NOTE: This is a post that’s going to talk about masturbation, porn use, and the practices of “edging” and use of substances like poppers to facilitate longer masturbation sessions.

I do not specialize in sex therapy or behavioral addictions but I have completed courswork in the diagnosis and treatment of both, and I am a person who supports people who want to find what is healthy sexuality for themselves, many of whom are in recovery.

The diagnostic constructs of “sex addiction” and “porn addiction” are contested, particularly in factions between sex therapy and addictions professionals, and these conflicts have escalated in ways that I find frankly unprofessional and baffling, and we lose a lot because of the polarization. My position is that I am pro-consensual sex, I am not anti-porn, and I also find there are people with sexual behaviors that feel problematic, compulsive, or destructive to them and need help working through this regardless of what we call it.

Men who have become habituated to constant masturbation, anonymous sex, sex on meth, or masturbation while watching porn or using poppers report to me that it can feel very difficult to enjoy or even imagine having sex without those supports. What is discussed here may be one component to support recovery in conjunction with working with a trusted sex therapist or behavioral addiction counselor who will listen to you and work with you to define and work on your recovery goals. For some, this discussion may not work in alignment with your recovery needs and goals, and I encourage you to stay with what does.

Lately I suspect that many men, and likely others, do not really practice enjoying themselves sexually. What most of us do is “jerk off,” either as a habitual routine thing or a repetitive, hours-long epic experience that involves porn and ritual acts to try to maximize orgasm. Jerking off serves many functions: tension release, dealing with arousal, or avoiding uncomfortable things we’d otherwise feel we need to do.

I’m not involved in communities that practice “NoFap” or “No Nut November” but what I do know about them, I think there are some places where we might agree. The kinds of masturbation that we tend to do may end up being deadening, time-wasting, and diminishing. Green Day sung about this in their song “Longview” in which the singer describes an apathetic, listless, declining life that’s momentarily interrupted by the thrill of masturbating, “bite my lip and close my eyes / take me away to paradise” and then dropping back into boring, deadened monotony.

The rituals of watching porn, using poppers or otherwise getting high and edging for hours may be thrilling the first time or two but may quickly fall into the time-wasting habits that end up separating ourselves from our sexuality. Often I think of a maxim from the Jackie Chan breakout film, Drunken Master, in which the young Chan is apprenticed to learn a style of martial art that draws upon the fluid and adaptive movements of a severely intoxicated person, both to confuse the enemy and to deliver effective blows. At times, to practice the art, the apprentice drinks to intoxication, but always must contend with his Master’s warning—”Water floats, but also capsizes boats.”

While perhaps not everyone will appreciate the relevance of deep wisdom from a comedy/martial arts film, this phrase has often spoken to me of the tender balance of walking the middle way of substance use. We gravitate to them because they open us up beyond our regular behaviors and judgments, allowing us to have experiences we wouldn’t otherwise. Yet the line between floating and capsizing is quite hard to discern and easy to cross.

Porn is not a substance in the same way as alcohol or poppers, yet to me looking at it as such offers interesting insights. Porn may be a fun way to stimulate desire and expand our erotic imaginations, and it may also become something that takes over our sexuality and fills us with unrealistic expectations that make it difficult to enjoy the un-choreographed and un-edited realities of sex with other people.

Lots of men I think have gone through periods of problematic behavior that may not rise to the level of an addiction or dependence. One question that I find really useful is to think about a behavior that you do on a regular basis, and then tell yourself that this week you won’t do it once. Notice how you feel. If you feel anxious, afraid, angry, uncomfortable, or otherwise wonder how that would even be possible, it is worth exploring deeper what purpose this behavior is serving and if it’s in some way keeping you from being the person you want to be.

All of this is different than the kind of sexual self-experience I’m wanting to talk about, in which you take time to be with yourself, to really experience yourself without distractions or intoxicants, to find out what your body likes sexually, what kinds of fantasies you have, what kind of touch is pleasing to you. This kind of self-sex is about connection and presence.

I define connection as being about being fully and consciously present in my body, with my experience, and able to be with you being fully and consciously present in your body, with your experience. Harder than it sounds. This connection becomes possible with the supports of confidence, vulnerability, and relational safety, all of which are supported by embodying those with and for myself. If I know with confidence that I will be okay no matter what happens, and all my feelings are okay, and that I can protect myself if needed and care for myself if needed—or that I have people available to support me with all this—then I can be fully present and connected.

When it comes to sex and our bodies, some of us get glimpses of that state of being when we’re children who haven’t yet internalized all the conflicting messages of sex in our cultures. When we simply have bodies that have all these sensations and we’re curious about them and they don’t “mean” anything. Eventually, most of us lose contact with this state of innocence and presence as we’re taught a whole host of ways we’re supposed to think and feel about our bodies under threat of shaming judgment, ridicule, or exile.

All of these messages and the emotions that go with them still live in our bodies and affect our relationships with them. Yet the sexual need exists, for many of us, and seeks satisfaction one way or the other. For some of us, we don’t desire sex and believe that we are supposed to want it. These and other influences may cause us to find solace in ritual, porn, substance use, and so forth.

