Doubting my sanity after quitting porn

Hey guys, I am not one of those people, that usually post on any forums, I am more of a quiet observer. But I am starting to question my own sexual orientation these last couple of days, so I had to do something about it and I apologize for the long post or if you feel it's off-topic (in that case, can you point me in the right direction pls).

So.. I'm 21, I'm studying in Germany (not german tho), I'm a decent looking guy, athletic, always well dressed but I am still a virgin. The closest I came to losing my virginity was about a year ago, when my friends tried to set me up with this girl that really liked me but I didn't like her back. I won't go into any details about her- she just wasn't my type. Anyway, I still tried to make things happen because it was time for me to finally have sex(social pressure). So when we were finally alone at my friend's house after the party he threw, we talked for a couple of minutes and I started kissing her (even though I wasn't attracted to her) and she really liked it, a few minutes later I undressed her and was kissing all of her body. She only had her underwear on, but I couldn't get an erection. Was it because of the fact that I didn't like her, or because it was all arranged and I knew I'll have to tell 5 of my friends how it went on the next day(she had already had sex with 2 of them) or was it because she had hair on places, where she wasn't supposed to (according to today's standards and western culture), or was it something about my sexual orientation- I have no idea. I apologized for not being able to perform and blamed it on a few plausible things (alcohol, being too tired, because the sun was already rising etc.). I hadn't PMO'd for 2 weeks prior to that moment for what it's worth, and this was the moment I relapsed and ever since I tried to forget about her and this whole thing, I continued fapping for months until a month ago I tried to give it another shot and here is where I am now - I haven't watched porn for 3 weeks and I have been completely PMO free for exactly 2 weeks. You might wanna know what kind of porn I used to watch - I started at the age of 12 as far as I can remember after being introduced to it by my friends (I really regret that) with the usual boy/girl stuff, then I discovered anal porn and as the years went by I really got into it and that was about 95% of what I watched (2 times a day on average). A couple of years ago I started watching those Big Black C*** videos and I was getting rly excited whenever I watched something I hadn't seen before. After that period I would just watch the occasional gay porn video along with the other 95% of what I described, not being aroused by the gay porn though. A couple of months later I would just try to fap to it for no apparent reason without a lot of success, months later I unfortunately had success and was aroused by it. Back when I was 19, my only explanation for this was the love for anal porn and the false perception of the sexual reality porn has created for me. I escalated to anal masturbation with vegetables etc (since I didn't have any girl to do things with I would just do things to myself), and most of the times I liked it. Once a month I would spice things up and would not only watch anal porn (boy/girl 99% of the time) but would also play with my ass and imagine I was the girl in the video. I didn't take seriously any of this back in the day.I almost never watch lesbian porn, unlike most guys; I just need to see a guy in there I guess lol. Whenever I orgasmed, any of the thoughts about men I explained would disappear and I would feel "sane" for a couple of hours.
More on my background: I've always had crushes on girls, I've always been shy around them,I always preferred talking with guys (without any sexual desires towards them), cuz I was feeling insecure around girls.And I never had homosexual fantasies with any of my friends or any other guy I ever met
After qutting PMO this month (which once again consisted of 99% anal boy/girl and BBC stuff and me picturing myself as the girl very often) it's getting worse. While I am in bed trying to get some sleep I can only think of me being dominated by a bigger more mature man (not someone in particular) LOL. It's the idea that gets me aroused. I even made a post on an anonymous app where I said that I am looking for an older man to have fun with and the minute someone replied I deleted the app cuz I panicked. Whenever I see a beautiful girl on the street I would find her interesting and imagine her naked, but I rly need to see a girl, in order to fantasize about her and not about men.
So tell me guys, what have I done to myself, what's going on?

1. Am I gay?
   
   
2. Am I some sort of a girl trapped in a guy's body (if such things exist) ?
   
   
3. Was porn the reason I got here or was it preventing me to see who I really am all these years (in that case 1. or 2.)?
   
   
4. Is it some sort of HOCD I read on the Internet recently?
   
   
5. Am I mentally disturbed?
   
   
6. ?!?!?
   Thank you all if you read that post and again I'm sorry if this wasn't the right place to share my problem. Pls help
   

 

Thanks for posting. The whole community benefits when we get real, honest stories.

