But it's now been going on for about 5 years. Don't know if it's old age, TMS (traumatic masturbation syndrome)....found through YourBrainOnPorn.com and Healthystrokes.com, porn addiction, performance anxiety, depression, guilt, desensitization, mental issues or likely a combination of all of the above and whatever else I am leaving out.
Buckle up....this will be a long post and really more for me to try and work through it than necessarily for anyone reading....though I do hope it might help someone else.
I'm 46 years old. My dick is basically for decoration at this point, lol.....which is really the only reason I'm here. That last part is sort of a joke...but sorta true. At 41, it was almost as if someone flipped a switch and I stopped having control over how my dick functions.
I should note that I'm in great shape for my age....31" waist, 212 lbs, 6' tall....still using 120# dumbells for shoulders, workout 4 days a week...so I don't think there's necessarily a physiological reason for my ED. Blood pressure is good 110/70. Testosterone levels are normal for my age group....no, I've never used steroids....though when my wife and I were trying to get pregnant, they did put me on a year of off-label Clomid to improve my sperm motility since she has PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome) and the Clomid would give me 'super sperm' to help her conceive. The Clomid almost doubled my test levels...I think around 800 IIRC. Long story short....Clomid didn't work, she never got pregnant and she was diagnosed with breast cancer as well as an auto-immune disease (antiphospholipid syndrome-APS) in the last 2-3 years.....so there's a lot of health problems on her end that are causing issues as well.
I guess I should start at the beginning.
I've always been pretty sexual. I started "masturbating" (or more accurately called....rubbing myself) at an early age. I remember being 4-5 and fantasizing about being naked with naked women and rubbing my junk....obviously not to orgasm. That started happening around the age of 10 or 11....and I bring up the age and this early masturbation b/c it was often before falling asleep and rubbing my erection against a mattress with my penis between my stomach and the mattress or a round bolster pillow....which is what is defined as TMS on the Healthy-Strokes website. Not sure, but "prone masturbation" or TMS may mean angling the penis down away from the body between the legs and humping the mattress or pushing the penis into the mattress with your full weight on it...I didn't do either of those...but the angling down and away may be a contributing factor to my problems that I'll discuss later.
By the time I was 12 or so, I had switched to masturbating with my hand rather than against the mattress b/c it was just easier and more convenient....I could do it anywhere as opposed to having to be in my room.
I mention this info about TMS b/c I may have caused massive desensitization with other masturbation techniques later in life....and I'm laying the groundwork for that information. I've always preferred to masturbate without lubrication....and have always tended to M for prolonged periods, edging....if you will....b/c it felt good and I wanted to prolong it as well as thinking that in preparation for actual intercourse with a woman, it would be a good thing to be able to "last".
Fast forward to my subsequent sexual encounters with females and getting an erection was no problem but when girls would perform oral on me, I really didn't get much out of it, except for the first time due to the novelty. It's pretty rare for me to be able to orgasm by oral....like probably 10-20 times my whole life. As someone here or on YBOP.com said, (to paraphrase) "oral was like someone was tickling my penis with something wet". I much prefer intercourse since I can come that way probably 99% of the time. I've always thought I was 'blessed' to be able to have really great sex with women I've been in lasting relationships with (I've only been with 6 women total) and was able to go for hours (if they could handle it that long) and give them really intense orgasms. After reading this site and YBOP and Healthy Strokes.....I'm totally confused. Maybe I was just so desensitized that I didn't realize that much of my "pleasure" was the mental stimulation of satisfying the woman without really feeling what I should have been feeling; i.e., my own sexual sensations. I do fully admit that I'm apparently (according to the women I've been with as well as those I've confided in) very atypical in that I'm more concerned about her getting off than me. Yes, I've faked orgasms before....simply b/c she was getting sore and I was getting tired after marathon sex.
As for my porn "addiction"....I put it in quotes b/c I'm not sure I have one. I think I might....not sure. Let me back up. I think my first exposure to porn was at around 11 years old finding a porno mag walking home from school one day and being extremely aroused by it, masturbating to it....over and over for years. When I turned 18 (obviously, I'm old AF...so this was before internet porn)...I bought more magazines....just a handful and used those for years as well as one VHS porn tape.
