On a 2 and 1/2 month break and feeling horrible about it

[wetandwindy]

This post could have went into a number of different sections but this seems like the best place I think. If a mod thinks it's better of somewhere else then feel free to move it.

 

I've a guy that's just turned 32 years old. In my adult life I've only had three girlfriends. The first when I was 18 years old and that lasted 6months or so. The second when I was 24 and that lasted 4 months and I've been seeing someone since February this year. All in all it's a pretty pathetic dating portfolio I'm sure you will agree.

 

The girl I'm with been with this year is amazing. She is pretty, great personality, sexy and we have a tonne of stuff in common. When we were not on our current break I used to get butterflies in my stomach when I was going to see her. Life just seemed so damned good. I wanted to introduce her to family and friends, I loved having her on my arm when I was going out and I was enjoying having someone in my life that liked me for who I am too.

 

There was one issue though and it's a pretty big issue. I was having ED (erectile dysfunction) almost every time we slept together. At first we tried to ignore it but I could tell that she was starting to get frustrated and and starting to feel like it was her fault in that she wasn't exciting me or satisfying me. It wasn't the case at all. This was something wrong with me not with her but I guess it's hard for her to accept that.

 

It all came to a head one morning in May when we woke up, I was erect and we started making out and then a few thrusts into intercourse I became soft again and pulled out and lay on my back frustrated and she sighed and said "what are we doing?" and "we are just going round in circles with this". She was very upset.

 

That's when I knew I couldn't tip toe around the issue any more and decided to try and find out what was up (pardon the pun).

 

I arranged to see my doctor who just fobbed me off with Cialis which is a viagra type pill. I knew it was something deeper than that though as I never have problems when I'm going solo so I had been researching on the web to try and find out the root cause. My research led me to something called porn induced erectile dysfunction.

 

If you are interested in knowing more about it then this TED talk explains it very well.

 

 

It was starting to make sense. I've been single most of my life and as most males (and females I guess) do I still needed that sexual release so naturally I turned to porn when going solo. The only way to cure this is to totally abstain from watching porn and ideally go 30days or more without getting yourself off.

 

Well I met up with my gf and told her my findings. It was extremely tough and very shameful trying to explain how I jerked off to porn every day and sometimes a few times a day and that's why I wasn't my brain wasn't reacting to her even though I was falling in love with her in another part of my brain. She seemed stressed by it but we agreed to continue as we were but with no sexual contact for a month and of course no jerking off to porn on my end.

 

I left her house that night and drove round the corner and just cried for a good ten minutes as if my body was relieving itself of all the tension and emotions that came with explaining that.

 

We had agreed to go out for lunch three days later but the following two days in between she took longer to reply to my texts, replied with short answers as in "how was your day today?" she replied "fine but I'm feeling tense" instead of asking how I was etc. Small things which I picked up on and knew we weren't the same as we were before I had told her about my problem.

 

On the saturday she text me telling me how she was really stressed out by it and that it wasn't right and I asked her to wait until we chatted on Sunday which we did and there were two options. One being we split up and two being we took a break for a couple of months to allow me to do what is called a reboot. Basically no porn and no solo pleasure in that time.

 

I chose the second option of course as I couldn't bare losing her and we agreed to wait until August before seeing each other again. This was still heart wrenching. I couldn't believe that something which I thought was harmless and that every male has done at one point or other in their life was causing me to almost lose the girl I adore. I felt physically sick when driving home.

 

So since we started our break I've been feeling awful. I've been reading various different articles about how when people are on breaks they should make full use of the time they have and enjoy being single for a bit. I have been keeping busy, working hard and having fun but I still think about her the very second I wake up and she is the very last thought in my head before I drift to sleep at night. Not being with her makes me feel so sad.

 

Sometimes I think we should have just broken up so that I could have started moving on in my life and not had this feeling of wanting to be with her and not being able to do anything about it. If we had split up I'd have accepted that I'd likely never see her again. As it is though I have doubts about what will happen in August when we meet up.

 

1. Will we be the same as we were?

2. Will we still like each other as much as we did?

3. Will my ED be fixed? If not then will that finally finish us?

4. How do I recover from this if we breakup because of my ED?

 

We have spoken via text on a couple of occasions since the break started. She wished me a happy birthday last month and I sent her a couple of hope things are well messages and she has replied.

 

My porn use has massively reduced. I went three weeks without and then relapsed (yup this is the correct term as it is an addiction) and went crazy one night watching porn and jerking off three times in an hour. I had a really tough day then and porn and solo pleasure has always been my coping mechanism so I guess there were a bunch of triggers that made me lose control that day. Sporadically used it another four times since then but now I'm determined not to use it at all before we meet up again in August and I'm a week in so far.