1. I'm going to guess "no", for reasons I'll mention below.

2. I see no evidence of gender identity issues in your post, so I'd discard that thought... unless there is more you want to talk about.

3. A big YES. To what degree only time will tell, but especially since you started at 12, you never really had a chance to develop a non-porn sense of sexuality. For what its worth, understanding one's sexuality is about more than just having sex... it can be just knowing your emotional and biological reactions to different things and different kinds of people.

4. Most likely, yes.

5. No. You had an addiction, and it has had its consequences. It has also give you all sorts of false data about who you are,

To the "are you gay" thing and the evening with that one woman, here's my take:

Not being attracted to a particular woman doesn't make you gay, and being uncomfortable when that person is being forced on you is entirely natural. The common narrative is that it should be a guy's dream come true to have a woman come on too strong to him, but it isn't always the case. If you were there for social pressure and had no interest in this woman, that is fine. Wanting some sort of emotional attachment or attraction prior to a sexual encounter does not diminish a guy's sexuality. In fact, I'd hold on to that tightly, because it is a part of you that didn't come from porn. You mentioned that she'd already slept with two of your buddies and this clearly is a turn off for you. There are likely other things about this situation that you didn't like... you don't need to share them with us, but they are probably important to keep in mind. No where is it written that a straight guy needs to enjoy every single chance at straight sexual contact he gets. We get this (I hope so at least) more about women... they can be totally grossed out by a guy and not want him in the least, but not be a lesbian. I am 100% straight, and I've been in (very few) situations like this, one involving a bachelor party, and there was absolutely nothing arousing about the situation. The whole thing was just gross. I don't fit the typical guy stereotype, but I am fine with that.

You said you were off of porn for two weeks which is good, but if you started at 12, then a two week streak isn't going to show very much recovery. I would not expect PIED to bounce back after two weeks. At the very least, I would not consider it evidence for being gay.

Turning to porn after a particularly embarrassing or emotionally damaging event such as that is very common, and it is a way the addiction gets deeper and deeper into us.

Remember that porn lies. It lies about sex, about what makes a man a man, what makes a woman a woman, what we're supposed to like, it gets deep into us and tells us lies about ourselves. There are layers and layers and layers of lies on all of our brains... not only because of our porn addictions, but because we live in a pornified world. Think about it... if you never watch porn, you're still listening to comics, watching TV shows and movies, making friends, and many of those people are immersed in porn, so it gets into our worldview inevitably. A big part of my own recovery was discarding the porn data, and starting from the ground up, and figuring out what I believed about sexuality. I think a lot of what we understand as "relationships" separate from sex actually tells us more about sex than much of the direct talk about sex... bonding, trust, connections, and so forth.

HOCD isn't something I've gone through personally, but I've seen so much talk about it on these boards, as well as guys who end up into "tranny porn". Those guys seem to have the hardest time. I will say that pretty much every addict who has been at it for a while has some sort of kink, fetish or whatever that is their go-to, and is the hardest to kick when the want to quit.

Keep at it, keep reading, and know that your lost post-porn will be so good, you'll wonder why you didn't quit earlier. You seem like a really smart guy, and one with great potential in life as well as relationships, and you have a lot to work for.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my post and reply!
I just have some questions about the stuff you mentioned above. You talked about PIED and let's say that this is the reason I am not able to "perform" with a real girl, along with the other stuff I mentioned about that night with the girl.
1.How long will it take for me to recover, since I'm "damaged" from all that porn I've been watching.
2.Do I have to wait all that time before I give it another shot with some other girl, cause I really don't wanna embarrass myself in front of the ladies?
3.Are there any ways of making that recovery period last shorter?
4.Is there anything else I should avoid, besides porn, that I am forgetting?
5.I am really missing porn right now, do you think it will get easier soon (am I allowed any "cheat days" in the future lol)?
6.Is only porn off-limits or should I also abstain from masturbation in general?

If you can think of anything else that would help me, I would rly appreciate you sharing this with me, and thanks again for understanding my situation!!!

PS: Oh and if you have any questions about this whole thing, so that you can give me more accurate answers I will be glad to answer them.

