pornography in the mind, leading to pornography addiction and issues in oneself and the relationship.

When men begin to objectify women, including the woman he is in a relationship with, by not seeing her as a person, but actually seeing her as a means to make his penis erect and to ejaculate inside of her, instead of seeing her as a respectable human being and loving partner and wanting to experience a sexual connection with her, there is a serious problem concerning porn addiction. When men begin to objectify women and cannot form friendships or relationships because he has already sexually objectified her in his mind; even the long-posed question: Can men and women be friends without sex being involved? The answer to this is: Yes. Men and women can certainly be friends without having sex. This is not to say that you can be friends with every woman and not feel a sexual attraction, but the majority of women and men can be friends. Also, if you have ever tried to be friends with an ex, you might find that it is not always so easy, and you might find yourself having to cut ties with that person, because you were once romantically involved with each other. But to those who truly believe men and women cannot be friends without having sex, this certainly shows concerns for deeper underlying issue.

When a porn video is more exciting and than the very woman lying beside you; when you are no longer turned on by that woman or any woman in real life, for that matter; when real naked flesh sex is doing nothing for you; when porn gets your penis erect, while you struggle to have an erection when having sex with a woman; or when you constantly want the excitement of seeing new girls in every masturbation session, while the woman lying next to you does nothing for you, there is a big disconnect between your reality and your fantasy world of porn.

When a man sees a celebrity or a series of hot women and instantly feels the need to masturbate, he likely has some form of porn addiction. When he begins to think that the sexual acts he sees in pornography are things he should and needs to be doing in his relationship, the expectations of porn vs. reality are very different, and when the desires to match reality as a real life porno are not met, the relationship suffers, as he loses confidence in his ability to perform, and this will certainly hurt any relationship.

While many companies do block access to certain websites with specific keywords, especially porn websites, many people can still easily get around this and access porn via proxy server or anonymizer, surpassing any blocking software on the computer. Porn addiction is a serious problem when it leads to such impatience, that men and women may turn to watching porn at work, where it should never be, for a “quick fix” experience of stimulation or excitement, or even just to deal with their boredom.

In porn, both men and women rarely talk during sex, and whatever the say to each other is vulgar, and it seems to create a sense in our minds that it is okay to communicate less during sexual intimacy with our partner, when that is actually the time both partners should be communicating more intimately with each other and appreciating each other. This doesn’t mean that a couple should be having a serious conversation during sex, but uttering some words of affection and sexual desire can go a long way to improve a sex life. Unfortunately, porn has re-envisioned for us that the receiving partner is a sexual object that needs to be dominated, rather than connected and spoken with, and needs to be given orders, commands, and demands.

Porn desensitizes individuals to the point where sexual gratification is never satisfied, and porn addicts seek to have more and more of it. For example, a husband who finishes up a sex session with his wife, while she rolls over and falls asleep, possibly satisfied or unsatisfied, slips his way into the bathroom with his laptop, opens it up, and continues to watch porn in order to achieve even more sexual satisfaction, though it never seems to last long, but his wife could not satisfy him, just as he could probably not satisfy his wife, and the porn seems to only temporary relieve the situation, but really does not solve the problem of fulfilling that sexual gratification.

In more extreme cases, that same husband may need to watch pornography, while having sex with his wife, in order to work up stimulation and achieve an erection, while she just lies there, not even the object of his affection, but simply as a means to jerk himself off with her body. This will cause some serious issues in any relationship, and if any man is on this path, where pornography is necessary for him to even have an orgasm, than it is probably not his wife’s fault, but his own, for he has a major porn addiction and massive desensitization.

Both men and women come charged with a lot of sexual energy, sometimes sexually repressed energy, and it is normally seen in the beginning of relationships, where there seems to be an infinite amount of sexual energy that we put on to our partners, making the sexual experience incredibly passionate. Over time, this sexual energy continues decreasing, and one of the many reasons it may decrease as we progress into our relationship cycle is because when watching porn, we tend to put all of our energy, even if it seems like simple masturbation, into searching for porn fantasies, and masturbating to them, decreasing the sexual energy we have, so that when we do come around to having sex with our partner, that sexual energy has already been expended, so we put less effort into love making.

There is certainly something more satisfying about sex with a partner, especially in the beginning of a relationship, when two people are completely into each other and the sex is intensified and awe-inspiring. Whether porn was present throughout the beginning of the relationship or not, both partners have yet to be desensitized, making the feelings involved in sexual intimacy beyond anything that porn could ever do. When and why does this connection to our partner become lost? While stress, life, the same partner, and similar routine certainly play a huge factor, the ever-presence of pornography seems to desensitize the entire relationship. It may be that because of porn, one or both partners stop trying to continue making that sexual connection during intimacy.