Around 1998, I moved to a new state with my current girlfriend (now my wife) and we got internet for the first time. That changed my porn addiction in that it was always new material, not as much imagination, etc. At that point, I'm like 24/25 years old....probably really high testosterone levels....no performance issues in spite of PMO EVERYDAY...at least once per day.....as well as regular sex with the GF several times per week. My triggers for PMO were likely much like everyone else's....opportunity. If the gf wasn't around.....I could pleasure myself for hours to porn. I'd always been into fantasy anal with a woman (I'd done anal with a few gfs....but not to be too graphic, but I'm pretty thick so I rarely got that treat....which was probably why I found it a turn on in porn). Over time, my tastes in porn became more twisted....DP was/is a big one. Not sure why since on a rational level, I'd never want a woman I was in a committed relationship with to be banging another dude. I think for me personally, porn was just a fantasy...I could see myself being with a whore who'd take two dicks at once in a fantasy world, but not likely in the real world. Obviously, calling the woman doing this a "whore" is exactly what people complain about when talking about porn degrading women. That's exactly what it does....but at the same time, what other word fits a real woman who does that sort of thing? Or is she just "open minded"? Meh...whatever. It's not my place to judge it...but obviously, I still do to an extent. Tangent; I'll stop.
Anyhoo....
This porn use continued for basically 16 years or so with no ill effects as far as I could tell. I could get and maintain an erection for sex whenever I wanted, I could get it hard enough to etch glass for over an hour and my wife was VERY happy with multiple orgasms every time we had sex...no toys needed....just P in the va-gee and decent pubic bone to clit contact would help facilitate it.
Sidenote: I should mention that porn use has become so mainstream that I don't feel like I have any shame in admitting to just about anyone that I've used it. In short, guilt over consuming porn doesn't seem like a factor in my ED issues....just for the record.
Sometime about 5 years into our relationship and 3 years or so into watching internet porn, I started a new "technique" for masturbation that may have further contributed to my desensitization as well as could be characterized as potentially TMS (traumatic masturbation syndrome). I would always masturbate in a chair while watching porn on the desktop. For some reason, not sure why, I started taking my erection and pushing it towards the floor (while sitting on the edge of the chair) every few strokes. That movement of pushing it toward the floor would stretch the suspensory ligament (for those familiar with penis anatomy) and cause my erection to become extremely hard and elongated. I think I first found this out when having sex with a girlfriend from the past while seated in a chair and her riding me. I grasped her butt cheeks and was lowering her between my thighs and her vagina would basically pull against my shaft and head as she would dip between my legs and then I'd pull her back up onto my dick while thrusting into her. That's the first time I recall noticing this. That sex was completely amazing and we replicated that position often after that....I just never really put 2 and 2 together to mimic it during masturbation until years later.
Anyway, I started incorporating this technique into my PMO routine and into my wife's and my love making. It was shocking to her at first, as I began to really stretch her vagina out with this new technique....in every position you can imagine....over time though, it left her pretty much gaped. It didn't bother me at all though....the sex was still phenomenal....even better in fact than when I didn't use that method with her. Looking back now, perhaps my desensitization left me needing to "wallow her out" in order to feel something (Tool's "stinkfist" lyrics are starting to make a whole lot more sense, lol).
So this "stretching" went on for 13 years or so with no issues.
Around the age of 39, while making love to the wife, I was kissing her passionately while inside her and overly aggressively sucked on her lower lip....it swelled up and stayed engorged for a good hour or so after we finished that session. On a few occasions in our younger years and more recently, if I was overly aggressive with suction while giving her oral, her labia would swell up abnormally large and stay that way for hours or even a day or so....putting all those things together and as a novelty, I thought: What if I bought one of those penis pumps I'd researched back in college for "penis enlargement" and used it to get a temporarily larger, swollen erection for sex?. I'd dismissed those cylinders and pumps back then as snake oil that wouldn't actually work for enlargement (I've always been self-conscious about my penis size and wished for bigger....at the time I was 7.25" long erect from the base of my pubic bone measured on top to the tip and 6.75" or so in circumference at the base....overall, kind of pyramid shaped almost....thick at the base tapering to the tip). I ordered a cylinder and a hand vacuum pump online to see what it might do for actual sex with my wife.