 

I try not to beat myself up about relapsing too hard. I certainly feel disappointed at myself for not managing to stay in control and remind myself that I used to watch this crap every single day and I've came a long way from that in a short space of time. Plus I could be addicted to things like drugs or alcohol which would be a lot more harmful.

 

As mentioned a couple of paragraphs up, porn has always been my coping mechanism so giving this up has forced me to deal with a lot of emotional turmoil and issues in my life rather than watching porn, masturbating and numbing my brain to emotion. As a result I start therapy next week so that will do me a world of good and hopefully getting me thinking straight.

 

If you have read this far then thanks. I guess I'm not really asking for specific advice but if you have anything to advise me on then great. I'm sure you can understand that there is literally nobody in the world I can talk about this to face to face. Telling your friends and family you have a drug problem is bizarrely less shameful than telling them you have a porn addiction and that you are struggling with that and it's affecting your life.

Edited July 10, 2014 by wetandwindy

[Ordinaryday]

This post could have went into a number of different sections but this seems like the best place I think. If a mod thinks it's better of somewhere else then feel free to move it.

 

I've a guy that's just turned 32 years old. In my adult life I've only had three girlfriends. The first when I was 18 years old and that lasted 6months or so. The second when I was 24 and that lasted 4 months and I've been seeing someone since February this year. All in all it's a pretty pathetic dating portfolio I'm sure you will agree.

 

The girl I'm with been with this year is amazing. She is pretty, great personality, sexy and we have a tonne of stuff in common. When we were not on our current break I used to get butterflies in my stomach when I was going to see her. Life just seemed so damned good. I wanted to introduce her to family and friends, I loved having her on my arm when I was going out and I was enjoying having someone in my life that liked me for who I am too.

 

There was one issue though and it's a pretty big issue. I was having ED (erectile dysfunction) almost every time we slept together. At first we tried to ignore it but I could tell that she was starting to get frustrated and and starting to feel like it was her fault in that she wasn't exciting me or satisfying me. It wasn't the case at all. This was something wrong with me not with her but I guess it's hard for her to accept that.

 

It all came to a head one morning in May when we woke up, I was erect and we started making out and then a few thrusts into intercourse I became soft again and pulled out and lay on my back frustrated and she sighed and said "what are we doing?" and "we are just going round in circles with this". She was very upset.

 

That's when I knew I couldn't tip toe around the issue any more and decided to try and find out what was up (pardon the pun).

 

I arranged to see my doctor who just fobbed me off with Cialis which is a viagra type pill. I knew it was something deeper than that though as I never have problems when I'm going solo so I had been researching on the web to try and find out the root cause. My research led me to something called porn induced erectile dysfunction.

 

If you are interested in knowing more about it then this TED talk explains it very well.

 

 

It was starting to make sense. I've been single most of my life and as most males (and females I guess) do I still needed that sexual release so naturally I turned to porn when going solo. The only way to cure this is to totally abstain from watching porn and ideally go 30days or more without getting yourself off.

 

Well I met up with my gf and told her my findings. It was extremely tough and very shameful trying to explain how I jerked off to porn every day and sometimes a few times a day and that's why I wasn't my brain wasn't reacting to her even though I was falling in love with her in another part of my brain. She seemed stressed by it but we agreed to continue as we were but with no sexual contact for a month and of course no jerking off to porn on my end.

 

I left her house that night and drove round the corner and just cried for a good ten minutes as if my body was relieving itself of all the tension and emotions that came with explaining that.

 

We had agreed to go out for lunch three days later but the following two days in between she took longer to reply to my texts, replied with short answers as in "how was your day today?" she replied "fine but I'm feeling tense" instead of asking how I was etc. Small things which I picked up on and knew we weren't the same as we were before I had told her about my problem.

 

On the saturday she text me telling me how she was really stressed out by it and that it wasn't right and I asked her to wait until we chatted on Sunday which we did and there were two options. One being we split up and two being we took a break for a couple of months to allow me to do what is called a reboot. Basically no porn and no solo pleasure in that time.

 

I chose the second option of course as I couldn't bare losing her and we agreed to wait until August before seeing each other again. This was still heart wrenching. I couldn't believe that something which I thought was harmful and that every male has done at one point or other in their life was causing me to almost lose the girl I adore. I felt physically sick when driving home.

 

So since we started our break I've been feeling awful. I've been reading various different articles about how when people are on breaks they should make full use of the time they have and enjoy being single for a bit. I have been keeping busy, working hard and having fun but I still think about her the very second I wake up and she is the very last thought in my head before I drift to sleep at night. Not being with her makes me feel so sad.

 

Sometimes I think we should have just broken up so that I could have started moving on in my life and not had this feeling of wanting to be with her and not being able to do anything about it. If we had split up I'd have accepted that I'd likely never see her again. As it is though I have doubts about what will happen in August when we meet up.

