Stop betraying yourself
Why acting on the belief that "everyone else does it" will never justify damaging your own well-being plus a short history of the human race.
You know what an urge is. The strong, hardly avoidable feeling of craving something specific. Whether it is eating a cookie or watching pornography, urges are hard to resist. And as nobody wants to just give in to it, we find excuses, make up stories or tell ourselves that this time does not count, has no negative side-effects and so on. Now imagine these powerful excuses losing all of their persuasiveness, because you instantly know they are untrue and evil. This is the exact goal of this article.
1. Porn is natural
Pornography is not natural. Read that sentence again until you understand how far reaching it is. Think about it. The first nude print-magazines appeared in the 1960s, the first mainstream DVD-Movies in the 80's and the Hub is probaly younger than you are (the website was first launched in 2007). Watching porn on a phone is only possible scince the last 15 years. That is 15 years of the entire human history.
So, no. Watching porn is everything but normal or natural. There also will be a seperate article-series on the history of pornography in the next few weeks.
2. Everyone is watching it
Statistics show that for men, more than 95 % masturbate somewhat frequently. Most of them view porn, too. And while those numbers are significantly lower for females, they of course masturbate or watch porn too, just less frequent. Is that an excuse to do so too?
What if I tell you that in the mid of the last century, nearly all of western men smoked daily. Does this make smoking healthy? Is it justified to smoke becauase others do so too, or does your body care about your lungs only?
The same goes for porn. Yes, you could watch porn, in fact, no one is hindering you. But should you? If porn or jerking-off would be good, you would not even need excuses, would not read this article right now and would not feel ashamed and guilty afterwards. While relapsing, as smoking once, does not immediately kill you, it will set you back and built up to something catatstrophic in the end.
3. I will just peek
No you wont. Why would you even want to peek at all?
4. This will not destroy my progress
When learning a new language, or working out, this statement indeed is true. Your ability gets better day by day and missing training once has no negative effects compared to the progress you made in the last months. Unfortunately, porn and masturbation however are way more neurobiological. For porn, as for alcohol or drug addiction, a single relapse after years of sobriety can ruin everything, as your until then clear mind falls back into its old patterns. With masturbation, the negaative effects are even measurable. After orgasm, temporary biological hormone changes set in, making one feel tired and relaxed. This however also means that with a single orgasm, you will reset your body to zero.
5. “I can control it.”
Controling an urge requires a variety of difficult techniques and a lot of practice. Anyone sucessful, not only in NoFap, but in overall life, is stronger than his primal urges, which means that with every single time one resists an urge, self-control and power of mind grow, while one gets mentally weaker with every realpse.
This means that in the end, you cheat on yourself and your future. Always remember that, even if your brain wants to tell you something else.
These are the excuses your brain makes up in order to watch porn or masturbate. Do not let it fool you! Instead, think about how good and fulfilled you feel when abstaining from it.
As I want to improve this newsletter continuously, you can directly give me any input, be it a problem you face, a topic you want to have covered or simply a short feedback. Please also excuse this newsletter not arriving Saturday and at a diffrent time, as I am currently experimenting. Stay free and until next week.
I read this completely.
As someone suffering from this addiction, I can testify that you are spot on. Especially when one was in a good streak of days without masturbating and suddenly relapses.
This energy suddenly runs away from you and you become depressed.
I have been battling this since I was 9.
And I regretted ever falling or knowing what pornography is; I wish I had never done so.
I'd love you to write on the effect of masturbation on decision-making.