Nofap: Guilt, struggle and way forward
Tags: Addiction, Positive Thinking, Masturbation, Nofap, Men

I am writing this at 3 am. I just gave in and masturbated.

The past one week has been an immensely difficult one for me. A couple of months ago I masturbated to a stranger while speaking to them on the phone. I felt disgusted and the post-masturbation guilt was so strong that I decided to try the YouTube phenomenon called NoFap (again!).

I went without masturbating for a month and it was going fine but I gave in after a hard day’s work, last week. The days in northern Europe are shortest during this time of the year, combined with pandemic frustration, sometimes it can become unbearable. The one month that I did not ejaculate, the daytime at work wasn’t that hard but the the evenings were generally difficult. I pushed myself to working out and yoga. Made plans with a girl, made up back plans, took initiative to socialize among other things to keep my mind off masturbation.

It was an uncomfortable month but I had yet again achieved nofap for a month and if it wasn’t for that one day, I would have been the happiest guy on Earth. Anyways, I ejaculated and in the most disgusting way possible. I masturbated to a sexchat with an anonymous user on a chatroom. I felt disgustingly guilty after.

Simultaneously, for the past couple of weeks I have been trying my luck on dating apps and have been pushing myself to be active on them. Constantly taking pictures on snapchat and editing them to put up on the dating apps. Only to find no matches and the one match I find doesn’t respond to my messages. It’s an immensely painful process. But more so because being on dating apps makes me extremely lustful and my libido soars, forcing me to touch myself and go down the ugly spiral again. Guilt and more guilt.

For the past one week, I have been browsing through girls on the dating apps. It makes me extremely unhappy because one literally sees what they can have but can’t. Every day of the last week, i spent all my time after work on chatrooms, trying to talk to anonymous women to engage with me. I did this everyday but did not ejaculate. The guilt is one thing but the physical pain after touching yourself, being on the urge and not ejaculating is something else. I felt so much pain, it was unbearable at times. For two days in a row, I showed up late at work because I was sitting in my dark room till 3 am trying to lure someone into talking dirty with me. Seducing myself with a few minutes of pornography and going back to chat with anonymous horny people on the internet.

I finally gave in today and ejaculated. As I washed the semen off from my thighs, I felt the guilt. In fact I felt it while ejaculating. I looked at myself in the mirror. It’s a really dark feeling. To seem so helpless in your own eyes. But it’s also not the first time I’ve seen myself like this.

I’ve struggled with addiction before and I’ve left those days behind. The process is hard but there’s a process nonetheless. This post is not all about the guilt, the hardships, the shame and all that negative stuff. But with every disappointment there’s also an opportunity to fix things.

I am asking myself the question, why did I even want to not masturbate anymore? For me, the answer is that I just did not want to engage in pornography. I just did not want to digitally satiate my sexual self. I want the real thing in life. I want to be intimate with a human again. I want to kiss and I want to be kissed. I want to love and I want to be loved. For real. The idea was to channel my sexual needs in the right way, to find someone who desire me as I desire them. I was trying to make that happen with Nofap.

But it seems to have just made it harder. Going forward, I am not going to force myself to not masturbate. It’s only natural that my body and mind want that release. I have to be conscious and not watch porn to get that release. I must orient that sexual urge to find a partner who wants to share their sexual urge with me. And I must do it the right way. I must look in the right places.

The urge to find an immediate release is always there. One must also define how immediate is the release. With the kind of things that are around to be consumed, the urge can be satiated as immediately as one desires. On the contrary, the release that one gets in the long term, by avoiding the urge for immediate release and channeling that towards a long term satiation is so much more rewarding. Imagine finding a partner that wants to share their urge with you day after day and you with them. That’s something that I haven’t worked towards in a long time. Just simply finding someone who fits. Making myself better and more attractive for someone.

Nofap may work for some people as it is claimed on YouTube but it is not for everyone and it doesn’t have to be. It’s only one approach towards semen retention and avoiding the urge. But there can be other methods to achieve the same. Nofap is like quitting smoking cold turkey. But that doesn’t work for everyone. It didn’t work for me and I quit smoking nonetheless.

My therapist suggested to not try cold turkey to quit smoking but to reduce the number of cigarettes I smoked every week until I reached zilch and then sustain it. Tapering down your addiction to zero instead of quitting cold turkey only to relapse again and having to start from the beginning. Going through the guilt every time. The process is always so much more important than the outcome.

I went a whole week without masturbation last week. I have scheduled another masturbation two weeks from now. For the next two weeks, I don’t masturbate, I don’t watch porn and I don’t engage in anything that may simulate me to do so. I am free to masturbate after these two weeks and then I go for three weeks without masturbation. I am positive that this is the better process and that I am on the right track.

More importantly, I focus on finding a long lasting relationship instead of one that immediately satiates.