Intimacy, love, and a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, man and man, or woman and woman have nothing to do with pornography, but when porn is introduced into the mix, the connection that the two are supposed to make and have during sex is lost. It ultimately leads to the downfall of any relationship, in which a couple may feel like they are not communicating enough, are lacking in sexual desire towards each other, and have no intimacy at all with each other. Many times, they blame everything on each other, causing serious issues within the relationship, even sometimes foregoing sex with each other entirely. The underlying problem is almost always, an addiction to pornography.

Many men turn to their doctors, looking for a prescription drug, or a natural drug, and many companies have cashed in on it: They have produced that magical blue pill, known as Viagra, that can make and keep a man hard for a while, and though it might seem enticing, it is probably not natural to have an erection for hours, if such a problem persists. Before men turn to their doctors for prescription drugs or seek out natural alternatives, the first place they want to look is just how addicted to porn they may be.

If you currently are or have masturbated to any of the images within this article, or if any of the images have turned you on to the point where you feel you need to navigate away from this article and masturbate, you have a porn addiction.

Admitting to Being a Porn Addict

The first step to fixing any problem is to recognize and understand that there is actually a problem and that something needs to be done about it. When a man or woman can finally admit to themselves that even just masturbating once or more a day to porn is the issue, they have begun the path to fixing it. Being a porn addict does not make you a bad person nor has it ever made you a bad person. There are plenty of people who watch porn and function normally everyday. It is what porn does to your brain and how it causes you to think about other people, in particular women, that could potentially harm your perspective of how you perceive sexuality and the world.

It is never easy and quite embarrassing for anyone to admit that they are fascinated with watching porn, watching two bodies going at it against one another, and performing a variety of different sexual acts and positions. While all the sex positions in pornography are completely normal acts of sexuality and can certainly be performed on the one you love, it is the disconnect of those sexual acts, the imagination of seeing those done and wanting our partner to do those things to us that makes us suffer the most.

When we have sex in any of those positions with our partner, it is probably not our partner we are imagining, but the man or woman we saw doing it that we are fantasizing about, and this certainly is an issue in any relationship, and a part of porn addiction. Imagine having to choose between porn and a girlfriend. Better yet, imagine being given the choice: Stop watching porn or have your girlfriend gang-banged by a half a dozen men? Most reasonable men would certainly start enjoying sex with their girlfriend and give up the porn. Men who choose the latter certainly do have some sick twisted thoughts, but we are here to have a discussion with the more sane individuals who are trying to break their porn obsessions and addictions.

Being a porn addict makes you want to avoid making new friends, sneaking away or getting out of events just so you can get home to watch and masturbate to porn. It hinders communication and social skills because the porn addict is so focused on his next fix, or least, the brain has been wired to unconsciously crave it, making focusing on anything else nearly impossible. The porn addict has no desire to socialize or get to know anyone else. Thus, many times, the porn addict will remain single throughout life and without any children.

The imagination of the individual who is a porn addict becomes weak and suffers greatly because constant visual stimulation for sexual gratification is needed. This makes it harder for the porn addict to have sex in a relationship, because they are used to watching it as a third-person, whereas having sex in a relationship, you are having sex in the first-person. There is plenty of “pov” pornography that certainly puts you in the first-person, but it is not real. The narrative is almost always created for you in a pornographic film, so no imagination is ever necessary, making everything instant and seemingly natural. Similar to reading a book vs. watching a movie, where the mind of the reader must imagine the surroundings, the characters, and everything that is happening, while a movie just provides the immediate satisfaction of all the visuals necessary to form ideas and opinions. In the bedroom, without the context of pornography, the imagination of the porn addict is completely flawed because it is unable to focus complete attention on the partner.

Despite it not being real, there are many people who do not care, even turning to new virtual reality technology and toys being released, that allow you to feel as if you are really having sexual intercourse. Imagine a world where men and women turned to virtual reality pornography, toys, dolls, and no longer felt the need for companionship, love, or sex. Humans evolved to be social creatures and desire each other. With new technology constantly being created, and it certainly is not going to stop, since there is a demand, where might the future generations of humans be headed in regard to pornography and relationships? Are young men and women likely to skip the entire meet-and-greet, getting-to-know, and dating process in favor of remaining at home to have sex with the imagination?

Porn Is Wrong

There is a saying that comes with all porn, no matter what porn you see.

That saying is: That is someone’s daughter.

Yes, you are masturbating to someone’s daughter.

The men in the video? That’s also someone’s son.

