people have been demonizing it for most of the AD years i think but it’s quite pleasant really. are there any proven negative effects?
Masturbation is totally normal and healthy, and you’re spot on that it shouldn’t be demonized or shamed. In men, it might even reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
At the same time, it’s important to have a balanced and psychologically flexible relationship with masturbation and sexuality. As psychologist Steven Hayes, a leading expert on psychological flexibility, explains: getting too fixated on any one activity or coping mechanism, even a healthy one, can lead to psychological inflexibility if it is used to avoid experiencing your life fully (For a thorough explanation of how this works, feel free to check out A Liberated Mind by Steven Hayes). Psychological inflexibility here means getting stuck in rigid behavior patterns to the point that it messes with living a full and meaningful life.
So while I’m totally with you that masturbation is healthy and that bullshit social taboos against it should be rejected, it’s also good to be mindful about your motivation behind doing it. Are you doing it because you’re escaping pain? Or are you doing it because it aligns with your values and makes your life meaningful? If you rely on masturbation too much and don’t have ways of accepting your emotions and connecting with the world, it could potentially tip into unhelpful psychological rigidity and a frustrating life. The key is to be able to experience masturbation while still staying flexible enough to show up fully for the rest of your life too.
What if I’m masturbating because my body demands I masturbate when I look at porn, even though I’d rather just look at porn without masturbating?
Thanks for the response. What you’re describing - feeling a bodily urge to masturbate when viewing porn, even if you’d prefer not to - is very common. We’re kinda designed so that our bodies respond to sexual stimuli. Many people can relate to that internal tug-of-war between an impulse and a conflicting desire.
From a psychological flexibility perspective, the key is to approach those urges with mindful acceptance rather than struggle against them. Fighting with or trying to suppress an urge often just makes it grow stronger, like a beach ball you keep trying to push underwater - it keeps popping back up with greater force (1). Instead, psychological flexibility invites us to open up and make room for the urge, observing it with curiosity and letting it be fully present in our awareness.
This doesn’t mean you have to act on the urge. In fact, by giving it space to exist without resistance, you gain the ability to unhook from it and consciously choose how to respond in line with your values (2). You might say to yourself “I’m having the thought that I need to masturbate right now” and feel the sensations of that urge in your body, while still maintaining the freedom to decide if acting on it is truly what you want.
Imagine for a moment that a dear friend or loved one came to you struggling with this same dilemma. How would you respond to them? Most likely with compassion, understanding, and encouragement to be kind to themselves as they navigate this very human challenge. We could all benefit from extending that same caring response to ourselves.
At the end of the day, you’re the expert on your own life and what matters most to you. By practicing acceptance of your inner experiences, unhooking from unhelpful thoughts and urges, and clarifying what you truly value, you can develop psychological flexibility to pursue a rich and meaningful life - whatever that looks like for you. That means that there’s no one “right” way to relate to masturbation and porn. The invitation is to approach it mindfully and make choices that align with the kind of person you want to be.
(1) You can check out the “rebound effect” or “ironic process theory.” It’s been studied extensively in the context of thought suppression. The seminal paper on the topic is Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R., & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5–13. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.5
(2) This meta-analysis reviewed laboratory-based studies testing the components of the psychological flexibility model, and how psychological flexibility techniques increase behavioral flexibility. Levin, M. E., Hildebrandt, M. J., Lillis, J., & Hayes, S. C. (2012). The impact of treatment components suggested by the psychological flexibility model: A meta-analysis of laboratory-based component studies. Behavior Therapy, 43(4), 741-756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2012.05.003
Mindfulness sounds like a lot of work when I’m already planning to get genital nullification surgery
EDIT: Lemmy users love to downvote trans people’s lived experiences because they’re transphobic
Mindfulness sounds like a lot of work when I’m already planning to get genital nullification surgery
Being present with yourself and learning to sit with your thoughts (mere transient, ephemeral nothingness) is probably not going to be more work than undergoing literal surgery.
And it’s pretty insulting to gender diversity for you to attribute to transphobia our revulsion at seeing your level of emotional intolerance.
I’m mindful as shit about plenty of other stuff, just not my genitals. Being mindful about my genitals is bad because I have dysphoria. But I don’t expect a transphobe like you to understand my medical needs when you’ve already made a reductive judgement about my entire psychology based on a single statement in a specific context. You’re eager to judge, not to understand.
and you are eager to bemoan and cry persecution and not very eager to be understood. i cant believe you never mentioned being ace but only being trans. and yet it is our fault for not knowing this about you?
