If You Edge (Delaying Gratification) You Might Be Slowing Your Recovery! I’ve been reading these forums for about a year and, since there are obviously a lot of logically minded intelligent men on here, I would imagine I’m not the only one trying to join some dots and figure out if there are any better, faster routes towards escaping from PIED. First, my backstory, skip ahead if you wish: · 40 years old. · Started watching P at 16, so 24 years ago. · PMO’d roughly twice a day on average. Rare to get through a day without at least one PMO. · Didn’t watch anything extreme or depraved. Didn’t experience too much guilt or shame around it. Would laugh about it with friends. · Only noticed ED about 8 years ago. · Realised it was probably PIED about 3 years ago. · Managed to quit porn over a year ago. I don’t crave it at all now. · Did 90 days no PMO half a year ago. · Since then I MO without P. Often only one day per week. · I don’t think of Pstars or P type sex acts when I MO. I focus my imagination on intimacy with a real woman. · Lastly but most importantly my PIED still persists but it is improving. My Realisation I read a lot about evolutionary biology, psychology and what makes people behave as they do. The more I read the more I realise that we are not as in control of ourselves as we think we are. Our behaviours and desires are formed through hardwired processes, an important and now well known example of these neural processes is the dopaminergic reward system. You’ve likely read about it on here but if you don’t know what this is then look up Andrew Huberman. He’ll give an explanation somewhere and you might find a lot of his other work very interesting. Essentially P addiction is the result of MOing to P enough times that you form a strong dopaminergic reward circuit in your brain which makes you want to partake in it again which reinforces the circuit yet further. When faced with a real life opportunity for sex the dopamine circuitry for triggering and maintaining an erection has eroded and been superseded by the PMO reward circuit so the erection doesn’t happen or is poor quality and/or short-lived. Through reading these forums I’ve learned that there are 2 broadly accepted ways to reverse this situation: · Option 1 - Avoid PMO completely for long enough (90 days or more) so the P based circuitry eventually withers and fades away. Hopefully you can become free of the addiction, not use P again, and thereby make space neurally so a healthy erection response to real women can reform. · Option 2 - Have sex with a real partner to rebuild the healthy erection response mentioned above. Opinions vary on whether this should happen after or simultaneously with option 1. These both make sense but I think there is a third option which can speed up the recovery process and can be helpful when you don’t have a partner to help with option 2. · Option 3 – Once you have completed option 1 to the point where you can MO safely without thinking about or watching P, you can MO sparingly using only your imagination and only thinking of normal women and normal sex. Just think of Jane next door who you find attractive and possibly a mild kink if necessary to get yourself hard. But use the mildest fantasy you can get it up to, e.g. Jane giving you a BJ rather than just missionary sex. Definitely no BDSM fantasies etc. Why no BDSM? Because any real sex you might encounter with a new partner is unlikely to launch straight into anything niche or extreme from the start. So you don’t want to have programmed yourself to only get an erection when there is latex and hot wax involved. You want to be programmed to get hard just because she’s naked. Option 1 is about removal from addiction. Options 2 and 3 are about reprogramming. Here’s the Special Sauce! This is what I have been leading up to. You may well already know about all of the above but I’m not aware that anyone has made this next realisation yet on the forums, and I think it’s potentially a gamechanger for many men on here. In a nutshell, delaying gratification could be seriously slowing your progress. I will explain. As a young man discovering sexual desire a simple pattern is learned: See a hot woman -> get an erection -> M -> O. And if you think about it an erection feels good already, M simply increases the pleasure and O is the height/end of the pleasure curve. So it’s even more simple than that: See a hot woman -> get erection and increase sensation to O. Now, as a mature man it is likely that you will have learned to delay your O. Firstly so you can last longer in bed to satisfy women you sleep with. Secondly because edging or delaying your O can make it more intense/pleasurable when you finally get there. Personally this has become standard procedure for me and I wouldn’t be surprised if many mature men do this as a matter of course. Why O quickly when watching P if you can