Imagine if the father of the porn actress came across his daughter on a porno film, would he masturbate to her or feel disgusted? Most likely, the latter. I am not sure of any man who would proudly proclaim that his daughter is a porn star. I’ve never personally seen any father ever in my lifetime who would willingly brag that his daughter is starring in porn films. Although I am sure there is probably a porn film that portrays that fantasy, in which a man portrays a father giving away his daughter’s virginity, and actually watching.

How would you feel about your daughter doing porn and having millions of men masturbate to her because she is a part of their sexual fantasies? No intelligent sane father in his right mind would sell his daughter into sexual slavery. So why does he agree that it is okay for everyone else who is not his daughter to perform these sexual acts on film, which he does by masturbating to all these other girls without a second thought? He is fulfilling his own desires and sexual fantasies by watching the video or looking at photos. But he would never, not in a million years, choose to watch his daughter having sex on camera.

At one time, I would have personally argued with any anti-porn activists why porn was completely normal, acceptable, and necessary. There are some countries that have banned porn completely and blocked it on the Internet so it is unavailable. People who advocate for porn and live in countries where porn is widely available believe it is wrong to censor the Internet, but maybe these countries that do ban it have a good reason for doing so.

Now, I stand with those anti-porn advocates for understanding and seeing exactly what so many are blind to see, because they have been brainwashed from an early age. Porn only seems normal to many of us because we are exposed to it so young. Most of us have no idea about the abuses, the exploitation, the addictions, the companies and men that take advantage of so many women and put them on camera without their permission, or promise them the world if they appear on camera, only to deliver to them a few hundred dollars and a lifetime on a variety of different pornographic websites.

Porn creates a false reality. It is rare that any librarian or teacher or any other number of professional women are going to risk getting fired, while on the job, to jump your bones. Does it happen sometimes? Absolutely. Most of those women find themselves in jail, labeled a sexual offender, and without a job. Was it worth the fulfillment of some 16 or 17 year old boy’s fantasy? I would hope not. In most cases, however, no woman just spreads her legs and has sex with any and every man she meets.

If men did the kinds of things you see in pornographic videos, such as a male boss asking a potential hire or an employee for “favors”, they would be hit with lawsuits and sexual harassment cases. In the porn fantasy, the women seem to do it for free, but whether money is involved or not, the activity of a boss doing such a thing, who is not married or in a relationship, is completely illegal.

When men believe that sexual harassment or sexual assault or even rape is acceptable, no matter what religion or country they are from, all of these actions are illegal and say something about how disconnected man is from himself and women. When women are stoned to death, thrown in jail, or accused of being the assailant who attracted a group of men to gang rape them, there is something really wrong in the world. When younger generations believe the oral sex is not sex, there is an issue that may just be stemming from pornography. When men and women start to use the very scenes and fantasies they saw in porn films on each other, instead of using their own creative imaginations, it certainly desensitizes the sexual relationship.

Porn helps ease a lot of our loneliness and suffering, but on the other hand, it teaches us an easy out to not deal with our feelings and emotions, and even disconnect for long periods of time, or even permanently from reality. With porn, we no longer have to go out and socialize or expose our vulnerabilities. We tend to numb ourselves from all the pain temporarily. We stay in our heads, not talking to anyone, and still achieve the same goals of orgasm and ecstasy through porn and masturbation. With porn, we already have received and continue to receive our reward, so seeking out a sexual partner might not even seem worth it.

Giving Up Porn

When do you know that you have had enough porn? When does it get to the point where you know that you have had enough? Porn is like anything else, a need, a want, a hunger that needs to be satiated every few hours, or at least once or twice a day. Many people go their entire lives without ever watching porn, while others cannot go an entire day without porn.

The excitement of new porn websites, new videos, and new fantasies is often what porn addicts seek, but after having viewed pornography, after masturbating to it, and achieving orgasm, the feeling lasts for a very short time, and afterwards, there is still a sense of not feeling fully fulfilled, and thus, the addiction to seek out more porn it begins, a vicious cycle of porn, masturbation, and orgasm, to achieve temporary bliss.

Watching porn is a choice and no one forces anyone to do it and no one has ever died from not watching porn. For some, giving up porn may be as easy as deleting your entire GB or TB collection from your hard drive, blocking yourself from all known websites, or even burning your porn magazine collection, and never looking back. For others, porn may not be so easy to give up. After the recognition of a porn addiction, the following step is to actually give it up.

