No Fap

Disclaimer: reader discretion advised. Really.

Disclaimer Two: in this post I’m going to talk about my experience with not masturbating but not the No Fap movement. I’ve never been to their website or looked at their forums. All broscience contained within comes from me.

Disclaimer Three: there will be lots of puns.

Disclaimer Four: I was still having consistent sex throughout this period. Some guys will say “that doesn’t count then” but I assure you I felt the effects.

*****

So last year I had a problem with porn and masturbation. It wasn’t a very severe problem but it was hindering me nonetheless.

The problem comes down to porn “inflation.” It starts off with some a copy of the Sun left in the park and naturally, as teenage boys, you turn to page three. Then you go to their website. Soon after you’re using porn tubes and become quite the expert on the best websites. The porn gets weirder and weider and more and more extreme as you chase that elusive dopamine hit. In the end it’s not the porn itself that gets you off but being shocked.

I noticed that the quality of my erections had been lessened over time (I really did advise discretion, do you remember that?). On rare occasions I’d have trouble getting one but always managed to pull through. What bothered me the most was that they felt less strong. I wanted to do something about it. I also had a problem with being attracted to regular girls, more on that later.

So I decided to set myself a challenge: to not masturbate for 100 days. The first week was quite hard because my body was used to the release at certain times of the day. That’s when the temptation to load up some porn was the strongest. Then it quietened down. Oddly it reared its head around day 90 but it quickly went away and I strolled into day 100.

But why stop at day 100? Why not just carry on? That’s what I did. I got all the way to day 140 and I just got so horny one day that I decided to bust a nut. Well there goes my streak, I thought, and so I loaded the porn back up and busted a few more that day. I tried to get as many in before the end of the day because I knew that at midnight the 100 day challenge had to start again. It was like Cinderella. A real Jizz-ney tale.

This was actually an important part of the journey. I think that to get the full experience you need to go through failure and then know you can pick yourself back up.

So I went back at it again and this time got to day 80 and I had this realisation: this isn’t moderation. This is just binge and restriction. This is like yo-yo dieting. And so I knew I had to incorporate masturbation back into my life in a moderate way.

I settled on this: no porn, but I am allowed to masturbate once a week. Since I’m having consistent sex I don’t ever feel like there’s a barren stretch ahead of me and it doesn’t feel like that once a week rule will lead to binges. If you don’t agree with the latter part of that sentence just think about people who practice “cheat days” on their diet. They spend all week restricting themselves entirely and it’s all they can think about. I don’t want that. The aim is moderation and this will provide the structure to achieve that since it’s combined with regular sex.

Now for the broscience. Why even restrict myself? Why resist when it’s sometimes really hard to? Apart from the obvious effects on erections, which I’ve noticed to have improved since I cut out porn, I want to feel the horniness – the desire – which drives a man to go out there and achieve, whether that’s sublimated into my writing or lived out on the street in its original form. Girls can tell if you’re attracted to them and if it’s conveyed in a non-needy way then that’s attractive in and of itself.

I think that once a week actually works better for guys than none because of how I understand the body overcompensates. When you lift weights your body doesn’t build strength and muscle to lift only that particular weight. It builds that and more. Or about how if you manipulate your water and sodium intake you can dry the body out. This is what bodybuilders do in their peak week before a show. So if you masturbate and then don’t the next day the body doesn’t have time to hold itself back and it’s still horny the next day. It expects to be satisfied but doesn’t get it. In fact it would be interesting to see, for a guy who doesn’t have consistent sex, if he were to masturbate on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then Daygame on Thursday to Sunday. If you try it let me know.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

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