Masterbation: Compulsion, Habit or Addiction?

Yes, masturbation, or actually the sexual release / orgasm that it produces, has benefits as several people on this thread have described. That doesn't inherently make it good if the negative effects outweigh those. Heroin use produces a happy, relaxed, euphoric state. But the negative consequences of repeated use are significant.

I think the majority of those who are on this site understand consciously or unconsciously that pleasuring onself is a negative otherwise we wouldn't be walking around wearing a cage or pursuing chastity.

What are the signs that it's become an addiction?

1. An inability to stop. Even when I know it would be better for my relationship or interpersonal life, I continue to do it. I try to stop but always come back to it.
   
2. I continue to masturbate despite health problems. Early in my marriage, when I was young, it led to premature ejaculation when engaging in sex with my wife. This caused me to masturbate on days when I thought we might engage in sex so I wouldn't cum so fast. And the orgasm with my wife wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been. As I grew older, it led to erectile dysfunction. Even young men who masturbate & watch porn frequently are now experiencing it in significant numbers. I initially thought my ED was a result of age, high cholesterol, drinking beer & wine before sex, & heart disease, but now that I'm chaste and am practicing tease & denial with my wife, my ED is completely resolved, and my libido & testosterone levels are at high or normal levels. And I don't have to abstain from alcohol beforehand.
   
3. Dealing with problems. A sign of an addiction is using the addictive drug of choice to feel better when experiencing negative emotions. This hit me in the first few months of my chastity experience when I got mad or angry with someone or myself and immediately had the urge to masturbate. I realized I was looking for that rush of dopamine to make me feel better. Now that I have been chaste for 7 months, that urge doesn't hit me when I have negative emotions. Interestingly, I haven't felt angry and raged about anything in the last 3-4 months and I'm wondering if that's related.
   
4. Affects your relationships with others. When I masturbate, it drains my sexual energy for hours / days which affects my desire to be intimate with my spouse. This lessens my attentiveness & focus on her needs and creates emotional distance between us. It actually lessens our physical intimacy resulting in a lowering of oxytocin in my system, the hormone that enhances bonding between one another. It increased my callousness towards her which led to hurt, feelings of rejection, and anger towards me. For single people, this drop in sexual energy also affects your relationships with others; it has been shown to impair your ability to connect with others and to establish healthy relationships with prospective partners. I started masturbating at age 10 and had no idea that it was making it so much more difficult to find and have girlfriends. It's only in hindsight that I can see the affects it had on me.

The benefits of sex with a partner have been clinically proven to be better than the benefits of masturbation. I don't recall what all of them are but one that I remember distinctly is that sexual intercourse lowers blood pressure & stress levels much more than orgasm by masturbation does. Personally, I've never experienced an orgasm while masturbating as profound and mind-blowing as the ones I've had with my spouse in the past 6 months. It does take work and practice with a partner to have good sex; it can be unsatisfactory. But when you figure it out, nothing... nothing.... surpasses it.

Masturbation almost always involves viewing of porn or fantasizing about others. This leads to objectification that affects our behavior towards others negatively which furthers the negative consequences mentioned in #4 above.

Call it an addiction, a compulsion or a habit.... whatever. I never considered it an addiction until I forced myself to stop with a chastity cage. I didn't masturbate that often, or so I thought. I suppressed my memories of my masturbation & porn use and only now have been able to recall some of the lengths I went to "use" my drug of choice. And it wasn't until I had gotten "clean" or "sober" for a couple of months that I could see how I had the signs of an addiction and how it affected me and my relationships. How my wife put up with me for so many years is really surprising to me now; I now believe it was only her Christian faith that kept her from leaving me. And for that, I thank God!

 

I am continuously locked. My masturbation habit cured its self.

 

i have not done it for a long time but i rember it was nice when it happen but after it had happen i use to feel horrible and i got all depress bout lots of thingys and now i dont have to do it i feel lots better.

 

Thanks for this. All of these things are true for me and have been for a long time, especially the pieces I have bolded. I'm so thankful for my chastity cage and for its control of my erections, and for the help it provides in managing my masturbation addiction. I freely admit that without my chastity cage I am a cumpulsive masturbator.

 

Describes me to a tee

 

I’m 59 and as i stated in another thread, I was masturbating every other day, sometimes daily… this in itself isn’t a problem.. I’ve always felt healthily horny, but it does lead to wife neglection - which I really don’t like and don’t want any more - I WANT to be a proper husband and adore my wife - the cage really helps with this - although at first, my wife was pissed - as she said ‘why can’t you be like this WITHOUT the cage’ - I explained the masturbation thing and how guys have a down time afterwards, the cage stops the down time and I stay focused on her…. The simple answer for her of course was ‘stop masturbating then’ - easier said than done in this day and age - iPhone simply allows for a cosmos of porn available at one’s fingertips - go to the WC… sit down, get comfy and Literotica here I come!! So easy!! I still do that but the cage keeps me ‘downtime free’ and I stay focused - she’s even complimenting me on my oral skills now so it really is no bad thing, even if I haven’t been out of the cage for 23 days now and no immediate release in sight… I am hoping she needs PIV soon - I am never allowed to cum in her anyway - so this is a distinct possibility - so long as she makes sure I cage up before I get carried away… I think this might work!! But I digress, no more masturbation in my case is a good thing!! For both of us!

 

Sounds like you're in it for the duration! She knows what it means if you're not wearing the cage and that won't make her happy.

 

You will likely find that if you stop consuming porn your wife will become more and more beautiful in your sight, compounding the caste effect!

 

No amount of porn ever made my wife any less attractive to me. But I should add that seeing the beauty of other women never made her less attractive to me either, so ... ?

But every person is different ...

 

How can you say that if all you have ever known is a life/mind with porn? The only way to make such a statement is to stop porn for a few years.

 

I don't look at porn often. It doesn't define my life. I have always liked seeing beautiful women (naked or not), but my wife is the most attractive woman in the world to me. I'm obviously not capable of objectivity on this topic.

 

Probably a combination of all thing

On a biological level, it's a compulsion. The drive for sex is there to ensure humans reproduce and we don't go extinct. It's an instinct But it's one that can be managed to some extent And honestly, even then, I'm pretty sure we're meant to have sex, not really to masterbate so much. If there's any evolutionary value to masturbation at all, it's only so we can keep our sex drives up when mates are scarce (after all, use it or lose it), so when the opportunity presents itself, we can actually have sex.

If you were routinely jerking off every night, that's definitely a habit

And if you feel that you literally can't give it up, even if you want to, that's probably a sign of addiction.