Figurative porn (WARNING: post is not for the weak or faint of heart)

I've noticed some threads lately that touch on the issue of whether fantasy while masturbating is any different than using porn for masturbation. For the most part, I tend to think they are, but with some differences that tend to be spawned by the individual's inner workings.

Word of warning - this is not an explicit triggering post - but I'm not gonna lie - it's blunt, and shows the depths of a many year compulsive/addictive masturbation habit, some of it porn-related, some of it not. I'm not diving into lurid specifics, but there is a bit of an ugly view of how I used to function. It's simply not pretty - and I'm not relaying it to push buttons or titillate - if nothing else - maybe someone else will not feel so dirty, shameful/guilty, realize they're not alone.

Basis for the following: I never found myself porn addicted as so many have suffered. Oh, I've seen my share of it, rest assured. In the earliest years of the marriage, when I found myself frustrated by the infrequent physical contact (either sexual or non-sexual), part of which was caused by sporadic work-related trips for me or her (we actually worked for same company for 3 years), when she was out of town on a job that spanned a week, I would occasionally make a trip to a video rental place (back when the standard vhs rental places had that back room with the curtain over the entrance), get a few movies, and no, I'm not making this up - I more than once spent 2-3 days watching full time, masturbating repeatedly, incessantly, sleeping only briefly before waking up from a sex dream because big surprise, I was hearing the sounds because the movies were still playing - I'd fallen asleep because I'd literally masturbated to the point of exhaustion/passing out. I barely ate, if I did odds are it was because I called for pizza or chinese to be delivered. Perhaps the most appalling thing to come out of that - once I'd actually called for the pizza to be delivered, and decided I wanted to work in a quick episode/orgasm before it got there. The doorbell was ringing, repeatedly, while I was trying to get that one more orgasm in - and obviously if you've been pleasuring yourself repeatedly for hours, or days, the orgasms don't always happen as easily. I am actually surprised the guy hadn't given up and left - but I got the orgasm, ran for the door with money in hand, and not that I really cared whether it was obvious what was going on, I didn't think to turn the sound down or stop the movie - so hiding behind the barely opened door, still standing there sans clothing, I hand the money out, but the door had to open wider to get the pizza in, and the soundtrack was clearly audible - the pizza guy gets a smile on his face, says enjoy the pizza - then in a scene that you'd think would only be lame enough to be in a porn movie, he says point blank - you were my last delivery this round - mind if I check it out? Screwed up tho it is, I only get shy about not having clothes on if it's a physically intimate situation - otherwise, I tend to be pretty casual about it - taking the pizza, I basically told him to help himself to the movie. Trust me, sports fans - it's a pretty odd thing to be sitting on one's sofa, eating pizza naked and chugging from the two liter, while the pizza delivery dude watches your rented porn and masturbates just as casually as you casually sit there naked and eating. Afterwards, he simply left, and I obviously resumed what I'd be doing.

Yes, I'm aware that this is about as ugly as a masturbation addiction can get.

I didn't do it every time she was out of town, and it didn't seem to affect me emotionally in a negative way. I wasn't savoring women being portrayed as sex objects/victims - I knew from the first that my driving force was that we were not having sex very much, primarily because of her issues and inhibitions, but neither were we exploring even some basically vanilla things I wanted to explore/try. So, the wonders of porn movies, I could for a brief few hours or days have as many orgasms as I wished, while watching whatever I wished. Yes, for those of you who are younger, that's what porn used to be, not the easy button clicks it is now.

And I tired of it quickly - I found during the last couple of bouts of that that I went thru, that it did nothing for me - I could no more get aroused from it than I could have a masturbation orgasm to it. Why? Because it dawned on me - that the types of porn I rented - not acts/fetishes/triggers of the stereotypical type - I realized that my selection was based on finding a vhs cover that showed the actresses, and that I picked movies that had actresses that closely resembled my spouse - either in facial resemblance, or physique - sometimes it was even more selective, if I couldn't find one that closely resembled her, I'd settle for ones that had very similar anatomical features. I realized that I was only renting stuff that reminded me of her in some way - because she was the only woman I wanted - I realized that I couldn't even orgasm from masturbation unless it was her as the fantasy - her eyes, her facial expressions of arousal and orgasm.

Except from the pizza delivery incident, she knew, I did not hide my masturbation marathons - she has never expressed a porn interest, the one time we watched the classic Caligula, she actually fell asleep while we watched it. I know what her visual triggers are, but she simply never has admitted that yeah, there are a few types that draw her attention. But back on track - when I realized that she was my sole non-porn fantasy, when I realized that I was merely picturing her face during those marathons, when I realized I no longer cared to watch it again, I felt that to be honest with her, I should tell her of my revelation - this is a good thing, right? You, my spouse, are the only person who can give me orgasm that I truly enjoy and do not feel dirty/ashamed of afterward. So I told her - and as previously discussed in another of my blog postings (I think), it took something that I felt was complimentary, a positive, and became something that she could use to her advantage, to her control over me. It was merely perceived as another form of control/power, a source of confidence that I wouldn't be looking elsehwere/cheating on her, because she was the only woman I wanted.

