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.

Boys, Don’t Twist an Arm to Get a Boner

When you realize what sexual arousal and the erection (boner) that goes with it are for—to make it so a guy’s penis can push its way into a woman’s vagina—it’s easy to assume that every erection will have a predictable starting point. In other words, if you are feeling tight in the crotch, you think you should be able to go, “Oh, yeah, caught some cleavage on that Melissa,” or “What would I expect? Jasmine just brushed up against me.” So, it seems like you should be able to justify erections and ask the question, “What logical reason would there be for my penis to think that I wanted to have sex with a girl right this minute?”

“It’s a common fear: You have an erection and it’s clearly caused by something that should not be stimulating to you.”

Well, of course, things aren’t that simple. You know that. You’ve no doubt awakened with a boner (“morning wood”) and your only real desire at that moment is to urinate. You might try to focus your foggy mind on the night behind you and try to remember a sex dream of some sort, but you won’t necessarily identify a fantasy lover who got you hot and bothered in your sleep. Generally, morning wood is the hardest boner you have (takes forever to go down) and seems the least justified (thoughts that usually seem sexy are pretty lame right then).

It’s a common fear: You have an erection and it’s clearly caused by something that should not be stimulating to you. Assuming you picture yourself an attractive heterosexual guy who will snag a beautiful bride in the coming years, it’s scary to think that something you consider perverted aroused you, particularly another guy or a younger child.

I Heart Boobies? Geez! Where Do I Begin?

I hate this new campaign to allow elementary school kids to display the word “boobies” at school. Of course, this wrist band/bumper sticker/T-shirt/etc campaign is really about breast cancer awareness. (Remind me again, what color goes with prostrate cancer awareness?) Oh, well, I guess it’s just a natural progression after the famously successful AIDS prevention campaign “Remember Your Fucking Rubber!” Remember those bumper stickers with the hilarious cartoon? Do you still have one those cuddly teddy bears that had “Remember Your Fucking Rubber!” tattooed on their derrieres? Okay, that was crude and I made it all up. My point is that in the desire to get this message as widespread as possible (and that’s presuming no dark motives), the “I ♥ Boobies” campaign creators are using a flamethrower of a word that leaves some scorched earth.

What’s My Motivation?

Sex problems are complicated by 1) a nasty tangle of lies we tell ourselves and 2) bad brain wiring. Mind you, bad brain wiring is not a birth defect. It’s the systematic way you connect things. There are both healthy and unhealthy connections. They were learned and they can be un-learned. (As a negative example, if I conked you on the head every time you smelled cinnamon rolls, you’d soon fear the smell even if you were half-asleep.) Escaping from unwanted habits, desires, and thought processes requires that we shine the light of truth on why we connect things the way we do and what really motivates us to think and act as we do.

“I look at naked people in the sex act is to feel power over them.”

Beat Porn by Killing its Value

If spend a lot of time looking at pornography, or looking for it, or thinking about it, or masturbating with thoughts of it, it means you value you it. The idea of having visual access to other people’s most sacred and intimate (and probably wrong) use of their physical bodies has been deemed by you to be worthy your thought, time, energy, and possibly your money. If you are aware of all that’s going on with viewing pornography and masturbating to it and sexual fantasy, you know you are giving far more than time and money to it. You may be risking your relationships and your self-esteem. In certain cases, you could be risking your job or your freedom. Okay, let’s not go there just now. The assumption here is that you wish you didn’t crave pornography and masturbation as much as you do right now. The given is that these activities, though bothersome, have value.

What’s So Bad About Looking at Pornography?

If you regularly look at photos and videos of nude people in sexy poses or engaged in sexual acts, who am I to say, “Shame on you!” It’s entertainment, right? You didn’t force those people to do that. They are providers. They are making a buck. You are a consumer. Paid or not, you are a legitimate viewer of the entertainment created for people like yourself.

If you’ve got no problem with it, I may not be able to convince you it is a problem. Personally, I knew it was a problem because I couldn’t get enough of it, or at least I knew I would have to spend a lot of money and time before I was, by some definition, fully satisfied. When I found new materials (“Oh, my gosh, a whole series on wicker furniture under natural lighting. Porn is my destiny!”), I’d gobble it up with all abandon. When I couldn’t stand it anymore and then had to masturbate to relieve the sexual pressure, I’d later find myself 1) worried about how far I’d gone, and 2) unhappy about how much time I’d just wasted, and 3) left with a painful yearning for something I sensed was patently unobtainable.