Positive Always Beats Negative

You’re disgusting! Quit it! There, does that help? No, probably not.

The particularly difficult thing about getting out of the rut of obsessive fantasy thoughts and compulsive sexual activity (like masturbation) is that feeling bad about it tends to fuel the whole thing. Masturbation, as pleasurable as it is, is a misuse of the body—or at least a less than optimum use. When you feel like crap, you accept that you should be treated like crap. I imagine that a lot of prostitution customers, men who crave the thrill of a professional orgasm, don’t see themselves as girlfriend-worthy at the moment.

So negativity helps speed up the cycle of temptation. But if unwanted thoughts and desires are what lead you into obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, how do you stop them without just yelling “No!” to your inner self all the time. Well, here’s a thought. Make all those condemnations positive. Instead of “Man, that’s a hot chick. Stop it, you jerk! Don’t think about her body!” think, “Man, that’s a hot chick. Yes, but it’s a real person who owns that body and may God bless how she chooses to use it. I choose right now to protect her privacy and respect her in my head.” See what I did there? I focused on things that are true or should be, not on what shouldn’t be. It’s just like a dieter choosing to be passionate about fresh, healthy vegetable dishes and enjoying improved scale readings instead of focusing on the pain of exercising longer or the deprivation of jumbo desserts.

Look, our brains didn’t get wired overnight. A lot of it is driven by tendencies that are permanent. I strongly believe, though, that through practice and positive reinforcement, we can coax our thought patterns to tend toward healthy thoughts and blow off destructive ones. And, let’s face it, obsessive sexual thoughts and fantasies are destructive. To give yourself completely to that cycle of temptation is to gleefully dive into a tailspin.

Be healthy. Think about what you think. If there’s problems there, think about adding thoughts, not subtracting them. If your timing is well chosen, the good thoughts will beat the bad. Brains work that way.

A Different Kind of How-To-Quit Video

My scattershot survey of how-to-quit-masturbating videos on the internet has identified these common characteristics: confusing psychology, pretzel-like philosophy, goofy advice, scare tactics, and, oh, um…let’s see, absolute boredom.

Here’s my curve ball. I hope you find it entertaining and engaging.

The Crude Life of Masturbation, Pornography and Sexual Fantasy

Dirty thoughts are fun. I bet the nun and the priest do it just out of earshot. What if Dick’s Sporting Goods were really about games involving dicks? Those girls walking into Fridays right now dressed up for Prom Night would be perfect for Girls Gone Wild, and what better place than a Fridays, with customers like me watching? Heck, you gotta relate to the real world this way to give your porn some meaning, don’t you?

Then again, I’m not psycho. Dirty thoughts aren’t, you know, who I am. I don’t want to take my kids to the The Muppets and have to fight off dirty thoughts about the moms and kids around me.

How can anyone really control their thoughts? Actually, that’s what this website is about.

Yet, there you have it. It’s so hard to do both, to be both. There’s an ownership mentality that goes with surfing pictures, “demanding” each new model displayed reveal their ready and willing equipment with nothing protected from my gaze or fantasy. The orgasm at the end of–Dear God, how many hours did I just waste–rewards an overwhelming sensation of conquering bought babes and servant studs. That mindset cannot simply be turned off. I continue to swim in the gutter even when I’ve been relieved, even when I’m not feeling the least bit sexy.

So, the world becomes a puzzle of potential double entendres, profanities, obscenities, and porn stars that I am charged with discovering and fleshing out.

Quit Masturbating: The 100 Word Solution

Masturbation is always a CHOICE. Desire the reward of FREEDOM badly enough to accept some momentary FRUSTRATION. Recognize that the ORGASM caused by masturbation is small REWARD compared to the feelings of POWER and CONTROL that come from viewing pornography and imagining sexual situations with VULNERABLE people. Write down what you really BELIEVE about how people’s HUMANITY, innocence, independence, and privacy should be respected. Acknowledge the difference between your SEX THOUGHTS and your CORE BELIEFS. Daily RECITE out loud your core beliefs. When sex thoughts arise, take DEEP BREATHS and confront them with the truth. RECORD and REWARD your PROGRESS.

