Overcoming The Urge To Sexualize My Anxiety

Deadlines create anxiety for me: the fear of failure, I am not good enough. I medicate those feelings through sex. For me that has meant pornography and masturbation. I wrestled strongly with this anxiety over my deadlines as well as the urge to masturbate yesterday and today. And I've experienced victory.

Factors contributing to my victory today:

• Chatting with a fellow SSsA-struggler online
• Making the resolve to stick to my 90-day fast
• Being open and vulnerable here on my blog even if I can't do so in person with trusted Brothers
• Going to a public place to work, where I can see people and don't feel so lonely
• Giving myself short doable goals (short increments of paced-out work) so that I am not overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand
• Reminding myself that my anxious feelings and my genital aches (from having no sexual release of any kind for over 2 weeks) don't have to be associated
• Giving myself a break after a good chunk of many "short doable goals" accomplished -- like blogging now

I noticed that my sense of accomplishment has increased, and I am looking forward to continuing to work on my tasks. The desire to sexually medicate my anxiety is over. I still have the genital ache from no sexual release, but it's more physiological than emotional. I'll likely have a wet-dream one of these days, and that will take care of it. God's made my body to cope with the physiological needs that way.

I also noticed that I have been scanning women and thinking of them sexually--their beautiful bodies like delicious desserts. I wondered what was going on with my sexual attraction to men, and so I "tested" it. I found that it took about 10 seconds of "mental work" (i.e. forcing myself to look at and think of a man sexually) before any sexual arousal would emerge. And even after that, I felt a little grossed out at myself for doing it. With the women, it was pretty much automatic, and if I weren't Christian or married, I think I might have pursued a couple and propositioned them for sex. Oh man, here comes another beautiful one...

Update

It had been almost a month since I last wrote. Where am I?

I had to make some changes to my computer more than week a ago and I discovered that I could look at porn without alerting my accountability partner. And so I have been doing that frequently, at first, as an experiment to figure out my software, and then because I wanted to engage in it.

Over the past month, I have been isolating myself emotionally from other men. I have not met up with my accountability partners, have not had open, connected conversations. I suppose this means that I am struggling. Yes, I am. Busyness is a convenient excuse, but the core of the issue is the will. Let me explain.

I am discovering the importance of "choice" in my growth into manhood. My decision to "let loose" on internet pornography (to test my change, so to speak) revealed to me that although I have started to change, the change will not proceed without further effort/will on my part. I need to choose to change.

So, more recently, I have found myself looking at porn of men having sex with each other--something that I had never really enjoyed looking at. With extra time on my hands to surf, I have been able to find ones where there is a semblance of emotional intimacy between the actors, not just the raw act of sex. One could say that I have "gotten worse," but I am not sure if that is the case.

The new feeling of "being one of the guys" has come in genuinely. This has not been fabricated, I am glad to discover. I miss talking with my straight friend. It feels so good to experience his openness and acceptance of me with holy love. Talking with him about sex stuff while having him know the details of my same-sex struggles is one of the most healing aspects of my journey thus far. He loves me where it matters to me most. I miss interacting with him so much more than I want to masturbate to pornography. With him, the longings in my boy-soul is met; porn does not meet the deeper needs of my boy-soul.

I have wanted to write this post for a couple of weeks now, but busyness--and shame of needing to confess my recent porn habit--had kept me from doing so. But I am glad to have forced myself to write this. It is healing. Stops the isolation, so that I can proceed in my journey into manhood.

Once I publish this post, I will go and take care of my software vulnerability. Put a fence around the porn so that I don't tempt myself with awful, unhealthy candy that will rot my boy-soul and stop him from growing.

Experimentation & Accountability

Over the last week, I have allowed myself to look at porn several times. I wanted to let myself "loose" so that I could find out, without any shred of doubt, if I am truly changing.

This is what I've discovered.  5 points.

1. I *am* less attracted to men sexually.

I can see men having all kinds of sexual acts either alone or together, but I see it not so much with a sense of deprivation within me. I don't feel like I want or need the same. I see it as a little comical that the men should want to do something like that with each other rather than with women.

