Back to Square One

It’s been about 6 months since my last post and I have to admit I have fallen back into my ancien regime. I have finished University and am now back home. During exams season I started to masturbate more, but generally only to music videos and soft material. My tastes became more extreme as the season went on and I started to masturbate even more until I was back to my post-renaissance self. It is therefore my intention to get back to a stage where I am not driven by a desire to look at porn, especially the very extreme and graphic kind. To do this I will not look at porn of any kind from this moment on. I will also aim for refraining from masturbation for one month (excluding sex) as I found the 21 day challenge I did almost a year and a half ago very useful. So there we have it, I knew changing the root of my behaviour would be difficult and take time, but I didn’t know quite how difficult and quite how long it would take. Hopefully this time I can use my previous experience to my advantage.

TEDx talk on Porn by Gary Wilson

 

Quite an interesting talk. The notion that the brain is always after “new mates” ran true to me. My pornographic tastes are always fluctuating, and I always find myself search out new porn. The weight of anecdotal evidence that’s now appearing with men speaking out against compulsive and addictive behavior towards porn is overwhelming. There’s even a group of people on The Student Room with the aim not to masturbate for the whole of 2013. I am seriously considering quitting for good.

Handjobs and Blowjobs

In some previous posts I had questioned whether I should classify handjobs and blowjobs as masturbation. I decided today that on my new calendar for this year I should denote them differently to get a more accurate picture of my sexual experiences. So, henceforth either a job of any kind shall be denoted as ‘J’. My thoughts were drawn to this because of a wonderful session I had last night with my girlfriend. My house is currently empty as the rest of my housemates have yet to arrive. This meant that I could moan and gasp and say her name as much (and as loudly) as I wanted. It did take her a while to get me there (more because this was the second time that night than anything else), but when I came it was VERY intense! The sad thing is that it’ll be difficult for us to be in that same situation for some time.

I also got to thinking about the differences between men and women over verbal noise during sex. I’ve known women who are very shy about making too much noise, but generally it seems more acceptable for a woman to gasp and moan loudly. Perhaps this is something to do with the perception of women as the ‘weaker sex’, not being able to keep a lid on their sexuality? Or perhaps it’s a case that their orgasms are just more intense and therefore uninhibit them enough to be loud? Personally I believe it is more something to do with social-conditioning than physical intensity. If you moan and scream to your heart’s content, forget the world and the people living next door, you will more likely experience a more fulfilling orgasm. IMHO.

Thoughts and Reflections

I’ve been looking at my masturbatory habits for around a year and a half now so I thought it might be time to take a general overview of how I think everything has gone and how I should proceed. For November and December I masturbated to porn 7 times in each month. Previously it had only been a couple of times a month. I was thinking about this last night and wondering whether it was such a bad thing in grand scheme of things. My original reason for wanting to curtail my masturbatory habits was because of my sexual dysfunction of not being able to come to orgasm during sex with girlfriends. My frequent, regular and habitual masturbation had desensitised not only my penis, but also my mind to sexual intercourse.

Through self-reflection and self-discipline I believe I have solved this problem. Since I started analysing my masturbatory patterns and started to cut back and reduce my masturbation to graphic porn I have been able to cum whilst having sex with my sexual partners. From this singular objective I have been successful. I have become a sexually mature man and have shuck off the detrimental patterns of my teenage years. (Please excuse any psycho-babel, I have been watching series after series of Frasier).

I was watching a sex education programme a couple of weeks ago. It was produced in the early 2000s and presented by two female sex therapists (I forget the name of the show). The topic of the programme was masturbation, so I thought it would be worth a watch. One point they made early on was not to think of masturbation as masturbation, but rather as “manual sex”. Whether with a partner or on your own they considered masturbation as sex first and foremost. I’m not completely sure I agree with them, but I thought it was an interesting idea I would share. Also during the programme they did an informal survey of male masturbatory habits. Almost all the men they interviewed masturbated multiple times a day, sometimes upto four or five times. When I started to become concerned I was masturbating at an average rate of 0,8 times a day, which compared with the above statistics appears minimal, and compared with how I’m doing now I almost appear celibate! I have no idea how much the average man in the UK masturbates and usually distrust figures that claim to attest to such knowledge. Either way it seems to me that I have my masturbation under control, and in such a way that it does not affect my sex life; which is the whole reason I started this quest.

