An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.

A thought came to me today. Yes, those do happen from time to time.

I've wondered about why someone like me in the past has often not seemed to experience a lot of the negative downsides post orgasm that others have. And a possible link has occurred to me, and I wondered how it played out among our group here. Let me explain what I'm thinking.

It seems people here who have some of the worse symptoms after an orgasm are also the ones who tend to feel a lot of guilt and/or shame.

Marnia made a comment on another blog about not liking to use guilt as a motivator for changing behaviors. I believe I know what she meant, and I don't really think I'm contradicting that thought, but I did want to explore this further. I think because there's more to this than meets the eye when it comes to guilt. So bear with me while I "think out loud" for a bit.

Hereby I make an official pledge not to use porn and not to masturbate to orgasm for two weeks.

a bit on my background if you are interested.

Today's step for me is just signing up - it took me a long time to find something like this place, and I am very hopeful it will help - very glad to be here, looking forward to meetin you all.