Wow really great discussion from you all. This was my first time posting on this platform and i’m glad I did. Thank you all for the guidance and nice words.

If you keep thinking about doing it, it hurts. Bascially the goal is not just to “resist temptation” through willpower, but to get yourself to a state where you aren’t tempted in the first place. If climaxing was really so healthy, you wouldn’t be here in the first place trying to quit, right? Don’t kid yourself. It’s basically a drug especially when you have done it often enough to get to this point.

So, back to your questions…Climaxing is thought to be healthy by the majority of the modern medical world now (but at least the USA medical community also thinks that lots of things are great that are definitely not—so make your own decision). There is a whole other school of thought that has a bunch of research saying semen retention is great. Both sides will Pooh-pooh the other. It is normal to get more wet dreams when you’re not releasing semen other ways (I personally count that as a bonus—especially if you can remember them, or wake up right after, especially if they’re good dreams!) You don’t have to be sexually active! There’s no rule written anywhere that requires “all males of age XX must have intercourse a minimum of X times per week! Failure to comply will result in waxing of one nostril per time missed.” I have the belief that every time a man has sex with a woman there is a soul tie created that bonds the two together…when you eventually find the right woman and get married, having soul ties to previous sexual partners do not prevent a great marriage, but do require more work to make and keep a strong and pure intimate connection to your wife that doesn’t get interference from past soul ties (again, that’s my belief-and I got married as a virgin, so I can’t tell you if it’s real from my experience, but some of my married and divorced friends say that it is very real). Blue balls is something I’ve never really understood, are you just meaning pain? I’ve had that when I’ve been hard for a long while and not been able to nut…I’ve had to go masturbate, often the semen that comes out was thicker, sometimes with yellow globs (found out that is extra protein to keep the sperm healthy for longer time since being worked up, the sperm has been released from testes, but not shot out, the body makes this thicker protein to keep it healthy until it gets sent out to make babies—the body doesn’t know where it’s going, just what it’s for). Maybe it’s the protein that causes the pain…if so, don’t edge or entertain the hard-ons. If you get horny, change the subject-do something entirely different. Drop the technology (not literally, this tech is expensive). GO AND DO. Exercise. Clean. Organize. Rearrange something in your room—move your desk or bed or shelf or something to the other side of the room—wherever you have done your porn/fap…move it, change it, make it radically different so it’s totally not the same and not as easy to go back into it. If you’re still horny, get on QUITTR, either the PANIC Button or open Chat, get help to get through it without relapsing. You know how important FREEDOM is. This is your life, that you want to live FREELY, not bound to porn anymore, grab it by the balls and live it boldly, freely, without the porn, without the fap, live it like the man you are, not defeated, but like a FREE VICTOR! You got this! I believe in you! Let’s do this!

So, for me, the masturbating/climaxing in the past wasn’t good because it led me back to porn. A lot of smart people say that having orgasms is good for men, promotes good prostate health, release of good hormones, etc. I followed that train of thought most of my 55 year life. Recently, one of the no fap crowd here in QUITTR challenged me to join the semen retention/no fap side, and I had gotten to the place where I was fapping more than I needed for “maintenance”…and that’s where I would run the risk of getting in danger of getting into worse.

Now, in the past, I’ve quit porn (sometimes for YEARS, but never quit masturbating (I did stop for a time…25 days during a 40 day fast was all I could last, and about 50 days during boot camp—when I was eating the scrambled eggs…they put something in the eggs to keep the horniness down, I’m totally convinced (and the cooks said they did). All the times I quit porn before, when I would fap, I still had a porn mindset—I would think about the porn I had seen…I would still look at people for the types of things I watched porn for and let myself get turned on by the people when I saw their body shapes, or body parts through thin clothes or when thin clothes were pressed up by wind or were tight on their bodies…or seeing folks getting frisky out in public or wherever I saw them. Since I never let those brain pathways of the porn die, they remained strong, and I would eventually go back to porn.

Daniel, there’s debate over cumming and retaining semen. I’m new to avoiding masturbation myself…for this run, I’m 15 days in for no fap/no ejaculation. And it’s a pain for me…I get hard a lot, and I want to rub one out so that I’m not always struggling with wanting to.

That’s huge!!! Keep going. It’s worth it