So, the occasional porn use no longer necessary/effective, masturbation became something I used to ease the appetite/desire for her - a folly, it was always too insatiable. Through later years, as I realized that I was even more strongly being treated as the necessary life support system for the rarely desired erect penis, the true bubble fantasy world came to life. Masturbation became something that I did to avoid making sexual advances, to lessen my body's instinctive response/arousal to her when she did show interest. The hardest part of all of that was the self loathing that came with the solo orgasms - I hated myself, found myself feeling pathetic, that I could not orgasm without the masturbation fantasy being of her - even unto the point where I learned to no longer picture myself sexually interacting with her in the masturbation fantasies, but instead detached - it was obvious that I was not capable of attracting her, was undesirable whether unattractive or lousy in bed - a perhaps self inflicted syndrome/perception, but one that was fostered in reality by the way she was also obviously drawing inward/shutting me out during the rare sex - to this day, I have only the slightest inkling of where she goes emotionally/mentally during sex/orgasm - I simply know that she's not there with me.

I learned to focus inward for masturbation. Which meant that I had to find new ways, new abstract and intangible fantasies, to orgasm on my own. Which meant that I was finding new ways, new places, to compulsively masturbate. I didn't even want to depress myself by doing it in our bed, or our home.

While the porn use was an immediate revelation at the time, when I realized that I was simply projecting her into the porn and so abandoned it instantly, with ease, it was a longer, slower loss of appetite for the "maintenance" masturbation that was done to keep the wolf fed with fantasies totally disconnected from her, to the point where the entire appetite for masturbation whithered, it became something I did not for pleasure or sexual release, but something done as a stress reliever, a sleep aid, that I could do quickly and without any sexual attachment to her or a fantasy - I guess it simply boosted the biochemicals so that my focus/clarity returned if I found myself getting edgy from desire in general/physical need, or whether I found myself slipping back towards masturbation fantasies focused on her.

Yes - there is a connection between this blathering, and the posted title. (Side note to Poet, if you've actually managed to read this - your posting regarding trivializing the fantasies/porn memories, the boggart/Ridikulus one, that made me have a genuine epiphany rather than a metanoia. Also, Aphrodite's Chela, if you're reading this one, perhaps you better realize why I sometimes say reading your posts is like reading my own mind, be it your love and desire for your goddess, or our shared past O/C tendency of writing notes along the curve of the hip of a portrayal of a nude female). It was recently, as in just within the last couple of weeks, that while I realized that while I never had a huge porn appetite, and have not watched it for years, that I was in essence still porn addicted. How? Because all this time, with porn or without, the emotional and physical fixation on this woman that I have loved and lusted for since first sight, was my porn - my figurative porn. While on the one hand it seems both logical and affirming that someone spent so much of their life wanting no one but his wife, that sole-source desire built up a library in my head of mental/emotional porn, fixated on her, that would rival the collection of the library of Alexandria). I suppose there is an endless, nobody-wins debate possible on whether it is a physical/instinctive trait or an emotional/mental/environmental thought process, that some of us are drawn to porn because of the endless possible acts and sex partners, or whether like me, some of us are hard wired to instinctively wrap our sexuality around one person, be that person our partner or not. But ultimately, whether in pictures or video or audio porn, or whether in our heads, emotionally and mentally, a junkie is a junkie until some pivotal moment breaks us immediately or by slow weaning.

I'm actually, surprisingly despite educational background and life experiences, fairly devout in my faith. And over the last 3 years, albeit it in incredibly tragic forms on most people's scales, there are days when am genuinely grateful and have more than once thanked God that a greater good came from my figurative camel's back being broken - not just porn, not just spouse-based mental/figurative porn, but in both physical and mental/emotional foundations, my entire libido and means of perceiving my world thru it have been nailed shut in their coffin. It allows me to return to last winter's celibacy-based harmony and peace in the non-physical portions of the relationship. Granted, perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut and not expressed to her that I felt that the entire prostate cancer/impotence end result was a godsend/blessing in disguise - that my varied and loving attempts to fulfill her needs despite the inability did not help her very much -but I can only take responsibility for my side of the communication - and not from desperation or giving up, but knowing genuinely in myself, that I gave our physical relationship every opportunity to come together in a manner healthy for both of us. No, I don't like that in staying sane/healthy as an individual, I have found myself haunted by a feeling that I am leaving her to founder thru learning how to incorporate her sexuality as an individual into her life - but I cannot ignore the fact that our marriage never worked better than it did during those precious 45 days.