Hey everyone! I'm grateful for this forum and have enjoyed reading stories by others.
I was just listening this morning to a recorded talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk. I've been a follower of his teachings for years.
He was talking about a few different things, including how by getting more in tune with the present, we can make greater peace with the past. I was smiling because a few times he referred to this as "touching yourself." I'm not sure he realized the common Western connotation of this, being a non-native English speaker. But the double meaning struck me as especially appropriate given where I am, one week into my reboot!
I just turned 41. I'm in that weird liminal area of guys who are young enough to have used the Internet to jerk off for a significant proportion of my life, but old enough that videos weren't my initial gateway. My dad was always an early technology adopter, so I was online all through high school. Back then (early 1990s), it was text-only, newsgroups and the like, and I discovered erotic stories forums. Reading those stories gave me a way to experience gay fantasies in private.
It was also the peak of MTV. Marky Mark music videos held a particular, er, fascination for me.
His image defined my sexual fantasies: Muscular, cocky, masculine.
Here's the thing, though: I never masturbated. Never. People are often shocked by this, but it's true. I'm not sure why. I was raised Unitarian, so I didn't have religious injunctions against jerking off. Something else held me back -- most likely a general, societally-induced shame about being gay. I believe the AIDS scare of the mid- to late-1980s played a role, too. For an impressionable kid, the hysteria made me associate gayness with illness.
I would spend hours in my bedroom, picturing muscular guys in my head, but I never touched myself and I never came. I also never had wet dreams.
I got to college. By my junior year, I'd started to have very rare wet dreams but still never masturbated. I was confused about my sexuality, experiencing strong feelings for both men and women. (But more often men.) I don't remember reading many erotic stories or looking at many pictures during this period. I kinda managed to be asexual, again a testament to how "shameful" gayness was back then, even though I was attending a liberal arts college.
My senior year, I found myself spending more and more time with a gay guy friend. He finally made a pass at me, and I was willing. That's how I came out. It was all pretty disorganized and unplanned!
The first time we spent the night together, I orgasmed. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I don't think it took much. I wasn't emotionally ready for penetration going in either direction, but we had good, easy oral and frottage sex that whole year.
After graduation, when I was 22, he and I spent about four months apart. And *that*, my friends, is when I discovered masturbation. I started doing it pretty regularly. I can remember one of the first times was in my car on a hot summer day, after working my crap landscaping job. I was like, "Wow. Cool. I get it." It was a positive thing, mostly. I was thinking about having sex with my boyfriend while I jerked off. No porn images of any kind.
But not longer after, as our separation continued, I did start to seek out sexy images online. By now, it was the late 1990s and they were pretty easy to find, even though they often took *forever* to load! I'd stay up late at night in my parents' basement, surfing sites like MenOntheNet. I'd click on thumbnail images and wait seemingly forever (haha) for the full size images of naked or partly naked guys to fill my screen. It was so easy to look at them and then jerk off. This is the moment when my orgasms became detached from the experience of being with a real person and instead became associated with fantasy.
Not long after that, my boyfriend and I moved to New York. In hindsight, I see this is where my Internet use started to become problematic for the first time, and I'll continue that story in my next entry.
For now, I'll close by saying that until a week ago, it never occurred to me that the "problems" I have with sex had much to do with watching porn and masturbating. If anything, I saw those activities as helpful or liberating, especially for a guy who was so "repressed" for so long.
What drove me to seek new answers last weekend, though, was this: I'm now with the most amazing boyfriend I've ever had. He's smart and beautiful and warm and I love him immeasurably. But a year into our relationship, I've never orgasmed with him *out of sensation.* I've always had to remove myself mentally, to resort to fantasies to get off. Usually, I've had to use my own hand to finish, though twice he's been able to bring me to climax with his. My erections are also pretty variable.
I've had to "touch myself" literally rather than in the way Thich Nhat Hanh talks about -- being present.
I turned to the Google, and typed in something like "can ejaculate during masturbation but not intercourse." That brought me to YourBrainonPorn, the book and website, and now to this forum.
It's pretty exciting to read about all this, because for a long time I saw myself as sexually deficient. There was something wrong with me, that I couldn't "let go" with a real partner. And maybe there is some general inhibition lingering in my mind. But I also see how relying on porn and fantasy for so long has undoubtedly played a role. For years, it's been safer and easier to get off by myself than with a partner. Now that I'm with someone I care about so much, though, I want to experiment to see if I can find another way.
I've been open with my boyfriend about all this and he's supportive. I'm also trying not to get too attached to any particular outcome -- like that the common one (from what I've read) that I'll become the perfect sex god who has explosive orgasms upon contact. But I'm interested to see where this leads.
I've made lots of observations already, but here are a couple:
- Almost more than an addiction, PMO feels like a garden variety "habit" for me. Like, when I have a free moment or I finish a project, turning to images on my device is such an easy way to feel a moment of thrill.
- A few days after I stopped, I had great sex with my boyfriend, very hard most of the time, but we didn't end in orgasm. It was kinda cool to realize how much pressure I'd been putting on myself to orgasm each time, and how sex could still be so great even if I don't come each time. (I may be in a bit of a flatline now.)
- It'll be interesting to see how being on this journey works while in a relationship with another guy who's not necessarily looking to reboot.