 

On actual time estimates I will defer to others. My age skews a bit higher than others here, so my own experience is not emblematic. The reason that is important is because first exposure is important, and earliest access to high speed internet is important. I'm 35, I was 14 when I got dial up, and around 20/21 when I got DSL. It was an early DSL, and it would be another several years before streaming video was viable. But, think less about days and weeks and more about months... maybe even years in some extreme cases. If you've been able to do a couple weeks, then that is a positive sign. More than a couple days can be troublesome for a lot of guys, so I doubt yours will be a worst case scenario. My guess is that you're catching this young enough that you're going to reverse things more easily.

The best way to shorten the recovery period is to take recovery as seriously as possible. Go "hard mode", which eliminates all porn, masturbation, and anything resembling a substitute. If you relapse, get back onto it as soon as possible... don't give yourself a vacation from rebooting just because you relapse. "cheat days" won't help you at all. Personally, I think blanking your mind of anything sexual and going into a complete asexual mode for a while is a good thing. It is like white washing the canvas so your new, more authentic sexuality can take its place. I think a lot of guys cheat themselves out of a better recovery by constantly worrying about how good of a boner they'll get or the next time they'll get laid. Porn and real sex are two different things, but your brain doesn't know that (yet), so thinking about real sex will trigger porn pathways. A good example of this is masturbation... chances are you'll masturbate to the thoughts that really got you aroused in porn. Another example is how a lot of guys here will quit porn only to end up finding escorts or something, and trying to live out whatever their porn fantasy was. That is an extreme instance, but also a good thought experiment. The temptations will run high as we quit porn to try to act out porn or find something to replace it that is remarkably like porn. Social media and dating websites/hookup websites are very, very sneaky like this.

 

Hey, I got back from vacation 2 days ago and I got sick the same day. Not having anything else to do and being exhausted and bored as hell, I relapsed today. I felt rly shocked after masturbating and I knew what I'd done. There was a lot of tension down there btw, so I guess It's not the worst thing in the world. And there goes my high score: 27 days no porn (21 MO-free aswell). I'll give it another try, just hope not to get sick in the near future, cuz that's when I'm most vulnerable.

 

27 days is pretty good. The best way to not let that progress go to waste is to make the relapse as short as possible. My mistake for a long time was having an "aw, f&*k it" attitude and it would take me weeks or months to try rebooting again, so I was letting my progress fade each time.

Yeah, sick, bored and exhausted are definitely three strong vulnerabilities!

 

1. Am I gay? absolutely not
   
   
2. Am I some sort of a girl trapped in a guy's body (if such things exist) ? Nope
   
   
3. Was porn the reason I got here or was it preventing me to see who I really am all these years (in that case 1. or 2.)? its the porn causing mental perversions
   
   
4. Is it some sort of HOCD I read on the Internet recently? its a mental perversion induced by Porn, we can give any names to it.
   
   
5. Am I mentally disturbed? definitely distorts and shatters the mental structure

friend,
explore 'inner engineering', just google it. this will help you. this helped me immensely over the last 1.5 years. transformed me completely, I could come out of porn and all the baggage that comes with it, felt inner joy for the first time in my life. All i would say spend some time evaluating it and find it for yourself.
#UnplugWithSadhguru
wish you the best.
your friend

 

Hi guys, this is the first time I've been on this forum since the end of July. And I've got some bad news. I relapsed again - this time it was day 30 - I fapped 3 times that day and then 2 times on the two following days - I just couldn't stop. ;( It all happened when I was feeling rly good (more present, more confident, more masculine) and I wanted to take so much action with any random girl I met on the street, but just never happened and I started questioning the whole nofap thing, like: this was supposed to work or: why am I having a hard time abstaining from porn when nothing good is happening to me anyway (results-oriented). And today while I was studying for an exam in October I just couldn't focus on what I'm reading unlike the previous week. All I could think about was that bad habbit. I felt that I had to look for help since things started to get out of control again. I don't know what has to happen for me to completely get rid of fapping and porn but I am rly desperate right now.

 

Get back on track again. Try go 40 days next time. Abstaining from porn and MO is not a sprint but a marathon. Don't buy into the idea that you should do what you want as long
as it feels good. That is total BS. Nofap is a behavior modification and it takes longer than 30 days to get over it. So do yourself a favor and start over. Don't look at this as a failure
but as a restart point. But it is completely doable.