 

1. Will we be the same as we were?

2. Will we still like each other as much as we did?

3. Will my ED be fixed? If not then will that finally finish us?

4. How do I recover from this if we breakup because of my ED?

 

We have spoken via text on a couple of occasions since the break started. She wished me a happy birthday last month and I sent her a couple of hope things are well messages and she has replied.

 

My porn use has massively reduced. I went three weeks without and then relapsed (yup this is the correct term as it is an addiction) and went crazy one night watching porn and jerking off three times in an hour. I had a really tough day then and porn and solo pleasure has always been my coping mechanism so I guess there were a bunch of triggers that made me lose control that day. Sporadically used it another four times since then but now I'm determined not to use it at all before we meet up again in August and I'm a week in so far.

 

I try not to beat myself up about relapsing too hard. I certainly feel disappointed at myself for not managing to stay in control and remind myself that I used to watch this crap every single day and I've came a long way from that in a short space of time. Plus I could be addicted to things like drugs or alcohol which would be a lot more harmful.

 

As mentioned a couple of paragraphs up, porn has always been my coping mechanism so giving this up has forced me to deal with a lot of emotional turmoil and issues in my life rather than watching porn, masturbating and numbing my brain to emotion. As a result I start therapy next week so that will do me a world of good and hopefully getting me thinking straight.

 

If you have read this far then thanks. I guess I'm not really asking for specific advice but if you have anything to advise me on then great. I'm sure you can understand that there is literally nobody in the world I can talk about this to face to face. Telling your friends and family you have a drug problem is bizarrely less shameful than telling them you have a porn addiction and that you are struggling with that and it's affecting your life.

 

if you can get an erection when you masturbate then you dont have ED. a lot of women jump to conclusions that a guy must have ED simply cos he couldnt keep a hard on one or two times.

 

you know the woman should help you guide in? she should grab your penis and guide it into her vagina, and use lots of lube. if you just try to poke it in then you wont be successful

[wetandwindy]

if you can get an erection when you masturbate then you dont have ED. a lot of women jump to conclusions that a guy must have ED simply cos he couldnt keep a hard on one or two times.

 

you know the woman should help you guide in? she should grab your penis and guide it into her vagina, and use lots of lube. if you just try to poke it in then you wont be successful

 

Hi ordinaryday I'm afraid it/s a lot more complex than that. It's all to do with how the brain is rewired by watching porn that it gets to the point where you find it difficult to be turned on by a real person which sounds crazy but it makes sense.

 

Think of it this way, when watching porn online you can be flicking between four or five different videos and watching multiple girls doing the craziest kinkiest stuff that you can imagine so your brain is getting this heightened and unrealistic idea of what sex is. When it comes down to sex with your girlfriend who doesnt have massive boobs or who doesn't have another three girls in bed with her waiting for you then your brain is like meh this sucks I want that exciting fantasy from that website that we watched last night.

 

If you have ten mins to spare watch the video I linked of the TED talk. It's a real eye opener.

 

There is also a bunch of stuff on Your Brain On Porn | Evolution has not prepared your brain for today's Internet porn

 

Doctors are only recently waking up to the fact that this is a big issue among young men and some older men too.

[RonaldS]

I agree with above. If you can get it up to watch skanks get banged on the internet, you can get it up to bang your girl. If you can't, there's another issue and it's between your ears.

 

But the reality here, beyond your boner, is that unless you guys have that 1 in 3,976,788,059 relationship that is all-time amazing, this thing is over. Move on. Save yourself a lot of agony. Save yourself a lot of time.

 

Breaks = bad....pretty much every time.

[RonaldS]

Also, just saw your second post. Come on. That's an excuse. You know why? Because you can do the same thing in your head that you do while watching porn. It's called fantasizing. Close your eyes, imagine skanks getting nailed, and get off. And hopefully get your girl off.

 

This whole 'my brain has been rewired' bit is silly.

[acrosstheuniverse]

I just wanted to say I'm very sorry that you're going through this. It would be an attractive thing in a partner for me that somebody was confident and vulnerable enough to be able to figure out the problem and explain something so potentially upsetting and embarrassing. Many dudes would just dump the girl rather than explain that they've jerked off too much to porn and now they can't perform with a live person. So well done, it sounds like you've handled it very well so far.

 

However, I'd be wary of putting too much on this relationship working out. If she was really into you I doubt she'd be able to stomach two months of not seeing you, or from trying to find out how you are and stuff. She'd be by your side, maybe you wouldn't be sleeping together during that time but at least keeping the affection building and strengthening the bond. I just can't see that she's too into you anymore, personally I wouldn't leave somebody for what is a mental/physical issue when I could be supporting them through watching it.