I used to find the right look in a man, and then fantasize having sexual relations with him.  No more.  Even the most perfect looking guy is just another guy to me -- a buddy.  Not a person who can really give me something by having sex with me.

This is a huge change. And I'm not pretending it.  It really is just happening.  And I am not sure exactly what has led to this change.  I have some ideas.

2. I am still able to get aroused by seeing men engage in sexual acts.

I can get aroused. Not quite as immediately as before, but I can. It's no longer an arousal that draws me to participate. It's more an arousal of plain sexual excitement. It's more... pure.  Innocent. Like a young kid would get an erection at the sight of another boy doing something sexual, but neither understanding what is happening to them except that natural feeling of sexual excitement. There is no need to masturbate in this kind of arousal.

3. I feel a strong need to have my male sexual-ness be affirmed by another man.

I don't mean just being affirmed as a guy. I mean specifically having a man--a straight man, by the way--directly approve me of my male sexual-ness. At the most "homosexual" end, it would be having the two of us masturbate together, but not needing to touch each other.  At the most "heterosexual" end would be having a coach-like figure scrutinize me masturbating or even having sex with a woman, and then give me a good score for it, and a pat on the back.  Somewhere in the middle would be for us to have sex together with a girl.

I want affirmation that I am male, at the very physiologically sexual level, and have other guys respect and like me because of my ability to carry out the sex act as a man.  That we like each other and affirm each other's sexual-ness.  The epitome of this experience is to have another man affirm me and even join me in orgasm (but not join me by having sex with me).  In other words, I don't want the other man's manhood, I want his brotherhood to affirm me where I feel least affirmed -- in my sexuality.

I think to the straight guy, this sounds gay. But in my mind, there is a world of difference. It's more like I am a young teenage boy who is just maturing sexually, and having some friends gather around to connect, affirm, and learn from each other by experimentation and comparison.  Very different from wanting to have sex with other guys.  This kind of activity leads the boys towards feeling good about themselves and then branching off into learning about girls.

4. I don't like most of the girls in porn.

I cannot objectify women. To see a woman go "ooh" and "ahh" while pretending to enjoy giving oral sex is simply fake.  Women want to be loved, to be cherished, to be held and told that they are beautiful.  The stuff in porn is for stupid guys (sorry, but it is).  Guys whose understanding of women don't go further than the length of their boner.  A girl who is begging a guy to give it to her for the sheer physicality... does any half-witted educated man really want that in a woman to love?

I suppose this is why I find myself most attracted to pictures of a man and a woman having sex that is in a close physical embrace, rather than the mere pounding of genitals.

5. Porn is still dangerous, no matter my orientation.

If I am not careful, I can get stuck in same-sex attraction by allowing myself to keep looking at porn, even if what I am looking for is more affirmation than attraction.

What I am afraid of is that if I stop looking at porn, will my same-sex attraction (as opposed to same-sex affirmation) come back?

I think I need to remain accountable to stopping porn.

Abstinence vs. Purity

The last time I masturbated was December 22, 2008.

Wow.  I have not masturbated since last year.

Sounds impressive.  But not really.

This week, I went and looked at "soft porn" on the internet.  I'm not even sure if you can call it porn compared to the kinds of online videos I would look at if unfettered by accountability.  Nude pictures on Google images, mostly men, sometimes women.  I've also started to desperately look for anything somewhat erotic on YouTube.  Not very much there.

Triple X Watch is still on.  I'm not sure if it will pick up on what I've browsed... about 3x this week?

It frustrates me not to be able to have an orgasm.  Looking at these erotic internet content frustrates me even further because there is no follow-up sexual release.  My bottom line is: no masturbation.

Technical abstinence.  "I might have looked, and I might have allowed some fantasy to happen for more than a few seconds here and there, but hey, I haven't masturbated.  I'm pure!"

No, I am not.

Abstinence is a matter of stopping.  Purity is a lot more than that.  I'll put some thought to that next.  I will blog about it.  Perhaps, pursuing purity can be my next goal.  First, to understand and articulate it.