enjoy it for longer have a better O, and also train yourself to be better in bed at the same time? But here’s my realisation. If you add delaying your O into the chain of events when using option 3 you are potentially making it more difficult for your brain to rewire. A young boy’s programming tells him ‘when I see a hot woman I’ll get hard and it can lead to O’. A mature man’s process is no longer that simple. If P hadn’t been invented he would have very strong programming from his youth to make him get a strong erection, so he can then afford to fight the urge to O without it harming his libido. But as sufferers of PIED we have damaged that natural programming from our youth. We no longer have that and we need to re-program ourselves. These dopaminergic reward circuits are primal and simple. They can’t be used to learn complex sequences of events. For a young boy the sequence is hot woman, get hard, fuck. That’s a nice simple circuit. If we are to rewire ourselves we need to make it easy for our brains. See/think of hot woman -> get hard -> M -> try not to O for a while -> eventually allow O. That’s the mature man’s MO routine. It’s too complicated to rewire the dopamine circuitry. The Solution The great news is that, assuming I’m right about all the above, I already have the solution: If you’re a mature man used to delaying orgasm when MOing, stop it! While you are trying to rewire yourself, your objective for MO needs to be to O as quickly as possible. This will send a clear message to your brain. Hot woman -> get hard -> O. Once you have overcome PIED and you have a reliable reward circuit well engrained which provides you with good erections you can return to delaying your O again. I’m sure you won’t forget how to do it! Thanks to everyone who read this far. I hope this will help people. Please let me know if you think this all makes sense or if you disagree. Either way, please let me know why so we can all learn from your view.
Agreed. What you are suggesting is mindful masturbation, but not edgeing for long. You menti0n BDSM. Did your porn habit escalate to BDSM porn? I am not being critical. It did so for me.
Almost. I'm suggesting no edging at all. Just get to O as quick as possible. I didn't personally watch BDSM porn I just used that as a catch-all acronym which illustrates my point.
Hey. No need to apologise dude. It was a fair question. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with watching BDSM porn anyway it's just becoming addicted that's the issue.
Agreed. Millions watch porn, including fetish porn. It is just 10% or so who are vulnerable and get addicted.
I'm trying the mix of option 1 and 2. I'm married and don't recommend option 3. I've tried thinking in real sex, real women, but it has not given me good results; I've erroneously thought in more women than just my wife, my imagination will go for much more than what the real moment can provide. If you are in a serious relationship with a single partner, dreaming about real sex instead of remembering porn scenes can still be damaging. Might be better, but it's not my current personal goal. In my case it has forced me to close my eyes and think about those fantasies while having sex with my wife, this with the intention of reaching O. So, I'm still unable to enjoy the moment, and to try to rescue the intimacy between the two I have to think about something that is not really occurring. I want to reach O, because of the physical moment I'm having with my wife, not because my brain is thinking on something else. Also, I've been asked why do I close my eyes, if I'm thinking about something or worst someone else, why cannot I just come by looking at her. Let me clarify a couple of aspects, I love my wife and I do like her. But my brain wiring is corrupted and is prioritizing fantasies instead of actual real time sensations. I want to go back and get hard, due to be dancing with her, and not because I have to close my eyes and think about a fake scenario or old memories, my goal is to be able to enjoy the actual moment.
I agree that you shouldn't edge. You're in a state of saturating dopamine concentrations in the pleasure centers of your brain (how high can I go before I O!). In other words, you're just the monkey pressing the stimulation to get your high. It has nothing to do with sex. I my opinion the same holds for sexual fantasies. You're still just a spectator. It is all visual stimulation while you're getting your high by saturating your pleasure centre.how does that relate to sex with a partner? I think the closest thing to real sex is to mindfull masturbate. To touch yourself and enjoy the feeling. Not just rubbing your genitals with the goal of getting your high, but feeling the sensation in your body in a loving matter, in a similar way that you would interact with a loving partner. Think healthy brain chemistry, think love for yourself