Asks question about psychology and masturbation. Gets well thought out response with source material and excellent advice. Responds to said comment in a rude way.
EveRYoNe is sO tRanSpHobiC!!
Lol. No. Your response was shitty and had nothing to do with the topic or the incredibly well thought out and empathetic response that you received. That’s why you’re being downvoted. Your gender does not give you permission to treat others poorly and you’re acting no better than actual transphobes.
I wasn’t being rude, I just gently informed the other person that they were giving bad advice, without getting angry or aggressive or belittling them in any way. You’re only reading my normal, pleasant interactions with other people as rude because you want an excuse to hate a trans person.
This is what is called gaslighting and it’s deplorable.
No, gaslighting is when someone tries to make you question your sanity. Someone disagreeing with you isn’t called gaslighting, it’s called a disagreement. Obviously I’m going to disagree with you when you make up nonsense about my own actions. And if I had been as obnoxious and incorrect as you are, then I would have accused you of gaslighting when you told me my own actions were different than they really are.
I just gently informed the other person that they were giving bad advice,
Do you really think they were giving bad advice? They presented something really well thought-out and with flippin citations! And I can say that Hayes is absolutely a credible expert in the field who has done amazing work in mental health and addiction.
You just don’t like the answer. Because you believe the answer is too hard for you.
And it’s an easy excuse to say you’re being persecuted for your identity, but really it is your attitude being criticized. Honestly it’s frustratingly transphobic of you to try and lump in maladaptive sexual responses with transness too. Do you see what kind of damage it can potentially do to portray a hypersexual trait as something essentially trans???
It’s good advice in general, but it’s bad advice for me, as I already explained multiple times. And I’m asexual, not hypersexual. I tell you I’m getting genital nullification surgery and you still go and erase my very obvious queerness.
Yes, but I feel mindfulness can solve many problems. I’m not sure how many of your problems will be solved with surgery, but you might need to mix in a bit of mindfulness for good measure.
I’m mindful about lots of things, but I’m not mindful about my genitals, because they give me dysphoria. I’ll be mindful about my lack of genitals when I don’t have genitals.
You can’t mindfulness your way out of being trans. It doesn’t work, I tried.
Very well. I know it’s not a fix for everything. I just found it helped me growing up and when I remember to be mindful as an adult. When I forget and get too caught up in my own head is when I need it the most.
I wish you luck on your process and hope the best for you.
Psychological inflexibility here means getting stuck in rigid behavior patterns to the point that it messes with living a full and meaningful life.
Rigid behavioral patterns like having to work 40 hours a week, shop, feed yourself, clean, do laundry, go to the doctor, pay bills and so on, over and over and over again for the rest of your life?
Bro you can’t just list basically every human ADL and say it’s a “rigid behavior”. That’s basically like saying “Oh, you claim to like variety? Then how come you spend every day ALIVE?” thats idiotic, arrogant, cynical
Well excuse the fuck out of me for not having enough free time to actually enjoy my life.
you cant compartmentalize things like that. there aren’t “chores” vs “fun” and everything you have to do is pain and the fun is just the chemical rushes. you gotta learn to enjoy the little things, enjoy yourself while you’re doing your job or your chores, have some gratitude that you still live and breathe. you probably are gonna wanna get screened for depression
I can’t pick and choose what I do or do not enjoy doing. There’s nothing engaging about cleaning or doing laundry. When I first got out on my own there was at least some challenge in figuring out the most efficient way of doing things but that’s all been mastered long ago. My job mostly consists of going down a list of projects and emailing people to find out why they haven’t finished things that should have been done weeks ago. Then when I leave I get to sit in traffic for half an hour. Maybe stop at one of the over crowded, understaffed grocery stores to overpay for food. Get home, work out for an hour, shower, cook food, clean up, do whatever else needs doing. There’s nothing to enjoy about any of that. It’s all tedious as hell. I might have an hour or two after everything else is done to unwind before bed and even then I usually have too much on my mind to really get immersed in anything.
I get how you can feel like that is a fault of the world, but don’t you see any agency in changing any of this? Or you just leave it at “Well I don’t like it so that’s that”
Of the things I listed:
Job - I’m always on the look out for better options, so far nothing has come up that pays more and I’m already not making enough to do the things I want to do.
Cleaning - Already said I have gamified it to get some enjoyment out of it in the past but I don’t see any more room for improvement there.
Traffic - I can leave work early to beat rush hour sometimes but that that only helps a little.
Grocery store - I’ve tried going to different ones but it’s more or less the same issues at all of the ones I’ve tried. I’ve figured out which days are usually less busy but it still sucks.
