Fantasy

So far so good on the reboot trail. It's been three days so far since my very brief relapse and I've been fairly good at ignoring urges and just keeping busy. However, I did put a lot more thought into what porn did to me and I feel a follow up to the last blog is needed to finish expressing how I feel about porn and why I want to remove myself from it forever.

Porn and Novelty: My Thoughts

So I'm back after posting my first article on here. If you want a better background just find my article titled "day 53 interesting progress". If not, a quick background: age 20, long term unknowing addict, gf prospect of 2 months, no sex with her yet, but she knows and accepts my issue, 54 days no P, 52 days no MO. Little signs of healing. Fantasy slowing reboot. Entire reboot has been flatline.

So I'm an 18 year old Aussie guy doing the PMO reboot, though I caved in and masturbated to orgasm yesterday (Day 7). Still porn-free, though.

I've been a consumer of pornography for about 5 years, I guess. I was pretty consistently masturbating once or twice a weekday, then often four or five times on each weekend day when I had more time. Consequently, I've had very little success with the opposite sex (about as little as possible: I haven't even held hands with a girl). But I only found out about the potential connection between PMO and social anxiety after I'd started my reboot.

I recently had an "enforced" period without PMO, about two weeks. I was on a trip in close quarters/sharing rooms with others, and didn't have the privacy or access to porn. However, it was not a porn-free trip, in that I carried my fetish fantasies with me in my head. So regularly, say at night or while dozing in the back of the car, I'd allow my fetish fantasies to take off and give myself an erection, which felt good even if I couldn't masturbate. I now realize that probably wasn't reboot time at all, since I was still reinforcing the porn pathways in my brain.

SICAS: Orange - 4

I've been seriously distracting myself for the last few days in order to counter the intensity (usually "Red - 5") of my impulses. Nevertheless, I have still managed to find some time to fantasize about some rather complex scenarios--though I have stopped mid-thought a number of times. Anyway, I have not masturbated, I have not used porn, I have not orgasmed. But my initial concerns about my ability to fantasize have proven to be well-placed, I think. In the past, this kind of fantasizing has usually led to my seeking out cyber-sex chat partners in short order.

With respect to religious traditions, I'm a pretty serious student. I was an extremely active member of a western Sufi order for over two years. I've studied Fourth Way (Gurdjieff/Ouspensky), Golden Dawn, and Thelemic traditions. I also have a background in Reformed Christianity (traditional Presbyterianism) and consider myself to be well-versed in both mainstream Christian scholarship and esoteric Christian thought. I'm also basically a non-theist and consider my spiritual interests to be "psychological" in nature, though that in no way diminishes their significance for me.

just wondering, how does fantasy fit in to the who issue related to Masturbation, orgasm, porn ect?