Little did I know when I ordered it that it would work for actual size increase. I lengthened my penis 1/4" in the first month. Another 1/4" in the second month of use and another 1/4" in the third. At the same time, the base stayed about the same size, but the head seemed to almost double in size and the shaft below the head seemed to grow in girth too. The problem is: I am probably a bit OCD. When I started seeing those types of gains several things worked against me. One, I became obsessed with having a 9" dick. I thought I could achieve it if I just kept pumping. 2....I started using higher pressures to try and force it to grow. In the world of weight lifting, pain is gain....you push through it to achieve results. Penis pumping, I thought, is probably the same. For anyone reading this boring shit story this far....it's not. Don't EVER go beyond 10 in-Hg of vacuum and you really don't want to go above 5 max. Supposedly, time under pressure is more important than the pressure itself, but that said, you don't want to be under vacuum for more than 20 minutes max anyway....and new users shouldn't be under any longer than 10 minutes. Shit...this isn't supposed to be a dissertation on pumping. I bring it up b/c while doctors prescribe these pumps to help people with ED get erections and they should be safe, they can be abused. They can cause desensitization and I wouldn't be surprised if they cause nerve damage. I would literally pump my cock up so big, it looked like my forearm about midway up in terms of the girth. I couldn't physically put it in my wife....even though we tried for fun a few times, lol. When flaccid, there was a really big change as well....it was free hanging around 6" and thicker then too. I bring this all up b/c I think it became an extreme form of TMS....especially if you used the cylinder to masturbate in....while under pressure. The orgasm was intense as fuck....but after 3 or so 20 minute pumping sessions in a day (for example)....you wouldn't really have any desire to have sex, nor would you get night time erections for several days.
This brings up another point....I was 39 years old at that point....I'm not sure how much of my dysfunction is a matter of TMS, porn or just being of an age where our sexual interest, hormone levels, etc. start to drop...but for the 9 months or so...I pumped religiously trying to get that 9"...the length/girth changes I got were permanent....but I never gained any more size. I stopped for a year or so after that....but continued my normal PMO with the stretching the shaft towards the floor technique and normal sex. I picked up pumping again on and off for spurts....maybe a few weeks, sometimes a few months....mainly b/c it would leave my dick enlarged for a few days at a time after doing so which just was a turn on to be honest...to walk around all day with that extra weight calling attention to it in my mind so that I was sort of primed to either PMO or have sex with my wife.
Basically at 41, I started to have problems getting and keeping an erection. It started happening with my wife. I tried all sort of things to try and fight the problem. Got Cialis and Viagra...I'd used them when I didn't have ED in the past twice just to see what the big deal was and honestly, they didn't do anything better than my stretching technique did....but now, they either didn't work, or didn't work well. I tried abstaining from using the penis pump.....to using it at low pressure...to using it at high pressure....and seemingly having it help by allowing me to feel "something" down below....then rethinking it and stopping use for months at a time. I tried watching ever increasingly "perverted" porn...which leads me to believe porn addiction is at least part of my problem. I've taken the porn test Gabe mentioned and it would seem I've either got severe PIED or a physiological problem b/c I sometimes can't get it up looking at porn even. What's weird is I can sometimes masturbate to my imagination (not old, recycled porn images) without any porn and have a really great erection. I've had times where I went months with no night time erections and very few porn induced ones. And then spurts where things work exactly as they should. It's totally confusing, depressing and infuriating to have no control over your own body and its reactions to stimuli.