Sex Addiction Recovery Sabotage

The war against your obsession with pornography and sexual fantasies and your compulsion to masturbate is a war between logical thinking and feelings. If you have a sex problem it means that your emotions were already the victor at some point. There’s no shortage of stories of people doing foolish things for lust.

Feelings are fickle things. If you’ve determined to move beyond masturbation, pornography, and sexual fantasy, you’ve probably experienced the powerful high of feeling like your determination has already conquered the beast. You’ve probably also experienced every other possible emotion in the process: fear that you can’t do it, shame for what you’ve done in the past, anger that you have to do without, frustration, sorrow that you wasted a lot of energy, and jealousy of people who seem to be able to indulge without limits or consequences.

Feelings often translate into beliefs and those beliefs based on feelings are simply not reliable. Unfortunately, some of those feelings-based beliefs can make for very formidable roadblocks on the path to recovery. Consider:

“One of the downsides of the internet is that you can find people who support almost any perversion.”

Boys Who Masturbate: Private! Keep Out!

In my previous article, Boys Who Masturbate, I detailed how I came to learn masturbation. I discussed the fact that I had over two years’ experience before I had a clue I wasn’t the only boy in town who played with myself regularly. Even then, it would have taken a lot to engage me in any sort of casual conversation about it. It was truly a guilty pleasure, and completely taboo.

Times are different now. YouTube lets kids see and be seen doing lots of outrageous and inappropriate things (though, usually not explicit). We’re in the era where a leaked celebrity sex tape is treated like it’s automatically everyone’s right to view. Song lyrics read like detailed sex manuals (“Baby in your ear! I put it your ear!”) When I saw jokes about teen masturbation in Transformers, there was no question in my mind that at least Hollywood thinks that the target audience—boys who mostly have yet to see their own semen—are already joking with each other about jerking off. Let’s compare an example of my experience to today: My interest in and education about sex coincided with my first first sight of semen (my surprise first ejaculation.) Today’s boys seem to acquire a library full of random (erroneous?) details about feminine hygiene, blow jobs, orgies, and gay sex. The average boy probably acquires a mini-PhD in semen by the time he becomes a producer. It’s hard to fault the ones who think, “I’ve learned to drive and now I have a car. There’s nothing left to wait for.”

“It’s not hard to imagine friends prodding each other into a shared experience. I’m here to say this is a bad idea.”

The Secret of Masturbation Video

Weiner and Schwarzenegger and Edwards Are Not Unique

The common response to politicians getting caught in sex scandals is “How stupid are they?” and “What a slimeball!” Indeed, it is easy to point fingers. And, certainly in these public cases, the enormous ego of the politician in error contributes greatly to the fallacy that the person was going to get away with it and to their pathetic belief that a firm denial would blast away the weight of any evidence.  But, let’s face facts: if you have obsessive compulsive behaviors in matters of sex, then you have been, are, or could be the slimeball people are pointing to.

Don’t Be Naked on Facebook

Please don’t be offended, but you can’t friend me on Facebook. If you see any profile for a Monroe, I guarantee it’s not me. I admire people who give advice like mine and fully identify themselves, but that’s not me. Only a small segment of people connected to me offline know that I share my experience with masturbation and pornography and sexual fantasy online. Honestly, I would be happy to share it with more people, but this is a need-to-know category and if you don’t need to know, you don’t want to know. That’s a healthy boundary.

A Clearer View of Sexual Intercourse

I doubt that anyone ever learned the facts of life, A-to-Z , in one afternoon-length lecture. I know my own journey of…prepare yourself… “sexual discovery” was piecemeal, ad hoc, and sort of lengthy. And it was definitely non-linear. I have a vague memory of a schoolyard playmate insinuating that sex involved a naked “boy”, a naked “girl”, and the boy’s penis doing something with an opening belonging to the girl. All I’m sure of is that at some point I understood that a married man had to aim his urine stream into his wife’s open mouth in order to produce kids. That’s why I’m now a monk, cloistered away from all females. No, but actually, I imagine that the truth wasn’t received much better. I mean, at age 10, I had the world figured out and it all made sense. And one thing I was sure of was that people potty in private and cover that part up the rest of the time. To suggest that men and women would fit their naughty potty parts together seemed so very wrong, an offense against nature. It wasn’t what people were designed for. Little did I know.