{"id":45646,"date":"2012-08-07T20:47:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T04:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=45646"},"modified":"2012-08-07T22:58:56","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T06:58:56","slug":"the-case-against-masturbation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=45646","title":{"rendered":"The Case Against Masturbation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More than two months ago, I gave up masturbation. (About 16 years ago, I gave up promiscuity and about two years ago, I gave up porn and any kind of visual aid to masturbation.)<\/p>\n<p>In 1990-1991, I gave it up for more than a year.<\/p>\n<p>I notice with my new sobriety that I have more time. I save 20 minutes a day. I notice that I have more focus because I don&#8217;t have so many options. Whenever I had time on my hands in the past or when I felt anxious or wanted to escape or to get high, I thought about masturbating. Now I don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>I think I have more passion and direction. I don&#8217;t have as many options, so I just flow into my diminished choices and give more commitment to them &#8212; to work, to writing, to Torah, to friends.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t store up erotic thoughts during the day to use at night. There&#8217;s this hot woman in my building and I could get drunk thinking about getting with her. When I walk down the street, I&#8217;ll often see a female with a particularly fine butt and my whole being becomes convinced that if I can just caress that part of her, my life will be awesome and my problems will disappear. Now that I can&#8217;t use these fantasies, can&#8217;t stoke them, I might spend less time in fantasy land and more time in reality.<\/p>\n<p>I used to set myself limits with my masturbating. I determined that I wouldn&#8217;t masturbate to any fantasies that were cruel and exploitive. I had mixed success with this. I found that every time I masturbated, I was just ingraining my eroticized rage that much deeper. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s wonderful to have more sanity and dignity in my life.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like I have more confidence because I conquer my beastly nature every day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than two months ago, I gave up masturbation. (About 16 years ago, I gave up promiscuity and about two years ago, I gave up porn and any kind of visual aid to masturbation.) In 1990-1991, I gave it up &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=45646\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26369,21,28],"tags":[29549,29550,29551,29554,29553,29552],"class_list":["post-45646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-addiction","category-personal","category-sex","tag-erotic-thoughts","tag-fantasy-land","tag-hot-woman","tag-masturbate","tag-sobriety","tag-time-on-my-hands"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45661,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45646\/revisions\/45661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}