Working out - I vary my routines to not get too boring but it’s still more or less the same stuff over and over again. It was fun when I was making gains but now my physique is where I want it to be so it’s just maintenance.
Cooking- can try making new stuff but that just takes longer and comes with the risk of waste if I mess it up or don’t like it. Also sharing a kitchen with housemates that tend to pack all the freezer space with garbage they buy from costco.
Free time - I guess I could stay up later but then I’ll feel like shit all day the next day.
I’m open to suggestions but you’re acting like I don’t think about this shit constantly.
I mean that’s definitely just a checkout aisle self-help book, though. Psychology, along with nutritional science and some other softer, more survey-based fields, has been suffering a pretty massive replication crisis, where something like 50% of papers are totally incapable of being replicated, depending on the journal and subject.
So I dunno, I’d generally be pretty skeptical of anything a book like that says about how you have to live your life or what you should be doing or how you should be doing it. Even if it’s something like “mindfulness”, right, generally thought to be a therapeutic practice, which we’re extracting from zen buddhism or whatever, just like carl jung travels around and extracts a bunch of “archetypes” from other cultures and then supposes that they’re universal when really it’s all just kinda some schizo bullshit canon he’s coming up with on the fly.
I uhh, I don’t like the scientific paint that is painted onto psychology and psychotherapy, is I guess what I’m saying. The attempt at formalization. What is just as good for one person, to be mindful, is probably something that someone else should rather not think about at all. Maybe even as a functional adaptation, a functional delusion that they can go on believing, and still end up having a fulfilling and uplifting life for everyone around them.
I mean that’s definitely just a checkout aisle self-help book, though.
Hayes is not a checkout aisle self-help book lol he pioneered multiple major branches of CBT. that’s like calling the Rolling Stones elevator music
I’d generally be pretty skeptical of anything a book like that says about how you have to live your life or what you should be doing or how you should be doing it
I admire the skepticism but you haven’t read it and clearly haven’t taken time to fully understand it. he isn’t making prescriptive claims. he’s speaking on behavioral science. “A happens, then B tends to happen. C happens, then D tends to happen. do what you will with this info.”
I don’t like the scientific paint that is painted onto psychology and psychotherapy, is I guess what I’m saying.
i understand the apprehension about psychological research but it is fundamentally a subjective science - psychology is what makes subjectivity possible, after all! and we humans clearly need treatment. if everyone listened to the ideas you planted in here, then what would we do? not try any treatments at all? not test our treatments? not seek evidence that our treatments are working and improve them? not share our findings?
the issue fundamentally is that you need to learn more about reading and interpreting scientific literature. you’re presenting a pseudo-intellectual skepticism which is admittedly a healthy protective mechanism from many things online, but is not going to be a useful attitude for all kinds of growth
im sorry im being a dick but this thread has funked up my barometer for crazy and i probably misinterpreted your level of it, be well
Hayes is not a checkout aisle self-help book lol he pioneered multiple major branches of CBT
I mean, both can be true, right. It’s not uncommon for pretty popular scientists to get into kind of the grift economy after a little while. Jordan peterson has how many citations to his scientific papers or whatever? But then he still rolls around and spews a bunch of bullshit that’s sort of framed under the guise of his psychological background, and you can still tell is pretty easily influenced by his jungian type bullshit. I dunno, been a while since I actually looked into him, but it shook my ability to trust psychology more as a field, after that one.
I admire the skepticism but you haven’t read it and clearly haven’t taken time to fully understand it. he isn’t making prescriptive claims. he’s speaking on behavioral science. “A happens, then B tends to happen. C happens, then D tends to happen. do what you will with this info.”
No yeah for sure I haven’t read it, don’t claim to have read it, I’m just extremely skeptical of that kind of book, which presents science to the public at large, because most of the experiences I’ve had with that sort of thing have been damaging psuedoscientific bullshit that I slowly have to talk my friends out of. Which becomes much harder when they think they know things on a topic because they’ve read like one book about it. I don’t even try to talk them into a different stance, I just try to talk them out of the kind of, oversimplified takes which they tend to get from these types of books. Steven pinker type books, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” type books, “The Bell Curve” type books, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, “Poor Dad, Rich Dad”, shit like that. Admittedly not all of those are science guys, and some of that shit’s kind of old, but, you see what I’m getting at, it all blends together for the public. Pop psychology, that’s probably the term for that specific type of book, and uhh, yeah, that book gave me that kind of vibe.
