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PROLOGUE
Some of you may already know me. You may have already seen that I have been living with Sexual Performance Anxiety for some time through some of my previous posts. I have been going through a lot of self discovery lately in attempts to get past this temporary inconvenience and I just wanted to explain "The Road so Far" and my findings and thoughts on a lot of things along the way. I just thought it may be a good jumping off point of self discovery for others who are experiencing similar problems. Who knows, maybe I'll even come to more self discovery in just writing it all out. Prepare yourself, this is going to be very, very long.
IN THE BEGINNING...
I had a pretty healthy sex life beginning when I was 16 years old. I have had 8 partners total; all but two were one time encounters, two were the result of a threesome and 2 were long-term relationships of which one is still going on with my wife of 13+ years. I never had problems with sex until after I was married. My wife is very attractive and I have had a crush on her ever since I met her. How I think everything first began with my sexual dysfunction would probably go back to our college days. My wife was going for her Bachelor's while at the same time interning at a rehabilitation center for people with brain damage. Needless to say she was incredibly stressed and the frequency of sex was very low. Sometimes it would be as little as one time in two weeks even once over a 3 week span. Over a period of a year I became more and more frustrated with this. I will be honest, instead of maturely handling the situation by talking with her, I held it in. I felt a little bit of resentment and a lot of frustration. I'm sure I said and did things that didn't lend themselves towards more frequency; pouting, saying barbed things, boycotting chores. Now don't get me wrong I love that girl more than everything. She is my entire world. In hindsight it's was some of the dumbest things I've ever done.
When we did have sex I began to experience more and more premature ejaculation. I had also started to watch porn more frequently. I think it's because I felt sexually frustrated. Somehow along the line I tied premature ejaculation as a failure on my part and that if I were only to perform better then she would want sex more. I still had not discussed any of this with her at all. Sex did begin to increase in frequency but then it became a weekend thing. It would either happen on Saturday or Sunday or sometimes both. I got frustrated once again by the lack of spontaneity. I also began to have frustration in anticipating when sex would be next. I just kept piling more and more pressure and more and more conditions on top of sex. Sex is supposed to be fun. I got to a point where it was about her orgasm and my orgasm and nothing more.
THE FALLOUT
This leads up to about 5 years ago when the first problem with erection occurred. It actually happened after a football game where my team had lost. I was upset and my wife tried to console me with sex. I was unable to sustain an erection. I just passed it off as I was upset and stressed. Then the next time it happened again. This time my wife full on started balling and felt very rejected. That became an intermittent thing for the next few years. One thing I must mention is that I smoke during this time. But I didn't just smoke, I kept it from my wife, for years. I think it was out of shame that I never told her that I started back up. It first started as bumming cigarettes and then buying my own pack. I never would consider myself a full time smoker but I think hiding it from my wife added some guilt. Smoking in my head became one of the excuses for why I had this problem. I said to myself, "if I quit smoking then this problem will go away." But then add that to, "if I was in better shape this problem would go away" or "if I had a six pack my wife would compliment me more and this problem would go away." Then it was this supplement or that supplement, if I ate better, if I didn't masturbate as much, if I toned it down on the amount of porn, the type of porn, etc. I had a line of excuses a mile long for why this would happen from time to time.
My wife and I started to focus on becoming more intimate to see if we could fix the problem. We went to Lover's Lane and got different toys, lingerie for her, I got a cock ring which seemed to help from time to time. About 10 months ago is where it became very serious. Up until that point I didn't even know what the problem was. I never even heard of sexual performance anxiety before that and had you told me there was such a thing I would have said that it was a load of crap. I had no idea that what I was experiencing was fear or anxiety.
THE DISCOVERY
After a long cold winter where I was quite sedentary and I started to get overweight I developed a case of cyberchondria. I related the symptoms I had such as the face flushing and symptoms of a mild sinus infection and was convinced I had cancer. I still smoked up to this point so I was sure I had given myself lung cancer. That is when I decided to turn everything around. I quit smoking, quite effortlessly actually. I began to eat healthier, go to the gym regularly. I was determined to remove all of the excuses I had made about what was causing this sexual dysfunction I was experiencing. The more excuses that I got rid of, and the problem still remained, the greater the problem became. I had now placed all attention on the true underlying problem. Up until then I was just treating symptoms. I began doing research and that is where I finally came upon the true problem I was experiencing; sexual performance anxiety. I read so many articles, heard so many podcasts that explained me. It's like they were talking specifically about me. Every part of it was true, every part of it made sense.