OK, that's all for now. More later, and thanks for reading! 8)
I was just listening this morning to a recorded talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk. I've been a follower of his teachings for years.
He was talking about a few different things, including how by getting more in tune with the present, we can make greater peace with the past. I was smiling because a few times he referred to this as "touching yourself." I'm not sure he realized the common Western connotation of this, being a non-native English speaker. But the double meaning struck me as especially appropriate given where I am, one week into my reboot!
I just turned 41. I'm in that weird liminal area of guys who are young enough to have used the Internet to jerk off for a significant proportion of my life, but old enough that videos weren't my initial gateway. My dad was always an early technology adopter, so I was online all through high school. Back then (early 1990s), it was text-only, newsgroups and the like, and I discovered erotic stories forums. Reading those stories gave me a way to experience gay fantasies in private.
It was also the peak of MTV. Marky Mark music videos held a particular, er, fascination for me.
His image defined my sexual fantasies: Muscular, cocky, masculine.Here's the thing, though: I never masturbated. Never. People are often shocked by this, but it's true. I'm not sure why. I was raised Unitarian, so I didn't have religious injunctions against jerking off. Something else held me back -- most likely a general, societally-induced shame about being gay. I believe the AIDS scare of the mid- to late-1980s played a role, too. For an impressionable kid, the hysteria made me associate gayness with illness.
I would spend hours in my bedroom, picturing muscular guys in my head, but I never touched myself and I never came. I also never had wet dreams.
I got to college. By my junior year, I'd started to have very rare wet dreams but still never masturbated. I was confused about my sexuality, experiencing strong feelings for both men and women. (But more often men.) I don't remember reading many erotic stories or looking at many pictures during this period. I kinda managed to be asexual, again a testament to how "shameful" gayness was back then, even though I was attending a liberal arts college.
My senior year, I found myself spending more and more time with a gay guy friend. He finally made a pass at me, and I was willing. That's how I came out. It was all pretty disorganized and unplanned!
The first time we spent the night together, I orgasmed. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I don't think it took much.
I wasn't emotionally ready for penetration going in either direction, but we had good, easy oral and frottage sex that whole year.After graduation, when I was 22, he and I spent about four months apart. And *that*, my friends, is when I discovered masturbation. I started doing it pretty regularly. I can remember one of the first times was in my car on a hot summer day, after working my crap landscaping job. I was like, "Wow. Cool. I get it." It was a positive thing, mostly. I was thinking about having sex with my boyfriend while I jerked off. No porn images of any kind.
But not longer after, as our separation continued, I did start to seek out sexy images online. By now, it was the late 1990s and they were pretty easy to find, even though they often took *forever* to load! I'd stay up late at night in my parents' basement, surfing sites like MenOntheNet. I'd click on thumbnail images and wait seemingly forever (haha) for the full size images of naked or partly naked guys to fill my screen. It was so easy to look at them and then jerk off. This is the moment when my orgasms became detached from the experience of being with a real person and instead became associated with fantasy.
Not long after that, my boyfriend and I moved to New York. In hindsight, I see this is where my Internet use started to become problematic for the first time, and I'll continue that story in my next entry.
For now, I'll close by saying that until a week ago, it never occurred to me that the "problems" I have with sex had much to do with watching porn and masturbating. If anything, I saw those activities as helpful or liberating, especially for a guy who was so "repressed" for so long.
What drove me to seek new answers last weekend, though, was this: I'm now with the most amazing boyfriend I've ever had. He's smart and beautiful and warm and I love him immeasurably. But a year into our relationship, I've never orgasmed with him *out of sensation.* I've always had to remove myself mentally, to resort to fantasies to get off. Usually, I've had to use my own hand to finish, though twice he's been able to bring me to climax with his. My erections are also pretty variable.
I've had to "touch myself" literally rather than in the way Thich Nhat Hanh talks about -- being present.
I turned to the Google, and typed in something like "can ejaculate during masturbation but not intercourse." That brought me to YourBrainonPorn, the book and website, and now to this forum.
It's pretty exciting to read about all this, because for a long time I saw myself as sexually deficient. There was something wrong with me, that I couldn't "let go" with a real partner. And maybe there is some general inhibition lingering in my mind. But I also see how relying on porn and fantasy for so long has undoubtedly played a role. For years, it's been safer and easier to get off by myself than with a partner. Now that I'm with someone I care about so much, though, I want to experiment to see if I can find another way.
I've been open with my boyfriend about all this and he's supportive. I'm also trying not to get too attached to any particular outcome -- like that the common one (from what I've read) that I'll become the perfect sex god who has explosive orgasms upon contact. But I'm interested to see where this leads.
I've made lots of observations already, but here are a couple:
- Almost more than an addiction, PMO feels like a garden variety "habit" for me. Like, when I have a free moment or I finish a project, turning to images on my device is such an easy way to feel a moment of thrill.
- A few days after I stopped, I had great sex with my boyfriend, very hard most of the time, but we didn't end in orgasm. It was kinda cool to realize how much pressure I'd been putting on myself to orgasm each time, and how sex could still be so great even if I don't come each time. (I may be in a bit of a flatline now.)
- It'll be interesting to see how being on this journey works while in a relationship with another guy who's not necessarily looking to reboot.
OK, that's all for now. More later, and thanks for reading! 8)