If I’m really being skeptical, than, not evaluating anything else, because I just got up and still haven’t finished my coffee, the first study at the end of your post has two experiments. The first has a sample size of 34, the second has a sample size of 44. I dunno if I would say that you can really extrapolate anything from such an incredibly small sample size, to be honest. Especially one that’s like, taken from standard college campus volunteers. I know there are lots of scientific studies that rely on sample sizes which are pretty small, and I would throw that criticism at those studies, too. Shit happens in nutrition and exercise science too, I know for sure, which is why you see shitty fad diets circulate so much. I dunno, maybe I’ll read the rest of the paper, but that’s just like my general, me throwing shit at psychology as a field, right? But, maybe more, like, maybe more to, I think, some sort of point, if I have it, right:
and we humans clearly need treatment.
Like what do you mean by this? Because you’re looking at this through “treatments”, right, and I dunno if that’s the correct lens with which to view most people’s problems that they have in life. I mean it’s not a fuckin, incredibly new take, right, but like, you have a society where you’re expected to work 9-5, probably more, hours, five days a week, probably go in on a rental with your significant other, or increasingly, with your significant others, for like, 60 something years of your life? It’s not a shocker when we’re experiencing increasing amounts of depression at large, then, to me. That people have problems with that. I mean like, does changing society at large, qualify as a kind of patient treatment? I suppose my problem, if I’m really trying to have one, is just kind of that like, there’s not really any amount of psychological help which makes it better that your fingers are getting crushed in industrial machinery. Psychological help, in that case, just looks like copium. I don’t think psychology can help a lot of those problems, I think the best it can do is put a band-aid over a crippling tumor, which is nothing.
If you were to ask me what we were to do with the mentality I have, I’d probably want to incredibly balloon sample sizes and drastically increase the amount of evidence that we’re collecting, compared to just like, some guy’s written observations on like 50 people in some random experiment. Probably though, this is impossible, because school funding does not look to be going up anytime soon and google isn’t gonna share their massive amounts of data they’re collecting on people, and even if we had a glut of data to go through then we’d probably still be having to come up with and apply some sort of framework to it. At which point we just end up with a bunch of hacky bullshit, where you just take the noise and draw something in it and then say that this was somehow a natural occurrence, so you’d also need more rigorous standards for what conclusions we’re actually able to draw from the noise.
Then, even if you were able to do that, you’d still have no real way of distinguishing, say, one set of noise from another set of noise, to compare the two and draw a conclusion, because we’re just playing with like, one set of data, in a vacuum, compared to another set of data drawn from a vacuum, and there’s too many variables which might effect one outcome compared to another. So you’d probably need to be gathering pretty rigorous data over the course of many years before you’d be able to draw a real conclusion. Even then, the data might not be good enough, I dunno if you’d have enough information.
I’d maybe lean more into neuroscience to try and cut out some of the external noise, some of the factors that might fuck your shit up, but then that’s also not quite a good method because it doesn’t really cut out the external noise so much as ignore it, and you can still end up finding FMRI signals in a dead fish.
So, I dunno, probably I’d just use science for maths and astronomy and physics, stuff like that, and then otherwise I’d dismiss it, in looking for philosophies and methods with which to live my life or shape my being around. Or, you know, try to take it as it comes, and not really accept claims at face value. I’ve tried mindfulness, and I’ve found it wanting, because it just caused me to dissociate whenever I encountered an outcome I didn’t really like, and then instead of responding to things naturally, and flying by instinct, it causes me to kind of be like, the guy who smokes weed and then becomes hyper-aware of everything they’re doing but then their actual behavior devolves into nonsense.
Then, when I got farther than that, and I started to observe that behavior in the abstract, then it just sort of struck me as like, none of this realistically gives you a particular value judgement, right. It’s fine enough to just say, like, ah, well, think about it more, evaluate your life more, think about the long term consequences a little more. But, that train of thought doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to be making the correct judgements, and even over a lifetime, it might very well be that I could try everything and still come to the wrong conclusions, wrong judgements, or the right conclusions and right judgements, or whatever. I could be a hyper-conscious CEO evaluating my own life totally inaccurately and still be getting by fine and dandy, and I could be a homeless guy with accurate takes but still have a shit life. It’s basically nonsense, to just be like, oh, well, think about it a little bit harder, just be a little bit more conscious, because that isn’t nailed down to anything in particular.
I respect your skepticism and I can see why you would mistrust the field broadly based on those figures in it. I just don’t think we need to throw out the whole field because of bad actors. Someone like Jordan Peterson is widely discredited in the field.