Which brings up another confusing point from reading YBOP and this site and Healthy strokes....it seems like I'm completely dysfunctional in that "normal" men not only can have orgasm from oral, but that they can become aroused simply from touching their junk or having someone else do so. I pretty much have to think about it...even back in my late 30s....I had to 'try' to get hard...it only took a few moments and maybe some manual stim, but it happened pretty quickly...but I still had to WANT it to happen. I guess I'm saying it wasn't involuntary...unless you're talking night time erections.
I guess I should mention my wife's illnesses have made it impossible to have sex for several years now. I'm sort of on my own trying to get sexual fulfillment.....as I mentioned, I can't cum from oral....only from sex. She can't have sex b/c the chemo she was on put her into menopause and drastically (I mean DRASTICALLY) shrunk and dried out her girl parts. I can't even put the head in without tearing her and making her bleed (not to mention the wincing pain on her face kills me emotionally and makes me so sad/depressed that I can't be aroused).
Writing all this out really makes me understand how fucked up I am, mentally and physically and that I seem to have brought the physical part on mostly through the vanity of wanting a big cock....like what we all see in porn...and trying to pump to achieve it.
Obviously, there's a lot going on here and a lot more to it......but this is pretty long already.
I just remembered, I got really "religious" for about 2 years...from ~36 to 38 years old and stopped watching porn or even looking at other women with lust. It wasn't hard for me to give up the porn really....not having sexual thoughts about women I'd see in person was a bit more difficult but I managed it. I got to a point I could appreciate a woman was attractive but when I started to let my mind wander to anything more than that acknowledgment of her beauty, I'd change my thoughts to something else. During that time, I noticed a marked dive in my sex drive. Just wasn't interested. It was super weird and honestly, I'm not convinced it was healthy, in spite of that abstinence being 'pleasing' to a deity.
I mention it now b/c I quit porn again 11/15/19, after finding YBOP again and taking it more seriously. It's only been 8 days, but I honestly haven't felt any urge to look at porn....just maybe jack off to real women I've seen recently....but I've set that aside since the site recommends no MO during a reboot....but it hasn't been a big thing either. In short, I'm not sure porn is my problem....and I'm sure many will give me flack about that, but I'm just not sure. Maybe reading over this will help me think of it more clearly.
That's it for now.
Buckle up....this will be a long post and really more for me to try and work through it than necessarily for anyone reading....though I do hope it might help someone else.
I'm 46 years old. My dick is basically for decoration at this point, lol.....which is really the only reason I'm here. That last part is sort of a joke...but sorta true. At 41, it was almost as if someone flipped a switch and I stopped having control over how my dick functions.
I should note that I'm in great shape for my age....31" waist, 212 lbs, 6' tall....still using 120# dumbells for shoulders, workout 4 days a week...so I don't think there's necessarily a physiological reason for my ED. Blood pressure is good 110/70. Testosterone levels are normal for my age group....no, I've never used steroids....though when my wife and I were trying to get pregnant, they did put me on a year of off-label Clomid to improve my sperm motility since she has PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome) and the Clomid would give me 'super sperm' to help her conceive. The Clomid almost doubled my test levels...I think around 800 IIRC. Long story short....Clomid didn't work, she never got pregnant and she was diagnosed with breast cancer as well as an auto-immune disease (antiphospholipid syndrome-APS) in the last 2-3 years.....so there's a lot of health problems on her end that are causing issues as well.
I guess I should start at the beginning.
I've always been pretty sexual. I started "masturbating" (or more accurately called....rubbing myself) at an early age. I remember being 4-5 and fantasizing about being naked with naked women and rubbing my junk....obviously not to orgasm. That started happening around the age of 10 or 11....and I bring up the age and this early masturbation b/c it was often before falling asleep and rubbing my erection against a mattress with my penis between my stomach and the mattress or a round bolster pillow....which is what is defined as TMS on the Healthy-Strokes website. Not sure, but "prone masturbation" or TMS may mean angling the penis down away from the body between the legs and humping the mattress or pushing the penis into the mattress with your full weight on it...I didn't do either of those...but the angling down and away may be a contributing factor to my problems that I'll discuss later.