THE SYMPTOMS
Imagine you wake up in the morning. You start going about your day. As you become more coherent and idea pops into your head. What if your partner wants to have sex later? This would get most people excited but instead you almost feel uneasy about it. "Has it been long enough since the last time I masturbated? What if I fail like I did last time? Will my erection be hard enough? What if she cries again or we start fighting? I need to make sure to take this supplement. I need to make sure I brush my teeth..and shave. I need to make sure I make her cum really good. If I make her cum I'll feel better and this will all go away..." Before long you start feeling like shit. These images and emotions and worries have started to beat you down. You shake it off. You try to ignore them. You try to think of something positive. You try to keep your mind occupied. Then something later on reminds you and suddenly the whole thing happens again. It all happens in the blink of an eye. Before you even noticed what happens this packet of information filled with images of past failures and emotions of worthlessness and unworthiness have done their damage and you're left there in a dumbfounded state wondering why you feel like you need to run away. And this could be hours before the actual act of sex would really occur.
Now we get to the real thing, you have had this millisecond daydream/nightmare hit you like a lightning bolt to the brain all day and it has worn you down. Your confidence and libido are already damaged. You have doubts before you even begin that you will have an erection, and if you do, that you can keep it. You are so in your head that your head may as well be up your own ass. So you try to focus on anything else. It works at first you get an erection. You are starting to feel more comfortable then something doesn't go exactly the way you had envisioned it in your mind. She needs a little lube, you don't like the way that she's doing that, you thought she'd be getting off by now. Any hitch in the process is like an invitation for this nightmare to run its course again. Next thing you know your face is getting incredibly flush, like red hot. Breathing becomes more difficult. You start losing sensation. You can literally feel like you've moved to some other part of your brain. The feeling of panic begins to increase. Then, complete and total crash and burn..
Sometimes it doesn't even get this far. The next occurrence this could be weighing on you so much that you can't even get an erection to begin with. You start passing on sexual occurrences. After a couple failures in a row you begin to feel like a total failure in every sense. You get almost depressed and then you begin to experience this nightmare on a loop again and again and again.
THE AFRICAN ANOMALY
This summer we took an 18 day trip to Kenya and Tanzania for safari. Of the 18 days, 16 of them we had amazing, effortless, pressure-less sex. We never planned for it, it just happened naturally. We get back home though and immediately the failure to perform began again..and again..and again. "What was different?" we both wondered. Was it the lack of stress, excitement of being someplace else, having no time to think about the negatives. I can't really give a definitive answer to this day.
PRON IS BAD, MmmKAY...
Now, up until now I haven't really mentioned the very parallel thing that was going on. I was addicted to porn. I didn't know it at the time. When I first started with porn it was 1995, on my Pentium I processor with 14.4 kbps modem. This was just images for years. When streaming video was introduced I began to escalate, preferring videos of girls touching themselves or having sex, or lesbian sex to static images. Then, as Internet broadband speeds increased, and I had dual monitor the amount increased further. I needed more and more to remain stimulated. Then, sometime in 2012 I began working from home. Now I had porn on demand all day long. No one was home. Whenever I had down time I would pop up XVideos or PornHub and go to town. Then I began to use Orbit downloader to download all of my favorite clips. I would cut together compilation videos of my favorite scenes. I started focusing on specific genres more; lesbians with strap-ons, pov lesbian, ffm hardcore to ffffffm hardcore. Then somehow I went down the rabbit hole one day to Hentai, then to TG, then to TF then to giantess. I started viewing just the weirdest shit on Image Fap and TF and TG caption sites and Giantess insertion images. I am not proud of any of this, I will just go ahead and say that now. But I needed this new stimulation to achieve the same affect. I got to the point where I would masturbate 5, 6, 7 times a day. Then at some points I would have to fast from the more extreme stuff just to get off on nude images or even vanilla porn video again. I had over half a terabyte of pornographic images and video on my hard drive.