What does this do to the way we pay attention to and experience ourselves? This is something perhaps worth exploring for yourself for the next few weeks. When you are having sex, where is your attention? When you masturbate, where is your attention? What do you notice? What do you attend to? Are you focused solely on rubbing your genitals until they hit the joy buzzer? Are you constantly clicking on different videos trying to find the right one, or just barely avoid getting the right one, to hit the buzzer? Is your attention so much on the porn or the fantasy that you’re not really in your body?

When I am feeling sexually connected and really enjoying it, I feel that my attention is in my body and able to take in a range of sensations. When I feel stressed or pressured to perform, my attention is usually on my partner’s body and the parts of me that are worrying about whether they’re having a good time. In a state of connection with another person who can hold the connection, there is this beautiful exchange of pleasure and energy and fun.

Exploring this state of self-sex is both simple and highly challenging, as most simple tasks are. Take time, alone, to be sexual with yourself. Find a comfortable spot where you can be relaxed and uninterrupted and consider having no screens in the same room as you. Do this sober, without porn or poppers or other external intoxicants.

Then explore touching your body, noticing what kinds of touch your body enjoys. Engage with yourself sexually the ways you desire to be engaged, in whatever ways are practical—using your actual imagination helps with this. Try to stay in your body and take in the sensations you’re giving yourself. 

Notice what comes up and what gets in the way. Whatever it is, those things affect your sexual relationship with others too, in some form. Consider journaling about these afterword.

You don’t have to do this all the time, but consider doing it occasionally. This could help us be more aware of when and why we’re using other substances for sex, and help us to better understand whether that enhances or detracts from the experience. Again, this is not about saying whether one’s regular habits are “healthy” or not, but helping you to know when you’re connected to yourself or not.

This practice will be uncomfortable for a lot of people. Straight men in particular get exposed to a number of weird messages about sex that on one hand make it this really important thing that they have to get all the time and on the other hand make it really hard to actually enjoy. Really taking pleasure in being sexual with one’s self without the mediating influence of porn seems to be provocative. There may be internalized beliefs that one is low-status or a “loser” if they’re not having sex with another person. One fear that occasionally comes up is it’s somehow “gay” for a straight man to enjoy his own body.

Neither of these really make that much sense and seem steeped in an insecure adolescent fear of being judged and outcast and so preemptively accusing others of what one fears he is. What would be wrong with practicing desiring ourselves to the extent we want to be desired?

Is the desire to be approved of by your friends interfering with your ability to get to know yourself and really learn to understand what you like and desire, and enjoy being in your own body? Do your friends need to be involved with what you do alone in your own time? Wouldn’t being able to care for your own sexual needs help you to feel more confident, at ease, and less desperate when finding someone else to share yourself with? If you’re still a teenager, your friends don’t have to know, and if you’re an adult man, now’s your opportunity to take the wheel of your life back. 

It’s also worth noting that some reasons are religious prohibitions on masturbation and sex outside of a committed relationship, and if those are your values, I assume you would not be interested in this exercise and wish you well. If you are curious about another way to think about the spiritual relationship between sex, life force, and self you might consider reading my book.

In recent years, certain groups have promoted abstaining from masturbation altogether as a way to increase testosterone, gain self-mastery, or increase motivation to get out of the house and look for partners. There is certainly merit to this approach as well—conscious abstinence or conscious engagement are both ways of helping us know ourselves, cultivate will, and build confidence. Self-sex ideally would not be the center of one’s life at the expense of other important facets of ourselves. What’s important to me is that we’re abstaining or engaging with an intention, not because masturbation is “bad” for some vague reason.

My one concern about abstaining from masturbation to motivate seeking partners is that I think men would be well-served to consider horniness as a state of intoxication under which they are less likely to make clear-headed choices. (Note: I am not suggesting this as a literal scientific or legal truth, although I would be curious to see research on the matter.) Men make a lot of choices we later regret when horny, especially when horny and tired, lonely, drunk, stoned, or otherwise intoxicated. We may be less likely to hold our boundaries and standards or more likely to pressure others and disregard their boundaries.

There is a common wisdom that one should not go to the grocery store while hungry because you’re more likely to buy food you’ll later wish you hadn’t, and to be honest I advise men to use the same guidelines when using apps or going to bars while horny. If you’re looking for sex, go for it. If you’re looking to have fun and meaningful connection, might as well take care of yourself first. 

This idea of horniness as a state of intoxication brings us back, again, to being intentional in relating to ourselves sexually. Whether abstaining and harnessing that energy toward other tasks, or engaging to make sure we have meaningful and pleasurable experiences, these willful acts help us to feel more loving and appreciative of ourselves, and more confident. All of these qualities are great to have whether we’re in committed partnerships or on our own. Rather than pinning all our hopes for sexual and romantic fulfillment on other people, when we cultivate this for ourselves, we’re actively creating the life we want.