Make the decision to give it up and do it. Delete porn, delete reminders of porn. Most importantly, hold yourself accountable and keep yourself pre-occupied and occupied with everything. Get a trusted and understanding friend who will hold you accountable. Figure out a reward system for yourself for each day that you go without watching porn or masturbating. You need to keep the mindset that you are always busy, with things to do. The great thing about giving up porn is how much more productive you can be, but the thoughts about pornography do not go away as easily as one would hope. The first few days are fairly easy because its relatively new to be without porn and not look forward to even watching it.

After the first week, it can get harder, and boredom and other emotions might try to take over and cause a return to porn. Times of being alone or watching a sexual scene in a movie or coming across a revealing ad or photo might bring up thoughts of porn, but by ignoring it, and focusing on other things helps to overcome the porn addiction. By keeping productive with other things, thinking about other things when porn comes to mind, porn addiction can be defeated. If you ever stopped doing something that was an addiction, you miss the hell out of it, you start to go into withdrawal and you will even lie to yourself to try and do it again.

There is no doubt that you will miss pornography. You will miss it greatly. The longer you were exposed to porn, the more you will miss it. Giving up pornography is giving up your favorite addiction, like cigarettes, alcohol, or junk food. If you started young, porn was your best friend, always there for comfort and support, to ease your pain and get your mind off your stress. Pornography was there when you were single and when you were in a relationship.

You will definitely think about it and you might even find yourself looking at softcore pornography in the form of photos, but if you are committed to giving up porn, you will find yourself weaning on amateur pornography and model photographs of women or men. Once you get past these initial stages of withdrawal, you will no longer be interested in looking at hardcore pornography, softcore pornography, and eventually, you will not even have the desire to look at amateur model photographs of women or men anymore.

The most extreme urges, we’ll call them red zones, which are considered the time periods that you are most vulnerable to wanting to watch pornography. Red zones also include the times where you get random boners for no reason, you feel horny, or you just have the sudden feeling to watch porn and masturbate. These red zones will come at times when you are alone and have access to your computer. You have trained your mind to accept these red zones and give into them. You must re-train your mind to eliminate red zones. Keep yourself busy by doing other things.

Do something productive on the computer. Take up the challenge to learn something new on the computer such as any program in Adobe Creative Suite or create a website about your struggles with porn addiction. You can even blog anonymously if you prefer. Take up baking or cooking. Start taking pottery or art classes. Start writing thoughts and philosophies. Go looking for UFOs. If you have been wanting to lose weight for a long time, than start doing it. Go exercise, go to the gym, swim, and get those pounds off! No amount of masturbation is going to help you lose that 10 or 20 extra pounds you need to lose. Use the energy you use for porn and masturbation for everything else! Do anything that is not a reminder of porn that will cause you to go into a red zone. Lesser urges can easily be fought by getting pre-occupied with something, but when it comes to a red zone trigger, you must do something that you feel is even more important. You need to keep yourself busy, even in down times, and especially when you are alone and most vulnerable.

You need to not touch yourself in any way. When alone, men or women tend to stick their hands down there, for comfort, to touch or rub or play with, whatever the case may be, avoid touching yourself at all costs. It may be hard at first, but as the days pass, you will retrain your brain not to put your hands down there. When sleeping at night, grab an extra pillow and lay it on you, wrap yourself in a tight blanket, or whatever it takes to prevent you from sticking your hands down there. There is a lot of subconscious triggers that cause people to touch themselves, get turned on by it, and eventually it all leads to masturbation.

If you are a person who cannot quit cold turkey and never look back, than start by determining how much you originally looked at porn and masturbated to it, and pick a number you feel is best for the week. Make sure it is less than your original number. If you looked at porn twice a day, commit to only looking at it once a day. As the weeks progress, start looking at it only a few times a week, than once or twice per week, and then stop completely. This is a method that may not work for everyone, and you may just need to commit to stopping completely right from the start.

You must fight all the withdrawal symptoms. Porn was and is a drug and you may not experience the illness associated with being dependent on a physical drug, but mentally, you will definitely feel it, from having shakes and anxiety, to dirty thoughts, more usage of verbal sexual innuendo, and even start to see your girlfriend, wife, or other women as being very sexy and sexual.

There is nothing wrong with seeing your girlfriend, wife, or other women as being sexy, but remember that you do not have any right to sexually harass any of these women, and you should stave off any attempts to masturbate to them. You may have symptoms of irritability, anxiety, lethargy, and lack of focus and concentration. After a few days, the desires and urges become less and less, until they all fade away, and you end up being just fine.

You may not experience any symptoms at all. If you do experience withdrawal symptoms, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you and everything you are going through is completely normal. You will do yourself a favor and find it much easier to get through all of your withdrawal symptoms if you continue to educate yourself on porn addiction, withdrawal symptoms, and keeping your mind focused on other things rather than anything sexual or of a sexual nature.

