"Masturbation with out Lusting"?

Well I see this thread is quite old and the last entry wasn’t so recent but I haven’t been to this site in a while as I was[/b] having success at overcoming my problem. That was until yesterday at 2 in the morning.[/font]

I can only speak from experience but I would say that masturbation would start with lusting but I don’t really think that’s what would keep it going.
 
I’ve started to try and look at my addiction rationally, and that’s what it is, an addiction. Like any other sexual or drug addiction, they all start and end in the same places.

With any addiction they all start with enjoying the experience, no matter how regrettable or wrong it is. I suppose it’s at this stage that lusting plays a role. I know when I started I, guiltily, enjoyed it and, although I hated porn, it became a medium for a while.

But then after a while the ‘lusting’ went away and that’s when the addiction really kicks in. Like with any drug it gets to the point where you don’t want it but ‘need’ it in you daily life. I feel, personally that I’ve been in that place for a while.

I managed to go ‘cold turkey’ for a while but then I ended up a stage one all over again: yesterday, when I searched for porn, and the process started all over again.

I’m going to stray off the topic here a bit but bear with me:

 My own addiction, I can accept. It affects me and my side of relationships with people, it shouldn’t affect anyone else. But I’ve abstained from porn for years now as it makes me sick that people would subject themselves to that knowing how it affects so many people. When I see it I can’t help thinking of what it was that possessed these girls to do it. Was it for the fun of it, a quick buck, or to show off? Unfortunately the reason is sometimes something a lot worse: sexual slavery. Porn is something that affects millions of people from the viewers to the women I’ve come to pity. And that’s why I can’t go back to that stage of my life, not again.  

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think masturbation without lusting is what classifies you as addicted and, I feel, is the punishment for not stopping earlier or not starting in the first place.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way but that’s the place I’m at right now.
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Hi Brian,

Being female, please forgive if this is an uninformed question.  Don't nocturnal emitions occur and afford some relief?

TruthSeeker

My experience: Maybe once every 2 - 3 months.   I had a few in my teen years.  Highly sexual dreams occur (at that point - things I'd never seen or imagined otherwise), and you wake up having an orgasm.  Maybe physically keeps your prostate from bursting, but otherwise, not much relief...  Not an exuse for masturbation, but also no consolation for someone enmeshed in the habit and trying to quit...

found a nice article on this masturbation topic, I don't think God approves of masturbation.

net-burst.net/sexuality/masturbation.htm

also read part two, it actually talks bout "non-sexual masturbation"

God bless! He is the final authority!

Listen to the Holy Spirit!

Mark, you've been warned before to drop the whole masturbation debate. We're going to have to agree to disagree on this issue, and leave it at that. If you want to debate masturbation, do it on another forum. Our primary purpose here is support for those who quit, not to provide an unending forum for debate for those who don't.

One more post on this topic will get you banned.

 

Paulos,

More likely than not, this isn't really an answer to your question, but it's as much of an attempt as I can offer.

First, some disclaimers.  For me, masturbation does not feel like it has been the center of my addictive behavior.  Rather, voyeurism in the broad sense has been the core.  Masturbation has been an accompanying behavior.  My sense is that in most of the sex addicts I know, this pattern is reversed, and this may weaken my ability to speak to your question precisely.  Also, I'm hardly an old-timer.  I've been engaged in active recovery for about two and a half years, and at this point I've been continuously sober for only 21 months.  Finally, I'm an Orthodox Christian and not an Evangelical; and so my use of the Bible may differ from that of the other participants and owners of this board, whose perspective I nevertheless honor and respect.

For me, the request for an iron-clad Biblical or rational argument against our behavior gives scripture and logic a greater weight than either really has in my own inner life.  I'm clever enough to work my way around a proof text or an abstract philosophical conviction, and I'm committed enough to my addiction simply to ignore such evidence.  After all, I have been willing to pursue my addiction despite the fact that it has separated me from God, despite the fact that it has caused my wife deep pain, despite the fact that it has deadened my soul, despite the fact that it has crippled my relationships with my children, despite the fact that it left my whole family with psychological scars, despite the fact that it has vastly interfered my career and left my job in jeopardy, and probably despite a dozen other things.  If things like that won't stop me, does it really seem likely that a neat verse from Proverbs or a compelling argument from Gregory of Nyssa or Spinoza is going to do the trick?

To get serious about recovery, I needed something much more personal.  I needed to be able finally to admit to myself that the pain was unbearable, and that I was finished.  This happened for me in my early 50s.

Two and a half years ago, I was finally able to see that as the years wore on, I was inexorably building higher and higher walls separating me from my wife, from my kids, from the people around me (I'd say, "From my friends," but I really had no friends), and from God.  I could see that as time moved on, my own soul was fragmenting into more and more bits - Tim at work, Tim at church, Tim the addict, Tim at home, . . . - and that I was becoming less and less a whole human being.

I looked at the record of my struggles, and could see that over 35 years, I had made no progress whatsoever toward sobriety.  I knew I didn't have another 35 years left to try the experiment again.

I watched my oldest son getting ready to leave home for college on the other side of the country, and I thought, "I always wanted to be a good father, but he's now leaving home, never having seen me well."

I thought about suicide, and this helped me finally grasp that I had nothing left to lose.  However frightened I might be of admiting weakness, of seeking help, of trusting God and other people, of confession to members of my family, this fear made no sense in someone contemplating throwing away his own life.  Of course it was scary to admit my situation to others.  Of course it was scary to be honest with my wife.  Of course it was scary to walk into a 12-step meeting.  Of course it was scary really to attempt to surrender absolutely everything to God.  If those things turned out badly, though, I could always kill myself later and have lost nothing.

Those are the sorts of things that persuaded me to surrender and to reach out.  It wasn't a reasoned argument or a verse of scripture.  Perhaps I wish reason and the Bible held such power for me, but they don't.

To move toward recovery, I needed total inner emotional and spiritual despair.  I also needed the hope that others had gone that way before, and that even for people like me, there was hope.  I needed utter despair, and I needed a wild and crazy hope.

I don't think my experience is in any way atypical.  I think we addicts walk along trying the same things again and again and failing in the same ways again and again until finally the pain becomes unbearable and we become able to surrender completely to the possibility of a new life.  I don't think reason has much to do with it.  I also don't think there is much of a way to hasten the inner process of capitulation.  We suffer until we have suffered enough, and then we dare to trust.  We keep going until our lives and the lives of the people around us have been wrecked sufficiently, and then we begin the terrifying work of building new lives.

As I said at the outset, this isn't the answer you asked for, Paulos.  It's not an answer that I, who make a living teaching people to solve problems using reason, find natural.  It is, however, very much an answer that describes the deepest parts of my own experience that I have yet been able to access.  I didn't get to recovery through my mind, but through the innermost parts of my heart.  You asked us to show you our minds, and I can't do that; but I have tried to show you my soul.

Tim M.