I never really associated this with my sexual dysfunction, other than the fact that I knew I was masturbating too much. Then I read an article that tied sexual performance anxiety and porn addiction. I didn't even think I had a porn addiction..until I tried to quit. I can't believe how hard it was. I deleted my entire porn directory on my hard drive. I removed all bookmarks and cleared all history. The first day was excruciating. I had an itch that I just couldn't seem to scratch. I never even had close to this much of a problem when I quit smoking. I relapsed several times before I finally gave it up completely. At first my libido sunk to the lowest level I had ever experienced.
THERAPY
Five months ago I decided I needed to see a therapist about this. It just wasn't going to fix itself on its own. It seemed like the troll that I fed attention to and now it won't leave me alone. I was in a loop of failures I couldn't break out of. My wife and I decided to table all sexual intercourse for the meantime. My therapist really helped to increase intimacy between myself and my wife to a level I didn't even know was possible. I got to the point where I could tell my wife anything and not feel ashamed or shy or embarrassed. I even came clean to her about how I was hiding smoking from her and anything else I needed to get off my chest. It was very liberating. The therapist also introduced us to the 5 Love Languages which even strengthened our relationship further. I also improved myself even more. The therapist recommended I practice mindful meditation, which I did and enjoyed. I also took up Yoga.
She then introduced the concept of Sensate Focus Touch, a treatment created by Masters and Johnson to increase intimacy and sexual pleasure. We had to begin with just touch over the clothes for a period of time and then progress to being nude and increasing the petting and rubbing and eventually returning to sex. While this was a great plan in theory we were terrible at following the rules. For one it seemed so forced and awkward at first. After we got over that then we got to the point where we got so hot and heavy we went right into having intercourse. We got so excited by "cheating" that there would be no problem with failures. The pressure was off, there was no expectation to have sex which made sex very easy to have. The problem came up again though when it got to the point where we would say "no sex" while basically winking one eye. It reintroduced the problem all over again.
VIAGRA IS NOT ALWAYS THE ANSWER
I also went to my primary physician to discuss. He suggested a low dose of Viagra for 10 pills would help restore my confidence. I did not handle that situation appropriately. Sure, even with the smallest dose there was no way I wasn't getting an erection. Full on 100% every time. But I did probably one of the stupidest things. Somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious I have some idea of what sex should be. There is almost 20 years of porn and poor assumptions and bullshit that people have told me that have somehow instilled themselves as beliefs of "this is how sex should be." Screaming O's and sounds and beds banging against walls in multiple positions, etc. So, since I felt like Superman on the Viagra I also acted like Superman. I fostered the very thing that is causing the problem, this delusional expectation of what sex should be. And don't get me wrong sex was amazballz on Viagra. We were doing standing cowgirl, I got her to squirt. We were all sweaty and out of breath and out of cum by the time it was over. High-fiving and in a puddle of ecstasy on the bed. But then the Viagra ran out...no more Superman.
PE AWARENESS
It was around that time where I discovered PEGym.com for the first time while doing research on something else. One problem that was always a concern through all of this was the quality of my erection. It's a lot easier to crash an burn when your 70% than it is when you're 100%. Things are just more sensitive when you have full on wood so it's harder to lose sensation, even when you're in your head a little bit. There was also compelling evidence that PE could help to fix certain ED problems and that was enough to sell me on it. I bought a Bathmate X30 and began to use it. When I had questions or concerns I would come back to articles on this site and in this forum. I began adding some of the JP90 routines to pumping, including stretching and jelqing. I had a huge increase in BPEL and girth although I can't say whether it was all gains or some of it was just a higher erection quality but it was a very fast change. I had confidence back and we had sex several times that was very amazing. She would blow me in the kitchen all the way through and then back to hard again and then we'd go and have sex in the bedroom and I'd go again. After some gains I decided to explain the situation fully to my wife. That is when she stopped me and told me I needed to tone it down. She wasn't disgusted that I was doing it at all but she told me flat out that she did not want me to gain any more in girth and was honestly fine with my length also. It wasn't her fault but this made my confidence come crashing down a bit again.