My foray into tantric masturbation has been the result of a bit of mission creep on my part, but I think it could be something to look into if you have the time and patience. Being in my third year of University it is difficult to find the free time, peace and quiet (living in a house with three other guys) to meditate and progress. The distinction between orgasm and ejaculation in this (and other) disciplines is a helpful one to learn and get used to if you want to enjoy masturbation or partner sex with some ‘added extras’. Frankly ejaculatory control is an excellent tool to have in the bag if you can master it. Another important thing I’ve learned from this is about kegel/pelvic floor muscles. The regular exercise of the ‘clinching’ muscle (the one you use if you want to stop urinating mid-flow) is often recommended to women who suffer, or are likely to suffer, from incontinence. For men it is also used for the same reason, but a strong kegel muscle can also be used to enhance sex. This is done by using the muscle to regulate orgasms and prevent ejaculation. I won’t go into detail here, but search around and you’ll find plenty of information to do with ejaculatory control and kegel muscles. Despite learning interesting ‘sex tips’, I wouldn’t recommend tantric masturbation for someone who thinks they are suffering from a similar dysfunction as I was. It is tricky and could lead to you becoming obsessed with reaching the goal of multiple orgasms rather than becoming a sexually mature man, as you may have simply shifted your compulsive pornographic masturbation to compulsive tantric masturbation. “HANDLE WITH CARE” would be my disclaimer.

Next I’d like to deal with a few things that castimonia said in a comment on a previous post. Firstly I’d like to say I have really appreciated his insights and comments on this blog, but a couple of differences on our approach to this have surfaced and I think it would be helpful to point them out. In the first paragraph of the comment he talks about remaining “abstinent from ANY sexuality for a period of 30 to 90 days” including sex (of any kind) with a partner. My goal here it not to destroy or eliminate my sexuality, far from it. My aim is to enhance it. I have done masturbatory abstinence periods before, but all I found them useful for is proving to myself that I didn’t need to masturbate regularly or frequently. Admittedly this is good knowledge to have and is worth doing, but I don’t think it is necessary to sacrifice your entire sexual existence. A period of abstinence from masturbation (particularly from pornography) is helpful and I would recommend doing it for a period of around 21 days or a month, but if you are a single man or in the early stages of a relationship allow yourself the ability to have sex. So long as it is not compulsive or obsessive you should be fine.

On the second paragraph I do agree that my mind has been warped by pornography and the sexualised media of our time. Truth be told I have become more attracted to her, but I do think the relationship may have run it’s course. The second point I also agree with if I was searching for a compatible life partner. I have been with and met women who were gorgeous, but with awful temperaments and personalities. If I was after a long term relationship I would put personality over looks, but as it stands now, that’s not what I’m after. I believe I can allow myself a little vanity when it comes to choosing a girlfriend. I’d like to congratulate castimonia for getting married and I hope he has a happy and fulfilling life.

In the third paragraph he mentions sex not just being about orgasms. The reason I do most things is because I enjoy them and it is the same for sex, and dare I say, masturbation. Because I am not in the same kind of relationship as him I feel we have a different approach to the “goal” of sex. To him it’s an affirmation of love and commitment, but to me it’s about the raw pleasure and thrill that sex brings. I don’t mean to say that one is better than the other, simply that we think about it differently, and a young single man shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to learn about himself that sex with a partner brings. Without sex I would never have considered my masturbatory habits to be compulsive or obsessive and be spurred on to curtail them.

Numbers For September

I did masturbate that much or at least I didn’t seem to. I had a lot of 3-4 days gaps between masturbating, which I think is a sign of me becoming less addicted to it.

My total masturbation was 0,33 so 2,33 times a week.

I masturbated to porn on average 1,4 times a week.

So, I masturbated to porn 60% of the time, which is worse than last month, but only by a wee bit.

I’m back at Uni now. My girlfriend is still wanting to wait until she gets onto a pill that doesn’t try to turn her inside out, so we’ve just been playing with each other sans-sex. I’ve been counting our encounters (oral sex, handjobs, etc) as masturbation without porn because it’s sexual stimulation without extreme graphical images of extremely attractive women, even though I’m being stimulated by another person. I could count it as sex, because frankly they’re the same reasons I don’t count normal sex as masturbation. So perhaps I should count it a sex and not masturbation without porn.

Either way, I’m not totally happy with the relationship. I’m not massively attracted to her, but the fact is she’s just too nice and I don’t want her to be upset. So that get’s me thinking that it’d be worse to keep her hanging on. I would quite like to be the free, young man about town, hooking up with (or at least trying to) all the pretty young things out there. It’s my last year of Uni, and I just want to enjoy myself. I think for the first time in my life, I’m actually confused.

Male contraception: The Pill for Men (Stolen from the Economist)

THE array of women’s birth control developed in the last 50 years reads like a trip through Willy Wonka’s factory. Patches or pills; rings and coils; injected, implanted or inserted, women have more options than ever before to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy. Which makes the lack of progress on male contraception all the more striking. Men today rely on the same two methods they had in the 1950s, vasectomy and condoms. But vasectomies are drastic, and lads often claim that condoms are fiddly and spoil the mood. The burden of birth control, then, rests squarely on women.