By the time I was 12 or so, I had switched to masturbating with my hand rather than against the mattress b/c it was just easier and more convenient....I could do it anywhere as opposed to having to be in my room.
I mention this info about TMS b/c I may have caused massive desensitization with other masturbation techniques later in life....and I'm laying the groundwork for that information. I've always preferred to masturbate without lubrication....and have always tended to M for prolonged periods, edging....if you will....b/c it felt good and I wanted to prolong it as well as thinking that in preparation for actual intercourse with a woman, it would be a good thing to be able to "last".
Fast forward to my subsequent sexual encounters with females and getting an erection was no problem but when girls would perform oral on me, I really didn't get much out of it, except for the first time due to the novelty. It's pretty rare for me to be able to orgasm by oral....like probably 10-20 times my whole life. As someone here or on YBOP.com said, (to paraphrase) "oral was like someone was tickling my penis with something wet". I much prefer intercourse since I can come that way probably 99% of the time. I've always thought I was 'blessed' to be able to have really great sex with women I've been in lasting relationships with (I've only been with 6 women total) and was able to go for hours (if they could handle it that long) and give them really intense orgasms. After reading this site and YBOP and Healthy Strokes.....I'm totally confused. Maybe I was just so desensitized that I didn't realize that much of my "pleasure" was the mental stimulation of satisfying the woman without really feeling what I should have been feeling; i.e., my own sexual sensations. I do fully admit that I'm apparently (according to the women I've been with as well as those I've confided in) very atypical in that I'm more concerned about her getting off than me. Yes, I've faked orgasms before....simply b/c she was getting sore and I was getting tired after marathon sex.
As for my porn "addiction"....I put it in quotes b/c I'm not sure I have one. I think I might....not sure. Let me back up. I think my first exposure to porn was at around 11 years old finding a porno mag walking home from school one day and being extremely aroused by it, masturbating to it....over and over for years. When I turned 18 (obviously, I'm old AF...so this was before internet porn)...I bought more magazines....just a handful and used those for years as well as one VHS porn tape.
Around 1998, I moved to a new state with my current girlfriend (now my wife) and we got internet for the first time. That changed my porn addiction in that it was always new material, not as much imagination, etc. At that point, I'm like 24/25 years old....probably really high testosterone levels....no performance issues in spite of PMO EVERYDAY...at least once per day.....as well as regular sex with the GF several times per week. My triggers for PMO were likely much like everyone else's....opportunity. If the gf wasn't around.....I could pleasure myself for hours to porn. I'd always been into fantasy anal with a woman (I'd done anal with a few gfs....but not to be too graphic, but I'm pretty thick so I rarely got that treat....which was probably why I found it a turn on in porn). Over time, my tastes in porn became more twisted....DP was/is a big one. Not sure why since on a rational level, I'd never want a woman I was in a committed relationship with to be banging another dude. I think for me personally, porn was just a fantasy...I could see myself being with a whore who'd take two dicks at once in a fantasy world, but not likely in the real world. Obviously, calling the woman doing this a "whore" is exactly what people complain about when talking about porn degrading women. That's exactly what it does....but at the same time, what other word fits a real woman who does that sort of thing? Or is she just "open minded"? Meh...whatever. It's not my place to judge it...but obviously, I still do to an extent. Tangent; I'll stop.
Anyhoo....
This porn use continued for basically 16 years or so with no ill effects as far as I could tell. I could get and maintain an erection for sex whenever I wanted, I could get it hard enough to etch glass for over an hour and my wife was VERY happy with multiple orgasms every time we had sex...no toys needed....just P in the va-gee and decent pubic bone to clit contact would help facilitate it.
Sidenote: I should mention that porn use has become so mainstream that I don't feel like I have any shame in admitting to just about anyone that I've used it. In short, guilt over consuming porn doesn't seem like a factor in my ED issues....just for the record.