THE MENTAL EXPLORATION
To elaborate a little more on the daydream/nightmare I was experiencing all day; I had always caught it after it had already done it's damage. To be honest it wasn't until about a week ago that I even knew fully what was going on. It wasn't until I reflected and tried to be mindful about it that I noticed that that little millisecond packet of corrupted data runs its course upwards of 200 times a day. I started making an exercise of noticing when I zoned out and into my head to look for what the cause was. I managed to catch it in the act as it was happening and that is when I became mindful to look out for it every time it occurred, to wake myself out of the nightmare before it did its damage. It feels much less significant now than it used to, but I find myself noticing it constantly throughout the day. I can even say that ever time I notice it my eyes look slightly left and upwards. At first I thought that was coincidence but that's where my eyes go every time. It seems to be tied to seeing someone attractive and imagining something, thinking about sex with my wife, thinking about my erection or discussing my anxiety. It has come up an unusually large amount of times while writing this post.
I feel now like I am closer than ever to getting over this. I feel like the more I notice this thing per day the more I diminish it. But I'm not sure how to reduce the number of times that it occurs. I'm still working on that. Sex has had it's ups and downs in the last month. I think more ups than downs for a change. Sometimes I still let this thing beat me down, especially if it's a very stressful day I don't seem to be as on guard to catch these packets as they happen. Then I feel that depressed feeling and realize I was too late. It takes a lot to snap me out of it after it happens. So now I just need to figure out how to manage that. I am seeing two therapists now. One is a cognitive therapist who is a male that deals specifically with anxiety and things like porn addictions. The other is a female who deals with relationships. Both have been very helpful in managing this problem and I am very optimistic that I will beat this thing before long.
SUMMARY
I feel like there is still so much I could say about this but, my God, I've already typed a fucking novel.
One takeaway, if you have similar problems to what I described and want to save money; don't throw money at this. It hardly does anything. I've thrown so much money at this when all I really needed was some self discovery with the help of a therapist.
Also my wife is an angel. I have put so much on her, I have made this so much about me sometimes and forgot about her. She was put in a position where she couldn't win no matter what she did. I was very unfair to her and she has always been there for me. While she did have a few times where she lost it on me I only have myself to blame for that. But she has stuck with me through all of this and I can't thank her enough for what she has done and what she continues to do.
I will continue to update this thread as things occur going forward. Think of this sort of as my cure for anxiety progress log.
Some of you may already know me. You may have already seen that I have been living with Sexual Performance Anxiety for some time through some of my previous posts. I have been going through a lot of self discovery lately in attempts to get past this temporary inconvenience and I just wanted to explain "The Road so Far" and my findings and thoughts on a lot of things along the way. I just thought it may be a good jumping off point of self discovery for others who are experiencing similar problems. Who knows, maybe I'll even come to more self discovery in just writing it all out. Prepare yourself, this is going to be very, very long.
IN THE BEGINNING...
I had a pretty healthy sex life beginning when I was 16 years old. I have had 8 partners total; all but two were one time encounters, two were the result of a threesome and 2 were long-term relationships of which one is still going on with my wife of 13+ years. I never had problems with sex until after I was married. My wife is very attractive and I have had a crush on her ever since I met her. How I think everything first began with my sexual dysfunction would probably go back to our college days. My wife was going for her Bachelor's while at the same time interning at a rehabilitation center for people with brain damage. Needless to say she was incredibly stressed and the frequency of sex was very low. Sometimes it would be as little as one time in two weeks even once over a 3 week span. Over a period of a year I became more and more frustrated with this. I will be honest, instead of maturely handling the situation by talking with her, I held it in. I felt a little bit of resentment and a lot of frustration. I'm sure I said and did things that didn't lend themselves towards more frequency; pouting, saying barbed things, boycotting chores. Now don't get me wrong I love that girl more than everything. She is my entire world. In hindsight it's was some of the dumbest things I've ever done.
When we did have sex I began to experience more and more premature ejaculation. I had also started to watch porn more frequently. I think it's because I felt sexually frustrated. Somehow along the line I tied premature ejaculation as a failure on my part and that if I were only to perform better then she would want sex more. I still had not discussed any of this with her at all. Sex did begin to increase in frequency but then it became a weekend thing. It would either happen on Saturday or Sunday or sometimes both. I got frustrated once again by the lack of spontaneity. I also began to have frustration in anticipating when sex would be next. I just kept piling more and more pressure and more and more conditions on top of sex. Sex is supposed to be fun. I got to a point where it was about her orgasm and my orgasm and nothing more.