Giving up porn is not life threatening and can be life changing in a very positive way.

In order to ensure you are going to give up porn, you must hold yourself accountable. There are several Internet website blocking tools you can use to remind yourself that you have given up porn. If you find yourself typing your favorite porn website into the browser when you first load up the computer or have been home alone and entering into your red zone, the blocker plugin is your first line of defense against your habitual behavior. These tools may be easy to use and is as simple as entering in the website address. More advanced tools may offer the option to block the website at certain times of the day, limit your number of visits to the website, or even make it hard to disable to the tool or get around the website by requiring you to enter in a password.

If you go the password route, you might want to confide in a trusted friend to set a password for you and not tell you until you reach your goal, or forever, if you wish. All browsers, from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera will come with extensions that have the tools necessary for you to block yourself from Internet porn. While I will not list any of these tools here, a quick search will lead you to at least a dozen plugins that come with a variety of different options, and you can give each one a test drive and see which one you like most. If you want additional protection, there is plenty of software available on all Windows versions, Mac OS, and Linux that will block websites, each with their own unique set of attributes. Many of this software is free to download and use.

You must be willing to hold yourself accountable, as if you do not have a password option set by a friend, you could easily disable the plugin and look at porn. The whole idea behind the block feature is to make you aware of what you are doing. Many people log on to their computers, mindlessly load up their favorite porn website, and search for porn out of habit and routine behavior. By making yourself aware, and stopping yourself, you will only help your process along in giving up porn addiction.

The benefits you might notice a few days to a few weeks after giving up porn:

• More energy
• More confidence
• Easier to get out of bed in the morning
• More hard drive space
• Less risk of malware and adware on your computer
• Increased self-control
• Clear mind
• Sex with the spouse becomes better
• More sexual interest in spouse
• More displays affection towards spouse
• More patience with spouse during sexual intercourse
• Erections become easier
• Erectile dysfunction may be eliminated or reduced
• Ejaculation is much easier to maintain
• More sensitivity in the penis
• Spouse becomes more attractive
• More sexual energy for and towards spouse
• Spouse no longer seen as an object to sexual desire
• Intimacy becomes stronger with spouse
• Sexual thoughts and reminders of porn might come up, but easy to ignore
• More productivity
• More time to focus on other more important things
• More interest in doing other things
• Easier to talk to females
• Easier to acquire more female friends
• Easier to not think about porn
• Easier to admit to being an ex-porn addict
• No feelings of guilt
• Feelings of freedom and confidence
• You can actually talk to women without feeling sexual excitement
• You can actually watch a movie with beautiful women without becoming sexually excited
• You realize that your penis does not define who you are
• You realize that women love you more for your personality and humor, and that makes them love your penis too, no matter what size it is

There are plenty more things that the individual may notice when giving up porn. Porn pre-occupies the mind so much, that not only is time spent watching porn and masturbating to porn, but thinking about porn is also time dedicated to porn, which can take up several hours in the day. The longer time spent without thinking about or watching porn, the easier it becomes to not think about it.

When Porn Is The Alternative

Porn is not necessarily always a bad thing. If porn is the alternative to rape, murder, and prostitution, than porn is a lot safer and serves a great purpose for deferring more dangerous activity. However, it is encouraged that people who are looking to give up porn forego the porn completely and learn to masturbate without it. Cut the porn out, not the masturbation. If porn can prevent men from becoming violent or having a lot of rage and taking it out on women, than porn might be the better alternative. If porn can prevent STDs because masturbation is the safest form of sex, than porn is definitely a better alternative to sex. When the alternative to porn is worse than pornography, it certainly can help a lot of people in need of releasing their sexual energy through masturbation and pornography.

Many porn actresses admit that it turns them on to know that thousands of men are jerking off to them. There are plenty of porn actresses who do not mind being in the business and may even see it from the perspective that they are helping many men out there, whether to get those men aroused for their wives, or to help them channel their sexual energy through masturbation. These women do feel that they are doing their job of helping relationships, rather than destroying them. Though some may argue that porn is definitely cheating because your mind is on another woman.

Many people would argue it is not cheating, as having an affair or cheating requires the relationship to be physical, while others would argue that it is cheating because the relationship is mental, and he or she may be cheating because their mind is not focused on their spouse, but on the porn actress. Another argument might be that it is not actually cheating, because the women in the video is only used for sexual arousal, while it is the sexual position or act that is the actual turn on. The arguments could go back and forth between pro- and anti- pornography advocates.

