2024-02-11 the masturbation paradox

The speaker reflects on his experiences with pornography and its impact on his relationships with women. He discusses how pornography has led to the objectification of women and a focus on his own pleasure. He shares that he has struggled to separate emotional and sexual intimacy and feels that his desire for release has hindered his ability to truly connect with his partners. He also mentions his experiences with nocturnal emissions and his dislike for the mess it creates. Overall, he feels that he is more balanced and content without the influence of pornography in his life. Most boys, young men, have access to porn, get into porn, want porn. When I was a kid, it was very difficult to see it. There was no internet around, so magazines. You couldn't buy them, but somebody would get hold of one, older brother, and then it would be passed around. It was like the holy grail to see naked women. Nowadays, it's really easy for anyone to see porn if they want to. And what I realised, I experienced, and it could be that many young men go through, is the objectification of women that comes about through pornography, seeing them as just objects of desire, fuel for masturbation fantasy. So that when, eventually, the young man, boy, grows up and gets the opportunity to have an actual sexual encounter, he might, if he's good and sensitive enough, he might go through the motions of, obviously, wanting to please her, get pleasure from pleasing her, but ultimately, he's there to please himself. Because he's spent many, many years doing just that, with his fantasy woman, or his fantasy, and maybe looking at a picture of someone that he would fantasise over. So that when he has the opportunity to be in a relationship, the sex is quite important. And yet, now I'm not saying this is the case for all, because how can I possibly say that? But I can't be unique in the fact that, really, at the end of the day, and perhaps it would explain why in all my physical relationships and the women that I've lived with, I haven't really had a relationship, I haven't dated, I haven't had an experience where I end up having physical relations with a woman that I'm not actually in a relationship with, that we don't live together, we're not making some kind of commitment to each other. I've never had that experience. I've been with seven or eight women, and there has been the feeling of exclusivity, connection, we're doing something, for however long it lasted. And all of those experiences, eventually, the idea of wanting to please her became harder and harder to bring out. It was too much of an effort. It actually was necessary, would be necessary, of course, otherwise it's just too selfish. If I want access, if I wanted access, then she deserved not just to be used, and then turn over and go to sleep. But that is what I would eventually come to feel like, that all I wanted was an opportunity to release and no longer wanted just to be alone masturbating. So I would, and if I woke in the middle of the night, feeling horny, with my beautiful partner asleep next to me, without wanting to wake her, I would snuggle up, get close touch, do whatever I needed to release the feeling and then I'd go back to sleep again. And this seemed much more efficient, more convenient, and it didn't have to involve her, it didn't have to wake her, but also it meant that during the day the desire for her also was much less because there was no build-up of the need to do that. I could do it whenever I felt like it and it could happen every night for quite some time before the libido just became so low due to a lot of ejaculation that the desire for my partner started to disappear. Maybe it had already done that. So I realised that the desire had played quite a strong role, a lot stronger than I had realised, in creating feelings of desire for her as a person. Unlike other men, I couldn't just be with somebody and that was it. If I got close to somebody, emotionally involved, was so intertwined with sexually involved, I could not separate them. And so the moment that sexual union took place, that's it, I'm in. I'm hooked, I'm fallen. It was interesting because my last sexual experience with my ex-wife, when we got together, I tried quite a lot actually. We were very intimate with each other initially, but I couldn't come. It just couldn't orgasm. I wouldn't get there, which for a while made me feel a bit stud-like because I could go so long because previously I would almost have premature ejaculation. I'd get overexcited. Now suddenly I'm like a stud. But actually I could never finish. It didn't seem to matter because the intimacy was so intimate and it didn't seem to bother her, but it seemed like she also knew that until that took place, until she'd made me come, it hadn't been consummated. It wasn't settled. And so when that finally happened, however long it took, it was like now she knows I'm hers and I suppose I was hers. I think I was hers before that. But there's something about the male, I think it's different, very different to the female in this regard because perhaps we're the sower of the seed, physically, where there is a difference in how we feel about what this involves and what happens to us. It may not be like that for all men, but it's certainly like that for me and it must be like that for others. Now I don't have, I am celibate and I can see the tremendous complication that arises, that arose when having that kind of desire experience. I don't have it. I'm not saying that I am not still capable. I just don't seek it. I don't think about it. If I get to a point where physically I need to release, and there can be a number of reasons for that, but if enough time has gone by, I know that if I don't do it, if I don't take action, it will happen nocturnally, which can be so bittersweet. In a way, the experience happens on several levels. First in the dream, and then in the physical, and the experience of both, especially the physical, is way more pleasurable than it is in real life. But the bitter part of it is I don't like the mess it makes. I've got to get up, I've got to clean up, I've got to change my underwear, I have to wear the underwear. I started wearing underwear at night when I would much prefer not to do so because I didn't want to soil the sheets. And that's what would happen. It happened a lot when I was young. And now I understand that if I don't manually do something, it will happen like that. So I manually do something. But I don't want to use any stimulation. I'd prefer not to imagine, but sometimes I can't help it. I just remember something that has taken place. I just want to get it over with in a way. Most of the time it isn't even very nice to do. But the release takes place and that's that done for the time being. Sometimes there is almost no physical sensation. It simply just comes out. I'd rather not do it. I do like the experience of the nocturnal emission, but not if I have to soil myself. I just can't bear the fluids. And I've always been like that in many ways. If I'm... When I was having nocturnal encounters with my sleeping partner, I would have to make sure that everything was cleaned up. I'd have to make sure there was a way to catch everything. I didn't want to soil her. I didn't want to soil the sheets. I used to do that with my first wife and she would always have to do something. I suppose she was in many ways not really asleep. And once I'd come, because there was wet patch near her, she had to get up and change things and that seemed selfish in many ways. I wanted her not to be disturbed by me, but yet she always was. So I tried to be considerate. I want to come and go and leave no trace and then just go back to sleep and be able to sleep well without feeling drawn towards this action that could become a bit obsessive. So the whole thing has not really been very good for me on the whole. I feel more balanced without it. And without seeking it, desiring it, without looking at images of it, without basically having anything to do with it, even when I'm watching a film. If there's about to be a sex scene, I just fast forward it. I don't need to see it. I much prefer films where you know they're going to have that and then we're finished and it's... We don't need to see the action. At least I don't. So yeah. Those are my thoughts on that.