THE FALLOUT
This leads up to about 5 years ago when the first problem with erection occurred. It actually happened after a football game where my team had lost. I was upset and my wife tried to console me with sex. I was unable to sustain an erection. I just passed it off as I was upset and stressed. Then the next time it happened again. This time my wife full on started balling and felt very rejected. That became an intermittent thing for the next few years. One thing I must mention is that I smoke during this time. But I didn't just smoke, I kept it from my wife, for years. I think it was out of shame that I never told her that I started back up. It first started as bumming cigarettes and then buying my own pack. I never would consider myself a full time smoker but I think hiding it from my wife added some guilt. Smoking in my head became one of the excuses for why I had this problem. I said to myself, "if I quit smoking then this problem will go away." But then add that to, "if I was in better shape this problem would go away" or "if I had a six pack my wife would compliment me more and this problem would go away." Then it was this supplement or that supplement, if I ate better, if I didn't masturbate as much, if I toned it down on the amount of porn, the type of porn, etc. I had a line of excuses a mile long for why this would happen from time to time.
My wife and I started to focus on becoming more intimate to see if we could fix the problem. We went to Lover's Lane and got different toys, lingerie for her, I got a cock ring which seemed to help from time to time. About 10 months ago is where it became very serious. Up until that point I didn't even know what the problem was. I never even heard of sexual performance anxiety before that and had you told me there was such a thing I would have said that it was a load of crap. I had no idea that what I was experiencing was fear or anxiety.
THE DISCOVERY
After a long cold winter where I was quite sedentary and I started to get overweight I developed a case of cyberchondria. I related the symptoms I had such as the face flushing and symptoms of a mild sinus infection and was convinced I had cancer. I still smoked up to this point so I was sure I had given myself lung cancer. That is when I decided to turn everything around. I quit smoking, quite effortlessly actually. I began to eat healthier, go to the gym regularly. I was determined to remove all of the excuses I had made about what was causing this sexual dysfunction I was experiencing. The more excuses that I got rid of, and the problem still remained, the greater the problem became. I had now placed all attention on the true underlying problem. Up until then I was just treating symptoms. I began doing research and that is where I finally came upon the true problem I was experiencing; sexual performance anxiety. I read so many articles, heard so many podcasts that explained me. It's like they were talking specifically about me. Every part of it was true, every part of it made sense.
THE SYMPTOMS
Imagine you wake up in the morning. You start going about your day. As you become more coherent and idea pops into your head. What if your partner wants to have sex later? This would get most people excited but instead you almost feel uneasy about it. "Has it been long enough since the last time I masturbated? What if I fail like I did last time? Will my erection be hard enough? What if she cries again or we start fighting? I need to make sure to take this supplement. I need to make sure I brush my teeth..and shave. I need to make sure I make her cum really good. If I make her cum I'll feel better and this will all go away..." Before long you start feeling like shit. These images and emotions and worries have started to beat you down. You shake it off. You try to ignore them. You try to think of something positive. You try to keep your mind occupied. Then something later on reminds you and suddenly the whole thing happens again. It all happens in the blink of an eye. Before you even noticed what happens this packet of information filled with images of past failures and emotions of worthlessness and unworthiness have done their damage and you're left there in a dumbfounded state wondering why you feel like you need to run away. And this could be hours before the actual act of sex would really occur.
Now we get to the real thing, you have had this millisecond daydream/nightmare hit you like a lightning bolt to the brain all day and it has worn you down. Your confidence and libido are already damaged. You have doubts before you even begin that you will have an erection, and if you do, that you can keep it. You are so in your head that your head may as well be up your own ass. So you try to focus on anything else. It works at first you get an erection. You are starting to feel more comfortable then something doesn't go exactly the way you had envisioned it in your mind. She needs a little lube, you don't like the way that she's doing that, you thought she'd be getting off by now. Any hitch in the process is like an invitation for this nightmare to run its course again. Next thing you know your face is getting incredibly flush, like red hot. Breathing becomes more difficult. You start losing sensation. You can literally feel like you've moved to some other part of your brain. The feeling of panic begins to increase. Then, complete and total crash and burn..