Sometime about 5 years into our relationship and 3 years or so into watching internet porn, I started a new "technique" for masturbation that may have further contributed to my desensitization as well as could be characterized as potentially TMS (traumatic masturbation syndrome). I would always masturbate in a chair while watching porn on the desktop. For some reason, not sure why, I started taking my erection and pushing it towards the floor (while sitting on the edge of the chair) every few strokes. That movement of pushing it toward the floor would stretch the suspensory ligament (for those familiar with penis anatomy) and cause my erection to become extremely hard and elongated. I think I first found this out when having sex with a girlfriend from the past while seated in a chair and her riding me. I grasped her butt cheeks and was lowering her between my thighs and her vagina would basically pull against my shaft and head as she would dip between my legs and then I'd pull her back up onto my dick while thrusting into her. That's the first time I recall noticing this. That sex was completely amazing and we replicated that position often after that....I just never really put 2 and 2 together to mimic it during masturbation until years later.
Anyway, I started incorporating this technique into my PMO routine and into my wife's and my love making. It was shocking to her at first, as I began to really stretch her vagina out with this new technique....in every position you can imagine....over time though, it left her pretty much gaped. It didn't bother me at all though....the sex was still phenomenal....even better in fact than when I didn't use that method with her. Looking back now, perhaps my desensitization left me needing to "wallow her out" in order to feel something (Tool's "stinkfist" lyrics are starting to make a whole lot more sense, lol).
So this "stretching" went on for 13 years or so with no issues.
Around the age of 39, while making love to the wife, I was kissing her passionately while inside her and overly aggressively sucked on her lower lip....it swelled up and stayed engorged for a good hour or so after we finished that session. On a few occasions in our younger years and more recently, if I was overly aggressive with suction while giving her oral, her labia would swell up abnormally large and stay that way for hours or even a day or so....putting all those things together and as a novelty, I thought: What if I bought one of those penis pumps I'd researched back in college for "penis enlargement" and used it to get a temporarily larger, swollen erection for sex?. I'd dismissed those cylinders and pumps back then as snake oil that wouldn't actually work for enlargement (I've always been self-conscious about my penis size and wished for bigger....at the time I was 7.25" long erect from the base of my pubic bone measured on top to the tip and 6.75" or so in circumference at the base....overall, kind of pyramid shaped almost....thick at the base tapering to the tip). I ordered a cylinder and a hand vacuum pump online to see what it might do for actual sex with my wife.
Little did I know when I ordered it that it would work for actual size increase. I lengthened my penis 1/4" in the first month. Another 1/4" in the second month of use and another 1/4" in the third. At the same time, the base stayed about the same size, but the head seemed to almost double in size and the shaft below the head seemed to grow in girth too. The problem is: I am probably a bit OCD. When I started seeing those types of gains several things worked against me. One, I became obsessed with having a 9" dick. I thought I could achieve it if I just kept pumping. 2....I started using higher pressures to try and force it to grow. In the world of weight lifting, pain is gain....you push through it to achieve results. Penis pumping, I thought, is probably the same. For anyone reading this boring shit story this far....it's not. Don't EVER go beyond 10 in-Hg of vacuum and you really don't want to go above 5 max. Supposedly, time under pressure is more important than the pressure itself, but that said, you don't want to be under vacuum for more than 20 minutes max anyway....and new users shouldn't be under any longer than 10 minutes. Shit...this isn't supposed to be a dissertation on pumping. I bring it up b/c while doctors prescribe these pumps to help people with ED get erections and they should be safe, they can be abused. They can cause desensitization and I wouldn't be surprised if they cause nerve damage. I would literally pump my cock up so big, it looked like my forearm about midway up in terms of the girth. I couldn't physically put it in my wife....even though we tried for fun a few times, lol. When flaccid, there was a really big change as well....it was free hanging around 6" and thicker then too. I bring this all up b/c I think it became an extreme form of TMS....especially if you used the cylinder to masturbate in....while under pressure. The orgasm was intense as fuck....but after 3 or so 20 minute pumping sessions in a day (for example)....you wouldn't really have any desire to have sex, nor would you get night time erections for several days.