Treatment IS important. There are REAL problems with roots in our own psychology. It is not purely psychological, but always biopsychosocial. Disregarding the psychological is not the way to treat biopsychosocial issues. In fact, it is one of the only ones we have any real agency or control over. And the more we develop psychology, the more just our understanding becomes. Think about 50 years ago when almost everything was just called “schizophrenia” and we treated people by shocking the shit out of them. That’s where we’d still be if we didn’t do this kind of work.
When someone comes to me writing in pain from traumatic flashbacks, or wildly out of control of their lives due to mood swings, or losing grasp on what is real or not, or paralyzed with anxiety from the rat race you’re talking about, or they just plain cannot enjoy anything anymore and want to kill themselves… it is a low priority for me to discuss systemic issues with them. We can acknowledge them as a tool for alleviating shame and guilt surrounding mental disorders, and we can brainstorm ways to work around them, but expecting a suicidal client to begin marching in the streets? That is not going to be a sustainable means of making their immediate lives better. It is often more of a distraction than anything. Systemic justice and advocacy work is the kind of thing you do for no singular client in particular, and usually done in addition to the individual work.
But mental health treatment is how we help people find peace right here and now. It is how we empower people to find agency in their own lives, and help make them strong enough people to go out and support others in the longer term. It’s the people who do not treat their mental health that end up devoting themselves to bizarre causes. I mean, think about how many Q anon supporters have addictive or psychotic tendencies.
If you acknowledge that there are real mental disorders (with both internal and external etiology), and you acknowledge that treating the individual can be a positive step towards addressing systemic issues, then the question becomes what kind of treatment should we use? That’s where the scientific method comes in too. Yes there will always be problems and questions, but we do what we can with what we have.
I have seen people make real progress and really turn their lives around. That includes the masturbaters too lol, who do come through from time to time. I don’t care if there are swindlers out there - as long as there are real people who are really helping others. Helping people figure out what is truly important to them can help them find strength to endure the shit they cannot change. Helping people build tolerance for and even appreciation for pain can help them make decisions that give their lives greater meaning. It helps people free themselves from the grasp of addiction and start giving back to others. It helps people find reasons to live. It is doing an immediate, person-to-person good. I don’t know what kind of world you dream of, but I hope it is one with room for that kind of justice.
Thank you for your thoughts on all this!
Thank you… most of the responses in this thread are really immature, arrogant, entitled, and pretty fucking cynical.
I work with people with severe depression and also the occasional sex/porn addict. Sexuality can lead us to some healthy lifestyles and can function as a healthy coping skill but it’s also one that’s easy to overdo. There are folks out there who try to treat their depression by masturbating all day long. They’re desperate for any hit of pleasure, and they have quite literally milked that cow dry.
This post reminds me of the Reddit marijuana communities, that rubber-banded so far beyond reasonable moderated consumption of a helpful medicine, but refused to see how maladaptive their ritual had become. No one in this thread is questioning the original premise. “But it’s so good!” That’s the immature, arrogant part. And the entitled part is the attitude that any criticism of my precious coping tool is a threat to my hollow happiness, and the cynicism is that the only reason to criticize it is because of a corrupt society! Jesus fucking christ this thread broke my brain, you all broke my brain, we all suck.
I’ve ended up having sex with my marijuana and smoking my semen… And I can’t help but ask myself, where did it all go wrong?
(Sing along with me)
Every sperm is sacred
Every sperm is good
Every sperm is wanted
In your neighborhood
Remind me to never walk barefoot in your neighborhood.
If you bring a black light at night, it looks like the surface of the moon in direct sunlight
You shouldn’t do that anyway.
This mofo walks barefoot on the streets.
Not everyone grows up in places where that is looked down upon.
ewwwwwww tho
I don’t even walk barefoot in my house. I used to, but then I got a bunch of cats.
Outside though?! Absolutely not! I have different PANTS I wear when I go outside.
That last line made me change to Ray Parker Jr style funk.
“Bustin’ makes me feel good!”
Literally good for you, eh?
Masturbate right before gym, then go train. Note how your performance was. Especially if its a squat or a deadlift day.
Note down what time you went to sleep, when you woke up, and every meal you ate (all calories, including macros).
Now refrain from masturbation from that day until the next session you have of the same exercise, make sure you go to sleep within the same time the night before, wake the same time the day of training, and eat the same exact meals, go train the same exact exercise, same sets, reps, and weight. Note your performance.
yeah yeah down vote me.
I don’t notice much of a difference personally and I have several years of consistent workout logs to go off.
Nobody tells this guy when to cum!
And I mean nobody!