Sometimes it doesn't even get this far. The next occurrence this could be weighing on you so much that you can't even get an erection to begin with. You start passing on sexual occurrences. After a couple failures in a row you begin to feel like a total failure in every sense. You get almost depressed and then you begin to experience this nightmare on a loop again and again and again.
THE AFRICAN ANOMALY
This summer we took an 18 day trip to Kenya and Tanzania for safari. Of the 18 days, 16 of them we had amazing, effortless, pressure-less sex. We never planned for it, it just happened naturally. We get back home though and immediately the failure to perform began again..and again..and again. "What was different?" we both wondered. Was it the lack of stress, excitement of being someplace else, having no time to think about the negatives. I can't really give a definitive answer to this day.
PRON IS BAD, MmmKAY...
Now, up until now I haven't really mentioned the very parallel thing that was going on. I was addicted to porn. I didn't know it at the time. When I first started with porn it was 1995, on my Pentium I processor with 14.4 kbps modem. This was just images for years. When streaming video was introduced I began to escalate, preferring videos of girls touching themselves or having sex, or lesbian sex to static images. Then, as Internet broadband speeds increased, and I had dual monitor the amount increased further. I needed more and more to remain stimulated. Then, sometime in 2012 I began working from home. Now I had porn on demand all day long. No one was home. Whenever I had down time I would pop up XVideos or PornHub and go to town. Then I began to use Orbit downloader to download all of my favorite clips. I would cut together compilation videos of my favorite scenes. I started focusing on specific genres more; lesbians with strap-ons, pov lesbian, ffm hardcore to ffffffm hardcore. Then somehow I went down the rabbit hole one day to Hentai, then to TG, then to TF then to giantess. I started viewing just the weirdest shit on Image Fap and TF and TG caption sites and Giantess insertion images. I am not proud of any of this, I will just go ahead and say that now. But I needed this new stimulation to achieve the same affect. I got to the point where I would masturbate 5, 6, 7 times a day. Then at some points I would have to fast from the more extreme stuff just to get off on nude images or even vanilla porn video again. I had over half a terabyte of pornographic images and video on my hard drive.
I never really associated this with my sexual dysfunction, other than the fact that I knew I was masturbating too much. Then I read an article that tied sexual performance anxiety and porn addiction. I didn't even think I had a porn addiction..until I tried to quit. I can't believe how hard it was. I deleted my entire porn directory on my hard drive. I removed all bookmarks and cleared all history. The first day was excruciating. I had an itch that I just couldn't seem to scratch. I never even had close to this much of a problem when I quit smoking. I relapsed several times before I finally gave it up completely. At first my libido sunk to the lowest level I had ever experienced.
THERAPY
Five months ago I decided I needed to see a therapist about this. It just wasn't going to fix itself on its own. It seemed like the troll that I fed attention to and now it won't leave me alone. I was in a loop of failures I couldn't break out of. My wife and I decided to table all sexual intercourse for the meantime. My therapist really helped to increase intimacy between myself and my wife to a level I didn't even know was possible. I got to the point where I could tell my wife anything and not feel ashamed or shy or embarrassed. I even came clean to her about how I was hiding smoking from her and anything else I needed to get off my chest. It was very liberating. The therapist also introduced us to the 5 Love Languages which even strengthened our relationship further. I also improved myself even more. The therapist recommended I practice mindful meditation, which I did and enjoyed. I also took up Yoga.
She then introduced the concept of Sensate Focus Touch, a treatment created by Masters and Johnson to increase intimacy and sexual pleasure. We had to begin with just touch over the clothes for a period of time and then progress to being nude and increasing the petting and rubbing and eventually returning to sex. While this was a great plan in theory we were terrible at following the rules. For one it seemed so forced and awkward at first. After we got over that then we got to the point where we got so hot and heavy we went right into having intercourse. We got so excited by "cheating" that there would be no problem with failures. The pressure was off, there was no expectation to have sex which made sex very easy to have. The problem came up again though when it got to the point where we would say "no sex" while basically winking one eye. It reintroduced the problem all over again.