This brings up another point....I was 39 years old at that point....I'm not sure how much of my dysfunction is a matter of TMS, porn or just being of an age where our sexual interest, hormone levels, etc. start to drop...but for the 9 months or so...I pumped religiously trying to get that 9"...the length/girth changes I got were permanent....but I never gained any more size. I stopped for a year or so after that....but continued my normal PMO with the stretching the shaft towards the floor technique and normal sex. I picked up pumping again on and off for spurts....maybe a few weeks, sometimes a few months....mainly b/c it would leave my dick enlarged for a few days at a time after doing so which just was a turn on to be honest...to walk around all day with that extra weight calling attention to it in my mind so that I was sort of primed to either PMO or have sex with my wife.
Basically at 41, I started to have problems getting and keeping an erection. It started happening with my wife. I tried all sort of things to try and fight the problem. Got Cialis and Viagra...I'd used them when I didn't have ED in the past twice just to see what the big deal was and honestly, they didn't do anything better than my stretching technique did....but now, they either didn't work, or didn't work well. I tried abstaining from using the penis pump.....to using it at low pressure...to using it at high pressure....and seemingly having it help by allowing me to feel "something" down below....then rethinking it and stopping use for months at a time. I tried watching ever increasingly "perverted" porn...which leads me to believe porn addiction is at least part of my problem. I've taken the porn test Gabe mentioned and it would seem I've either got severe PIED or a physiological problem b/c I sometimes can't get it up looking at porn even. What's weird is I can sometimes masturbate to my imagination (not old, recycled porn images) without any porn and have a really great erection. I've had times where I went months with no night time erections and very few porn induced ones. And then spurts where things work exactly as they should. It's totally confusing, depressing and infuriating to have no control over your own body and its reactions to stimuli.
Which brings up another confusing point from reading YBOP and this site and Healthy strokes....it seems like I'm completely dysfunctional in that "normal" men not only can have orgasm from oral, but that they can become aroused simply from touching their junk or having someone else do so. I pretty much have to think about it...even back in my late 30s....I had to 'try' to get hard...it only took a few moments and maybe some manual stim, but it happened pretty quickly...but I still had to WANT it to happen. I guess I'm saying it wasn't involuntary...unless you're talking night time erections.
I guess I should mention my wife's illnesses have made it impossible to have sex for several years now. I'm sort of on my own trying to get sexual fulfillment.....as I mentioned, I can't cum from oral....only from sex. She can't have sex b/c the chemo she was on put her into menopause and drastically (I mean DRASTICALLY) shrunk and dried out her girl parts. I can't even put the head in without tearing her and making her bleed (not to mention the wincing pain on her face kills me emotionally and makes me so sad/depressed that I can't be aroused).
Writing all this out really makes me understand how fucked up I am, mentally and physically and that I seem to have brought the physical part on mostly through the vanity of wanting a big cock....like what we all see in porn...and trying to pump to achieve it.
Obviously, there's a lot going on here and a lot more to it......but this is pretty long already.
I just remembered, I got really "religious" for about 2 years...from ~36 to 38 years old and stopped watching porn or even looking at other women with lust. It wasn't hard for me to give up the porn really....not having sexual thoughts about women I'd see in person was a bit more difficult but I managed it. I got to a point I could appreciate a woman was attractive but when I started to let my mind wander to anything more than that acknowledgment of her beauty, I'd change my thoughts to something else. During that time, I noticed a marked dive in my sex drive. Just wasn't interested. It was super weird and honestly, I'm not convinced it was healthy, in spite of that abstinence being 'pleasing' to a deity.
I mention it now b/c I quit porn again 11/15/19, after finding YBOP again and taking it more seriously. It's only been 8 days, but I honestly haven't felt any urge to look at porn....just maybe jack off to real women I've seen recently....but I've set that aside since the site recommends no MO during a reboot....but it hasn't been a big thing either. In short, I'm not sure porn is my problem....and I'm sure many will give me flack about that, but I'm just not sure. Maybe reading over this will help me think of it more clearly.
That's it for now.