When the porn industry does keep things in check, ensuring their porn stars are tested for diseases properly, then there is no danger. You can have sex with your spouse your entire life. If they do not have sex with anyone else who may have a potential sexually transmitted infection or disease, than the chances of both spouses getting a disease is 0%. The same thing applies to the porn industry. If porn stars are having sex with each other and only their own spouses and the circle remains small and honest, than there is not much potential for disease to reach anyone. It is when porn stars sleep outside their circle with others who may have contracted the disease, which makes the industry dangerous.

In this particular section, I am not advocating or defending that if men do not get porn, they can become rapists, violent, murderers, etc. Many men go without porn everyday and completely function normally in society, including myself. What I am saying is that porn can definitely be used as a safer outlet against the more dangerous alternatives. Men who may not access porn, however, must learn to have self-control. While it has happened, most men do not strip naked in public and start jerking off. Most men have the self-control and wisdom to know the act of giving into that particular urge in public is unacceptable, illegal, and could be a fate worse than death. What I am saying is that when the porn industry does its job to keep its workers safe and provide for its consumers, and the consumer is watching that porn, they are not harming anyone, and it might be better to entertain that particular person with their fetishes and turn-ons.

Another reason that porn is the alternative is that if you have a spouse who loves porn as much as you do and wants to re-enact scenes out with you, it could definitely be a very fun and exciting sex life, as you get to experience the remaking of porn in your own personal way with your sexual partner. If your partner does not have a problem with it, than it may not be the wrong thing for you. Maybe you have a spouse that is no longer interested in sex and prefers that you watch porn, but cannot fathom the idea of you sleeping with another woman.

For those who are looking to give up porn or become less addicted to it, porn is obviously not the alternative.

Free of Porn

Ultimately, giving up porn is one of the best decisions that anyone can make. It might not seem like it at first, but being able to see clearly; to focus on everything else that is not porn; being able to see and associate with women without objectifying them; and being able to finally have real sexual intimacy with a woman without any thoughts or ideas of porn can make life more satisfying. By not masturbating and going without porn, time is freed up; testosterone levels increase; and sex is no longer a fantasy or the object of affection, but rather, sex becomes a real life adventure to be explored and enjoyed with a partner.

The point of sex is not just to get to the penetration, but to feel each other, to be within each other, to enjoy each other, connect with each other and communicate, and to bond with each other. Being free of porn allows for to become connected again rather than disconnected, to experience sexual pleasure and intimacy for all that it is and all that we can experience. You can now take the time to explore her body, see what she likes and doesn’t like, hug, and cuddle with her before, during, and after sex.

By foregoing porn, you are truly supporting and advocating for the equal rights of both men and women. For women to stop being seen as objects of affections, “sluts”, “whores”, “hoes”, “bitches”, or whatever names that have been associated with women due to porn. Women are none of that, and the influence of porn clearly shows how much women have had to fight to be respected in order to not be seen as such by men, especially in the workplace. Many women face sexual harassment and sexual assault everyday, all day, for many years of their lives, all because porn fuels the thoughts and desires of men to belittle and think of women that way. Porn is not reality, and women do not deserve what porn has done to them.

By foregoing porn, you are stating that you are better than most men for not resorting to an animal and beast-like instinctual behavior of wanting to have sex all the time. Yes, we do think about sex quite a bit, and it probably will not go away, but keeping it under control makes us men. It is important for men to get it out of their heads that women are sexual objects who can be taken advantage of, dominated, and used any time that men are horny and need sexual gratification.

It is extremely important and necessary for all women to feel comfortable in society, in this world, and in their relationships and friendships, without fear of rape, without fear of men thinking dirty sexual thoughts when she wears a dress or a skirt, without fear that she is going to be sexually harassed or assaulted, especially by a trusted friend or loved one, and most definitely: for her to be in a relationship with a man who respects her and does not portray pornographic images and fantasies on to her, because she is not the porn star you saw in the video, and it would be wise of you to hope that she would never ever resort to doing any porn films.

Being free of porn allows your masculinity and testosterone to shine, your dominant male instincts to come out, your senses are heightened, especially if you are a single man looking for love, or if you are a man who is taken, your senses are heightened for your woman to want to take her in your arms and make passionate, yet wild love to her. Your confidence and testosterone levels rise because you actually give a damn about getting laid with a real girl and no longer relying on your fantasies of porn and your hands for easy pleasure and escape. Not only will you look and smell more manly, if you believe that human males produce a slight scent, or pheromone, that the woman or women who are into you cannot resist, that scent will attract potential mates.