I’m actually curious on this one, I don’t have gym equipment or membership, is there something else I can do to compare performance if I were to masturbate vs if I didn’t?
You could do bodyweight stuff. Pushups, pullups, squats, core work, etc.
It’s all old coaches tales. Olympic athletes not only masturbate but actively fuck each other senseless during the Olympics and you don’t see any effect on their performance in the slightest. If you are such a wimp that busting a nut makes you lose your breath sooner when jogging, then you have different medical problems. Cardiac atrophy for example. Masturbating barely even burns calories to begin with.
But to be entirely fair to the guy’s point:
Lots of top athletes have superstitions about abstaining from intercourse prior to events - some are very extreme, with fighters isolating themselves from their spouses and training for months without any release before their MMA fight/boxing match. Some say they do it for, say, just a week ahead of time, etc.
There are a few who have the opposite philosophy and claim to actually do it more in the week leading up to the fight.
It’s really a massive point of contention because some people claim it is a mere superstition while others absolutely will not break their routine.
There is also the famous incident where Bobby Fisher says that he performed poorly at a tournament because he had sex after the first night and the experience totally removed him from his focus…
This might be why it impacts fighters and certain people whose lifting styles are really about maximized performance and not a routine… If concentration is interrupted, it can result in very poor output. Like I can see how someone who is very intense about what they are doing and requires total focus would be interrupted by any form of sexual distraction. This is probably very, very relevant to guys who are fighters…
This might also have to do with perspectives on sexuality - people who ascribe a lot of meaning to it versus those who do not…
Lots of stuff to consider, I think.
Interestingly if I refrain from ejaculation, the longer I go, the more aggressive my performance is. I was in the camp that it was all BS. This was in my late teens and early 20s. I decided to test this claim after a gym owner/coach/professional bodybuilder gave me his thoughts on his personal journey into gym training, explaining that he would not ejaculate 1 week prior to a set of specific exercises he had planned to PR (hit a new personal record).
I’ve gone so far from refraining to ejaculate (about 6 weeks) that I would literally urinate a mixture of urine and ejaculate - without the orgasm. Reaching this far into refraining, my aggression and focus was noticeable. More interestingly and may have been coincidental, but refraining from ejaculation even eliminated joint pain I had in my elbows from heavy bench and overhead pressing. I’m including this because apparently there’s people who have arthritis (of some sort) and after ejaculation, their arthritis flares up immediately after.
I personally don’t care if people want to call it a myth, but if you’re an athlete, you compete, or simply take weight training seriously, you should maybe test out said myth for yourself.
I joked with my wife that I couldn’t break a 685lbs deadlift, I hit a plateau there - 4 times in a row (4 different sessions) until I decided to refrain from sex for 10 days leading up to my next deadlift session where I was able to smoothly pull a 690, so smooth I debated to go after the 700 (my next milestone) but decided to save it for another time.
That is amazing - really good stuff. I will add that to my anecdotes on this topic.
That’s a problem with attitudes about sex and lack of impulse control during competition. The same could be said about doing your taxes before a tournament. It can take your focus, but it is not the taxes fault. It’s your lack of impulse control to keep your mind focused on the competition. Bad coaches ignore that there is a strong psychological component to training. But it has nothing to do with the sexual nature of the stimulus, just what you do with it and what is the attitude towards it.
Still, absolutely nothing to do with any physiological element of performance. Jerking one off the night before is not going to knock off anything, much less weight in your lifting personal record, for instance.
I actually think there’s an argument to be made that a lot of top tier athletes are never doing things like their taxes prior to a big match. It’s just really anticlimactic to say “My spouse/manager/dad does all my paperwork and handles my finances before a fight” than to say “I isolate myslf from my spouse and don’t have any orgasms before a fight.”
I also think that they would make the argument that they have plenty of impulse control and focus, it’s just a matter of the extent to which one has it.
It’s one thing to be a man who does not look at p0rn or masturb8 and only sleeps with his wife and another thing to be a monk.
Ignore a rando on the Internet?
This is pretty incel-ish. Here’s an article linking several studies which contradict your anecdotal suggestions. But you keep not fucking, I’ll cover for you!
Positive results on a quasi-scientific self-experiment is not a good way to gain knowledge. At best it is how you specifically react to the variables introduced; however, it seems that you only performed this self-experiment on two separate occasions or perhaps only when you planned to go to the gym. Although your attempt to limit confounding variables is commendable, it is not enough to reach a conclusion. To definitely find the truth on the matter, many more participants must be enrolled and the experiment should last for at least three weeks, but hopefully much longer so as to definitely reduce any confounding variables that will influence the results. Some of the better studies regarding physical performance were running for around six months just for this reason.