VIAGRA IS NOT ALWAYS THE ANSWER
I also went to my primary physician to discuss. He suggested a low dose of Viagra for 10 pills would help restore my confidence. I did not handle that situation appropriately. Sure, even with the smallest dose there was no way I wasn't getting an erection. Full on 100% every time. But I did probably one of the stupidest things. Somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious I have some idea of what sex should be. There is almost 20 years of porn and poor assumptions and bullshit that people have told me that have somehow instilled themselves as beliefs of "this is how sex should be." Screaming O's and sounds and beds banging against walls in multiple positions, etc. So, since I felt like Superman on the Viagra I also acted like Superman. I fostered the very thing that is causing the problem, this delusional expectation of what sex should be. And don't get me wrong sex was amazballz on Viagra. We were doing standing cowgirl, I got her to squirt. We were all sweaty and out of breath and out of cum by the time it was over. High-fiving and in a puddle of ecstasy on the bed. But then the Viagra ran out...no more Superman.
PE AWARENESS
It was around that time where I discovered PEGym.com for the first time while doing research on something else. One problem that was always a concern through all of this was the quality of my erection. It's a lot easier to crash an burn when your 70% than it is when you're 100%. Things are just more sensitive when you have full on wood so it's harder to lose sensation, even when you're in your head a little bit. There was also compelling evidence that PE could help to fix certain ED problems and that was enough to sell me on it. I bought a Bathmate X30 and began to use it. When I had questions or concerns I would come back to articles on this site and in this forum. I began adding some of the JP90 routines to pumping, including stretching and jelqing. I had a huge increase in BPEL and girth although I can't say whether it was all gains or some of it was just a higher erection quality but it was a very fast change. I had confidence back and we had sex several times that was very amazing. She would blow me in the kitchen all the way through and then back to hard again and then we'd go and have sex in the bedroom and I'd go again. After some gains I decided to explain the situation fully to my wife. That is when she stopped me and told me I needed to tone it down. She wasn't disgusted that I was doing it at all but she told me flat out that she did not want me to gain any more in girth and was honestly fine with my length also. It wasn't her fault but this made my confidence come crashing down a bit again.
THE MENTAL EXPLORATION
To elaborate a little more on the daydream/nightmare I was experiencing all day; I had always caught it after it had already done it's damage. To be honest it wasn't until about a week ago that I even knew fully what was going on. It wasn't until I reflected and tried to be mindful about it that I noticed that that little millisecond packet of corrupted data runs its course upwards of 200 times a day. I started making an exercise of noticing when I zoned out and into my head to look for what the cause was. I managed to catch it in the act as it was happening and that is when I became mindful to look out for it every time it occurred, to wake myself out of the nightmare before it did its damage. It feels much less significant now than it used to, but I find myself noticing it constantly throughout the day. I can even say that ever time I notice it my eyes look slightly left and upwards. At first I thought that was coincidence but that's where my eyes go every time. It seems to be tied to seeing someone attractive and imagining something, thinking about sex with my wife, thinking about my erection or discussing my anxiety. It has come up an unusually large amount of times while writing this post.
I feel now like I am closer than ever to getting over this. I feel like the more I notice this thing per day the more I diminish it. But I'm not sure how to reduce the number of times that it occurs. I'm still working on that. Sex has had it's ups and downs in the last month. I think more ups than downs for a change. Sometimes I still let this thing beat me down, especially if it's a very stressful day I don't seem to be as on guard to catch these packets as they happen. Then I feel that depressed feeling and realize I was too late. It takes a lot to snap me out of it after it happens. So now I just need to figure out how to manage that. I am seeing two therapists now. One is a cognitive therapist who is a male that deals specifically with anxiety and things like porn addictions. The other is a female who deals with relationships. Both have been very helpful in managing this problem and I am very optimistic that I will beat this thing before long.
SUMMARY
I feel like there is still so much I could say about this but, my God, I've already typed a fucking novel.
One takeaway, if you have similar problems to what I described and want to save money; don't throw money at this. It hardly does anything. I've thrown so much money at this when all I really needed was some self discovery with the help of a therapist.
Also my wife is an angel. I have put so much on her, I have made this so much about me sometimes and forgot about her. She was put in a position where she couldn't win no matter what she did. I was very unfair to her and she has always been there for me. While she did have a few times where she lost it on me I only have myself to blame for that. But she has stuck with me through all of this and I can't thank her enough for what she has done and what she continues to do.
I will continue to update this thread as things occur going forward. Think of this sort of as my cure for anxiety progress log.
Admin of the Month Mar 2015
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