You will have more self-control of your inner sexual desires and just because you have a sexual fantasy that pops into your mind, you can actually control yourself and keep yourself from having to run to your computer and load up a porn website. With self-control, men begin to learn that sex was never about them. Of course, it feels great and they are there to participate, but sex becomes so much better when women are completely involved in it.  One of the main complaints that most women have when it comes to their man: he is not patient during sex. He is after getting off and going to sleep. He does not take enough time to really experience her body, kiss her, caress her, make her feel special, or even try to make her orgasm or experience an orgasm with her.

The mindset of porn makes men impatient, as many of the girls in porn videos serve the purpose of simply getting men off. They are acting, and while there are porn actors and actresses who do enjoy their jobs, they are under a lot of pressure, to get the magic shot. They certainly do make the best of it and enjoy sex, but for the most part, the orgasms are likely fake, they are in front of an audience of at least a dozen people, and they are posing in awkward positions that reveal their bodies to enhance the sexuality of the porn scene.

There is certainly more erotic porn for women, softcore porn, and erotic literature that caters to the feelings and emotions of women and some men. Most men can get hard and cum within two minutes and then its over. Women, on the other hand, though some women can certainly be turned on in just minutes and even cum in minutes, do sometimes take longer to warm up, to be romanticized and put in the mood, to get horny, and want you inside of them or to return the favor and do things back to you. It is far more enjoyable than porn to work your woman up to the point where she cannot take it anymore, and wants you to do things to her that are beyond anything that porn will ever have you feeling.

Being free of porn makes you more desirable and you also desire more because you are lonely and you want make love to someone and enjoy their making love to you. You will obviously have more time to go out now and meet women since you have more free time without pornography. While not every girl you meet is going to want you, with enough patience and putting yourself out there (and developing a sense of humor), you will find the right woman who is actually into you and wants to make love to you as much as you want to make love to her. However, it is extremely tempting, especially after receiving rejection, to get the urge and want to head home, say fuck it, open up your computer screen, find your favorite website, and masturbate to your pornography choice.

Being a single man trying to meet women makes it even harder. Going to meet women can be torturous as you might have the urge to masturbate from meeting and seeing multiple attractive women during the week. If you can hold off the urge to masturbate and use it for something positive, and continue to put yourself out there, you will meet the woman who is into you. The ones who reject you aren’t into you and are doing you a favor. Accept and respect that and continue your search in finding the wonderful woman who is right for you. If you really cannot fight the urge to masturbate, than use your imagination and not porn.

Being free of porn is truly a blessing and something to work towards. To have a free mind that does not think of porn opens up so much opportunity and thoughts that we were so blind to before. More and more men are taking a stand and refusing to remain brainwashed. The movement towards living a porn-free life without masturbation is becoming a rebellion against pornography and what most men have been led to believe is a completely normal life. Many men are seeking help, know its a problem, and are wanting to do something about it. The biggest help comes from support groups of men or women who can talk about it with each other, because they are going through the same thing.

Reddit began a section called NoFap: Get a new grip on life. These are not men who have turned gay or become abstinent. These are men who have girlfriends and wives who they continue to have sex with but where intimacy is involved, instead of false imagination and unrealistic fantasies. The NoFap movement is for men and women of all ages who are looking to give up their porn addiction and are looking for additional help and support by others who are going through the same thing.  The official introduction for the NoFap community is:

NoFap® is a web community that hosts challenges in which users (“Fapstronauts”) abstain from pornography and masturbation for a period of time (“fapstinence” or “rebooting”). Whether your goal is casual participation in a monthly challenge as a test of self-control, or whether excessive masturbation or pornography has become a problem in your life and you want to quit for a longer period of time, you will find a supportive community and plenty of resources here.

The NoFap movement also contains single men who are sexually active and single men who are not sexually active. There is even a NoFap support website for men (NoFap is here for all victims of pornography. Whether you have a porn addiction yourself or just need support as a partner, parent, or loved one of somebody struggling with pornography, our community is here to support you.). With the NoFap movement, you are not alone, and there are plenty of men who are right there with you, struggling to overcome their addiction. There is a lot of encouragement and support from other men.

For some people who choose to join the NoFap movement, they may have the goal of giving up masturbation and pornography for up to a week, while some others want to give it up for good. Some believe that they should still be able to still masturbate, but give up pornography. Others believe that having sex, and even masturbating with your partner, is perfectly acceptable in the NoFap movement. NoFap is really all about becoming aware of what has become so natural and so routine to many of us.

It is the individual who joins the NoFap movement to define what it means for them. Most of the extreme NoFap members would certainly say that “NoFap” means no masturbation and no pornography, while even more extreme would say that complete abstinence is necessary, while more liberal NoFap members would say that you must give up the very things causing your problems, and more often than not, the problems stem from masturbation and pornography, not sex with your partner.