Specifically regarding your self-experiment, if it was indeed performed as one session vs. one other session, there could be any number of confounding variables that could have effected your performance other then masturbation. Did you keep a sleep journal during the experiment (recording night mood, morning mood, amount of sleep)? Did you consume alcoholic beverages in the seven days leading up to the session? What was your specific workout routine?
In my opinion you should continue this experiment, but record more data for longer amounts of time; say six months of abstention, and six months of regular masturbation. Of course, this produces it’s own confounding variables because it could very well be that the result you get has nothing to do with whether or not you masturbated, but rather the gains you made during the first trial period. Which is why to be able to tell people what is truth and what is incorrect, more participants must be recruited to validate the results; otherwise, it will only ever be (again) at best (i.e. confounding variables properly accounted for to the best of your ability), how you specifically react to abstention.
With only a single event, it could be something as boring as what music you listened to during a workout. That can actually have a pretty strong influence, where maturation at best has a small influence, if any. If that weren’t the case, the Olympics wouldn’t be full of athletes fucking, because releasing their sperm somehow has a negative effect on performance. (If you believe it’s only masturbation, not sex, I’m going to need you to consider what mechanism could possibly effect this, because I can’t think of any.)
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literally good for you
I actually asked my family doctor at one point about the health effects of masturbation. She said that as a guy, if you are not otherwise sexually active, it’s good for the prostate to keep the plumbing working down there.
Religion
I’d like to go a bit deeper.
I don’t think people invented socially controlling practices because they found religion, I think they found religion to frame the invention of socially controlling practices.
Masturbation is a gratifying act that relives pressure to settle into a rigid domestic arrangement that serves to make more workers and soldiers, and create dependents that need fed, and whose well-being would be threatened if a parent became defiant and provoked the ire of elites.
Masturbation is good for the individual at the expense of the nation and its rulers. So it’s inevitable that priests would decry it as an affront against god, as that’s historically been their purpose.
Defeat the ruling class… jerk off
I’d like to go a bit deeper.
go on…
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this is exactly the truth
Citation needed.
Which part? I think this is all subjective opinion.
Their statement started off with “I don’t think” which generally means it’s an opinion that may or may not have evidence. As long as they don’t present it as truth and fact, it doesn’t really need a citation.
That an opinion lacks evidence does not alleviate the requirement that its factual allegations be supported by evidence. “I don’t think the surface of the earth is curved” may be an opinion, but it’s a provably wrong assertion, and adding a disclamitory phrase to it doesn’t excuse the statement from evaluation.
this is a message board not a dissertation, nobody has to do shit
Yeah, my bad. I forgot how cool it is to just spout whatever bullshit you want. Hurray for ignorance.
No wonder humanity is doomed.
Then you should simply call that person a dumb ass and move on in that scenario. And their statement was loaded with qualifiers that indicates to the audience to not take their claim seriously. This isn’t debate club or a Congressional hearing. It’s a niche internet forum.
Similar to the claim that god exists 🤔
Pretty sad when religion claims to abhor evil, happens to be the source of a lot of it. Right? I can’t name a single thing religion ever did for me other than make me miserable.
I don’t think it’s the source. I think it’s a tool of social control that enables the powerful to create a bare minimum willingness to be ruled. For a long time the doctrine of Christianity was the Divine Right of Kings. Now it’s the Prosperity Gospel. The books did not change but the people with all the money and power ensured the church leaders who served their interest had most of the money and thus followers.
If we didn’t have religion, some other social construct would arise, and I’d argue, has arisen to fulfill it’s role. Modern economic theory justifies the current power order in an unfalsifiable way that reminds me of religion.
Religion could be a liberatory force in society. In fact it has been. The liberation theology movement in South America and numerous heretical movements in the late medieval period are both examples of progressive Christian social movements.
Thank you. I think anyone who spends a lot of time reading about history comes to these conclusions.
IMO, and without actual data to back it up, I reckon religion (and religious difference) is responsible for the most suffering throughout the history of humankind.
I feel like even without religion we’d find ways to make each other miserable ‘cause we’re just an awesome species like that.
Yeah, no dispute here, mate. We’re pretty shocking like that. But I think religion stands out as an example of the worst, most inventive way we’ve come up with to subjugate and hurt people.
As a species, we’ve convinced ourselves that religion should be protected rather than inspected. We let lots of bad things happen in the name of religion. It’s bullshit.
Amen to that!