That may at last be about to change. A new drug, called JQ1, has proven to be a foolproof male contraceptive—though the males in question are for now murine, not human. JQ1 began life as an anticancer treatment, but it caught the attention of Martin Matzuk at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Dr Matzuk noticed that the gene it targets is similar to another, called BRDT, which is only active in the testes. By turning other genes on and off, BRDT governs the production of healthy sperm. Mice with their BRDT gene removed are sterile, and a study from 2010 found that European men with mutations in BRDT are more likely to have reduced sperm counts.

When it binds to BRDT, JQ1 accomplishes a similar effect temporarily. As Dr Matzuk and colleagues report in Cell, male mice given a relatively mild doses of JQ1 for six weeks showed an 89% drop in their sperm count, and the sperm they did produce were terrible swimmers. In the final month of testing, those which received a high-enough dose of the drug did not beget offspring, despite the fact that each was provided two receptive females and all displayed normal male desires, while mice not on the drug were fathering two litters a month.

Crucially, these effects were fully reversible. Once taken off the drug, the males reverted to normal sperm counts, sufffered no permanent damage to their reproductive organs, and sired typical numbers of healthy offspring. Mice on higher doses of the drug, or treated for longer, were slower to recover, but they, too, regained their prowess within one to three months.

That is welcome news for drug development. At the moment, research into male contraceptives has focused on testosterone-based drugs. They have drawbacks: higher levels of testosterone might increase the risk of prostate cancer or have knock-on behavioural effects (anabolic steroids, which mimic testosterone in the body, have been linked to “roid rage”). Worse, testosterone’s contraceptive effects are not uniform across populations. It appears to work better among Chinese men, for instance, than Caucasians.

The next step for Dr Matzuk and his team will be to tweak the structure of the drug so that it dovetails even more snugly with BRDT. This ought to minimise the odds of its own undesirable side effects. If all goes to plan, Dr Matzuk thinks, a human version the drug might be available to men within a decade. Womenfolk can’t wait to see him proved right.

Yet Another Wet Dream

I didn’t end up masturbating last night as I’ve got pretty severe tooth ache (wisdom teeth coming through) and paracetamol and antibiotics don’t exactly make me feel sexy! Anyway I decided to go to bed early and I set my alarm to go off at 8am. It goes off, I reset it for 10am then go back to sleep. During this time I dreamt that one of my ex-girlfriends and I were on the bus. We were feeling each other up and she started to masturbate me. Just as we got to the bus stop, I came. Now if that’s not symbolism I don’t know what is!

Post-Wednesday Debriefing

So, it turned out that we didn’t have sex, but we still played around for a while. One thing that disturbed me was that as she was masturbating me I was tensing trying to cum and not relaxing and getting into the zone. As a result, the pain that I had originally felt when I lost my virginity came back. It wasn’t as intense a pain as it had been, but it worried me. I think it was more of a psychological thing rather than a physical “I’ve been masturbating too much” thing, as I hadn’t since Saturday. I have my doubts about this girl, and that’s what’s probably making me so tense. She’s a lovely girl with a great bubbly personality and I do like being around her and talking with her, but she is a little overweight and I just can’t shake the feeling that I “could do better”. The last three women I’ve slept with have all been in the top half of the spectrum at least, and from a masculine perspective it feels almost like I’m going backwards. I think I’ll just wait until we’re both back at Uni and take it from there, as we’ll only be seeing each other maybe once in the next two months.

Seeing My Lady Friend On Wednesday

So it’s been over a month and a week since I’ve last had sex, which is a little bit depressing. This should be rectified on Wednesday though. She’s only coming for the day, but we’ll be spending most of that time in bed I hope. Because of this I thought to myself yesterday that I shouldn’t masturbate for the next three days and save myself. I saw her on Saturday, but we we’re in public so no hanky-panky. It struck me how horny I was when I got home. I masturbated twice, but then I thought about how horny I’d be if I went three days without and how exhilarating it would be on Wednesday. I honestly can’t wait!

Numbers for June

Here are my Masturbatory numbers for June:

General Sexual Attivity: 0,57. So 3,99 times a week.

General Masturbation: 0,53. So 3,71 times a week.

I also recorded how many time I masturbated to porn: 0.33. So 2,31 times a week and 62% of my General Masturbation.

I only had sex once last month, due to the break down of my last relationship, which shuck me up quite a bit. I’m seeing a new girl who’s a virgin. We haven’t had sex yet, but we’ve done everything else. She actually has made me cum using her hand, which only 2 women before have managed to do before. I think this signals that I’m quite comfortable with her and perhaps just more comfortable with myself. I’ve started to do press ups, sit ups and weight lifts to try and tone up before I go back to Uni in October. I’m stick of being a weakling!