Has any single man managed to stop masturbating?
Full question: Has any single man (who has a high sex drive and who thinks masturbating is wrong) managed to stop masturbating? Criteria: This has to have happened when you were not married yet, and you have to have had a high sex drive and not asexual.
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This matter has been on my heart and mind for years, so since we have a great community on Reddit here, I thought I'd ask one more time. But first if you'd allow me, let me share my story and the context.
Since I discovered masturbation when I was 11, I was fascinated but also felt really guilty every time after I did it, and when I turned 14, I couldn't go without it for more than 2 weeks, and I tried not to use porn. (I know because I used a spreadsheet to track the days, and I tracked this for about a year when I was 16 or 17.)
When I re-dedicated my life to Christ when I was 22 (after having gone astray), one of the things I did was try to stop masturbating and to stop watching porn, and my strategy was to masturbate normally, but without porn and thoughts. I was successful to an extent, and I rarely slipped up in this season (about 5 months). So I felt good about the improvement. I wasn't 100% sure if doing this was right, but I definitely thought it was better than before.
However after this season, I found myself slowly watching porn again. Shortly after, as part of me dedicating my life to God, I changed careers and moved to a remote area and made an effort to seek God's kingdom 4 hours a day, i.e. praying, reading the Bible, and watching videos about God. I also did a few fasts as part of my seeking God. I also wanted to really get rid of this masturbation/porn problem, as I loved God so much. My strategy this time was to only masturbate once a week on a specific day without thinking of anything. Sometimes on this day I would slip up and masturbate more than once, but I was quite successful in limiting it to one day in a week, so I felt good about it. Whenever I had a temptation, I would find it was doable to postpone it to that specific day.
After 3 months of doing this, I felt that it's time to go to the next level, i.e. go cold turkey, which turned out to be the worst strategy ever. Retrospectively, by removing my only outlet, I set myself up for failure, and the longest I could go without thinking about sex or masturbating was only 3 or 4 days. The slightest thoughts would get me so aroused, and knowing I didn't have a specific day later to masturbate, I was unable to concentrate on normal daily tasks until I had done the deed (and felt really guilty afterwards).
And then, after 3 months of failling miserably, I decided to talk to some Christian men about it, which was not easy because I felt so much shame and it was a big secret. So I reached out to about 7 men that I know who were Christian ministers who I thought would help me. My goal was to find out if they managed to stop masturbating when they were single, and if so, how did they do it? 5 of them ignored me, 1 replied "haha is that your biggest struggle?", and only 1 had a call with me in which he confessed he was still struggling and his advice was to "pray more", which I was already doing 4 hours a day, remember.
Long story short, after none of these men really helped me nor had a real-life success story, I embraced the desires that God gave me and continued masturbating, this time putting effort into finding a wife. This removed my guilt of masturbation. I found a wife 5 months later. She was my first relationship and we were both virgins. It's been 3 years since, and we have sex almost every day. Marriage had been really challenging and a real test of patience, and the enemy tried to break us many times but God kept us together.
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As I know this is a popularly controversial topic but that Reddit has a helpful and honest community, I want to surface the question again, as this is a delicate subject, and if I am wrong, I want to learn. I don't want to be wrong and damned by God.
So, again, my full question: Has any single man (who has a high sex drive and who thinks masturbating is wrong) managed to stop masturbating? Criteria: This has to have happened when you were not married yet, and you have to have had a high sex drive and not asexual.