 

I liken it to my own situation really, I'm female and I RARELY if ever orgasm with a partner. I've never come from sex, only from oral, and that's happened like four or five times in as many years. I feel terrible a lot that I'm not giving my partner that amazing experience of being able to do that to me and I worry I'll make him insecure about his abilities. But it's down to a) being on a lot of medication that dulls/numbs everything and b) I find it hard to let myself be as vulnerable as that around another person, I just can't let go. I can be the most sexually confident wild kinky skilled confident or submissive girl in the bedroom, but to actually let somebody int my mind and body to that extent I still find very hard. If a partner found it so offputting that he would rather break up with me or not see me for two months then I'd see us as not a match.

 

Just because you can't go all of the way all of the time doesn't mean you can't enjoy intimacy. I have had relationships with insane mad sexual passion where you accidentally turn each other on to insane hard wet levels just by stroking each other's back, and relationships where the sexual chemistry hasn't really been there but we get on so well and have so much in common and can't get enough of one another and have that intimacy that comes from constant touching, kissing, snuggling, that the lack of through the roof passion isn't an issue for me (the partner in those relationships probably thinks the sex is awesome, well from what they said anyway).

 

I admire what you're done so far in solving this issue and I think it will massively pay off in terms of your own sexual development (for example for years I only ever used a vibrator on myself, it always worked, but I was unable to get myself off using just my hands so obviously a man had no chance... vibrator broke one day, and after a while the sensitivity to those nerves I'd buzzed to numbness returned and I was more than able to get myself off manually without a toy). However, I don't think it's looking good for this girl. Either she's so upset thinking it's about how you feel about her that she can't feel the same anymore, she's disgusted by the porn watching (come on, who doesn't!?), or maybe she's just not mature enough to handle supporting you with the issue. But whatever it is, I would prepare yourself to be let down.

[readynow]

Well done for finding the root cause of your problem. I dated a man once who had this exact same problem and the 'cure' was him not watching porn or masturbating for a week before we had sex and it really helped. He had been alone for about 15yrs before me so his body was used to working with the porn - masturbation cycle.

 

 

About the break, did you need to go on a break? Could you have stayed together, did all the couply things together, made-out, cuddled and maybe even take this time to pleasure her with your mouth, fingers, toys?

 

 

I think staying together and just avoiding intercourse would have been a better idea. What is she (and you) to do with each others emotions and time for 2 months?

 

 

Breaks usually never end well.

[Priv]

Probably not. If she is willing to take a break for a few months the dedication to the relationship is pretty low. You also haven't been together that long. But I hope so for you.

 

 

You have ED. 'All in your head' is as real or sometimes more real than any physical problem.

 

 

-Did you have problems with it with your other 2 gf?

-How was your porn watching behaviour back than? My guess pretty much the same.

-You say you are in love, so I assuming you find your gf attractive. Did you get aroused by her, not physically, I am talking mentally.

 

 

Thing is. While it is certainly possible that porn watching behaviour influenced this all, I am also reading a desperate attempt to find the root of the problem. Reading it all I am thinking what most likely the doctor giving you cialis is thinking. You had a poor performance the first times due to stress, day off, porn, fear whatever + a gf who is taking it personally. This creates a incredible loaded need to perform excaberating the issue. It turns into a downward spiral.

 

 

Keep the cialis, or find some other drugs that work, and try it next time

with either your partner or someone new. It will give you the confidence boost you need and soon enough the pressure is off.

[KaliLove]

Why don't you put parental blocks on your computer (or have someone else do it so you don't know the password)? That way you can't access porn.

 

If you desperately need to masturbate, do it while thinking about your girlfriend instead of watching porn.

[wetandwindy]

Sorry I didn't answer any of your questions previously but I hated reading the negativity surrounding our break when you said it would probably end in us breaking up so I just didn't bother logging in again.

 

Well I met her on Friday for a drink for the first time in almost 2.5months. She didn't let me kiss her on the cheek to welcome her, bought her own drink before I could offer and although we chatted fine she seemed distant and said she was tired and ready to go home.

 

Not good but I persevered. Took her on a picnic tonight and she said she isn't comfortable around me any more despite me giving her no reason for this. Said she was anxious and nervous about going away with me for a weekend as planned incase my problem happened again and she was hurt for a second time.

 

To cut a long story short she broke up with me. I'm totally crushed by all of this. Literally have no idea what to do next.

 

Any time the opportunity to get intimate with a girl arises in the future I'll probably wimp out and avoid it as I can't face this happening again to me.

 

A guys manhood and sexuality is everything and for it not to work and to lose the girl you adore because of it not working is possibly one of the worst situations I can go through I think.

 

Anyway just wanted to let you know that you were right all along. Good game.