The whole point of NoFap is to become aware of the influence that porn and masturbation has on us, and to be free of that influence, for it opens up a whole new world; a world where sex can be amazing, because part of it comes from our own imaginations, not the image that some billion dollar corporations want to place in our heads.  It also helps to include your wife or girlfriend in on your decision to NoFap, as the woman who loves you will support you in your decision.

Giving up porn is known as “rebooting” or rewiring your brain to remember what it was like to be without pornography, visual stimulation, and to start to use your imagination and enjoy sex with your partner again. Rebooting is said to take anywhere from 30 to 90 days, and may even require abstaining completely from any kind of sexual activity during that period of time. NoFap keeps “reboot reports” in which individuals write about what happens after they have completely rebooted themselves, making it beyond a month or a three-month period. The advice from this article asks you to watch the entire trilogy of Matrix movies, and to think of it as your own personal struggle within the”porn matrix”.

The reality is that porn is never going away because it is a $100+ billion dollar worldwide industry and continues to make more money each year. There are many of us who simply choose to take this step towards giving up porn, no longer supporting it by watching it, and being free for the first time in most of our lives, as porn has influenced before we even really knew about sexuality. To be without porn is to truly be free, a freedom that the majority of us have never known, and that the majority will never know.

Returning Back to Porn vs. Physical Sexual Intimacy

Everyone has their relapses and you may quit porn cold turkey for a day, a week, a month, or even a year or more. You may find yourself wanting to return to it during your dry spells of not having a girlfriend or even when your girlfriend or your wife never seems to be in the mood. If you have a relapse, don’t beat yourself up about it, but do know that you will need to eventually give it up and train your mind to never go back to it.

By giving up porn, you may have been experiencing a heightened sex drive, sexual intimacy, and amazing orgasms with your partner, even being able to give your female partner and stimulating orgasm out of this world, and then you might get cocky and arrogant enough to believe that you could still do those things with your former porn use. Unfortunately, you will find that within a week, you will be right back to where you were before, at ground zero with porn. Your brain neurons will be affected and you will find yourself returning to the point you were when you decided to give up porn in the first place. You will soon find porn more stimulating and you may be unable to retain an erection with your partner again. You already know this leads to problems with your sex life, or else you wouldn’t be reading this article.

You have to accept the inevitable and truly know the consequences of what porn has done and is doing to your brain. Countless studies are proving more and more that porn is not good for you and is as addicting as some of the hardest drugs out there. When it comes to your sexual performance, your partner may love you and be understanding, but choosing porn over your partner will have serious consequences. Why turn to porn when you can have the real thing? A gorgeous woman or man who wants to actually be intimate with you? Isn’t this what you have been waiting for your entire life? Why throw that opportunity away because of a porn addiction? Eliminating porn from your life will be the best thing that ever happened for you and to you, and for you and your partner. It will especially be wonderful for your sex life.

Don’t let it get to the point where your partner gives you the choice: porn or them. You will not like when it gets to that point but it may very well be necessary for you to really understand how serious your porn addiction is, especially if your partner has had to come to you with that ultimatum. There are plenty of advantages to being in a relationship and it definitely comes with its craziness and downsides, but that is the whole point of being in a relationship. You may feel that porn does not expect you to take out the trash, pay attention to it, or put demands on its time, but porn also won’t love you the same way that your partner loves you and while there are plenty of sex toys that feel as good as the real thing, there is nothing that can take the physical place or the feelings that a real woman or a real man can give you.

If you are considering returning back to porn, and your partner is against your return, but is not quite meeting your sexual needs, than communicate with them about how you feel about your lack of intimacy with them. See what you can do to improve your sexual relationship. If your needs are reasonable, your partner may be understanding. If they deny you completely, you may want to reconsider your relationship and why you and your partner remain together. Sexual intimacy should not define the entire relationship, but it certainly is a part of the equation for making a relationship work. After communication, if you and your partner are still experiencing issues, you both may want to reach out to a sex therapist who might be able to provide much more insight into what is causing the need to turn to pornography and why there is a lack of intimacy within the relationship.

Give up porn today. Give up porn before it is too late. Porn will not be as comforting when you realize that your partner left you because of your porn addiction. The choice is yours. There is plenty of information in this article and there is plenty of help and online support groups, with helpful resources, many of which can be found at the very top of this article. The help will not come from any government, as porn is not yet recognized as a real addiction that affects lives. Fortunately, just as pathological gambling became a recognized psychological problem, porn addiction may soon find itself in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5). The help and support will, however, for now, come from the very same people who realized their own porn addiction problem, and did something about it. We are here to support you along with many groups out there trying to help those who are suffering from porn addiction and save their relationships in the process.

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