Because stroking the bratwurst can be addictive and lead to destructive behaviours.
Maybe sure. We all do like bratwurst. We’re not talking about bratwurst luckily.
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Christianity and capitalism. If it doesn’t make you feel guilty the Christians don’t like it and if you can provide it to yourself for free the capitalists don’t like it.
You kidding? Porn is a 4 billion dollar industry.
You can jerk off without porn. Think of all the advertising and subscriptions on porn sites. Those have nothing to do with masturbation and everything to do with capitalism.
My weiner would disagree
Sorry you’re addicted to porn, G. Get help if you need it.
A lot of religion has been to push a heterosexual couple together for the means of procreation. Masturbation has been seen as a way for people to lessen their urge to procreate in the appropriate canonical manner.
Often times it’s about control over people. Whether it’s religion or capatilism sense it’s something you can do yourself for free that gives you pleasure. Capatilism can’t force you to pay for enjoying yourself and religion doesn’t want you to do things that they don’t control
For fuck sakes. Not everything has to do with capitalism. Puritanical belief exists long before capitalism, communism or whatever economic system you want to paint as the boogyman. And it will exist long after.
Yeah I don’t think there it some capitalist conspiracy trying to stop people from masturbating. Kellogg is long dead
Same reason we practice forced male genital mutilation in the United States, religion (abrahamic) says pleasure is bad.
What has circumcision to do with sexual pleasure? Please do explain. I’m circumcised and I have no loss of sensation from not having foreskin. I also don’t have a moist area for bacteria to multiply
Where you circumcized after you became sexually active?
If not, how would you know there is no loss?
Same with all of you. None of you would know the difference.
There are people that were circumcized after becoming sexually active who can (and do) report exactly that.
Separately, we can simply ask people that have foreskins to describe the sensations they feel from that body part.
The only part that we can’t say with confidence is how the neutral pathways develop (i.e. how we perceive the sensations) when it’s the only way we’ve ever experienced.
- keratinization of the glans
- loss of the gliding sensation between the penis and the foreskin during penetration
- loss of the Meissner corpuscles in the foreskin
About the multiplication of bacteria in a moist area, how do you handle that in your mouth ? Surgery or personal hygiene?
I also don’t have a moist area for bacteria to multiply
If only you could wash yourself.
Ejaculation lower the risk of prostate cancer, so masturbation should probably be medically advised to all men.
4-7 times a week is a good number according this study
7 times a week ??? honey thats an addiction…
How do ya figure?
I beat my addiction 7 times a week!
your weak i beat my addiction 14 times a week
Amateurs. I beat mine 14 weeks per day.
Pfft! 21 weeks per meat! 🍖
Could I help you beat your addiction? It helps me beat my addiction afterwards.
Oh… there’s an upper limit? Is 4 times a day not healthy then?
My guess would be the benefit plateaus at that point.
At least 4-7 times a week. I have not read anything about an upper limit so go for it.
Im going to live for ever!
Username checks out
There is the factor of diminishing returns.
There’s an overflow and it helps others
You realize things aren’t viewed the same all over the world right? Here in Sweden it’s nothing bad or wrong, we generally have good sex education and parents that are fine with it as long as we keep it private and clean. And as adults it’s completely normal, not that uncommon to talk about either. There was a monthly magazine for teens when I grew up that talked a lot about sex, sexual identity and stuff like that and the readers could send it questions to get answered by professionals or other readers. Very open and helped so many with things they didn’t dare ask parents or others about and it was always a better source than the Internet when that came around. Pretty sure it’s still a thing too.
So it’s just seen as a thing everyone does and enjoys.
There should be rules about having jerk off rooms at work. Its a human right like praying rooms!
Edit: /s
I think neither should exist.
Sorry - this was a joke
My bad!
called a toilet
You pray while shitting?
shitting is the prayer!
Erm… Well, I consider myself to be tolerant of other people’s practices, so you do you.
I think the simpler answer is, you are so right, it barely has to be valorized. It sells itself.
I think the long answer is that porn addiction is a real thing that can affect people. Also lots of people in charge of things like sex education have historically been prudes who see masturbation as some sort of gateway to promiscuity.
Orgasms are normal, healthy and necessary.
Orgasms are normal, healthy and necessary
Yes, yes, no.
While orgasms are normal and can potentially have some physical and mental benefits, there is no physical or mental necessity to have them (plenty of asexual and otherwise celibate people of all different kinds out there to prove it).
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I don’t agree, in the experience of my friend circle, if you don’t release for a while:
- you start having wet dreams
- prostate harm - increased rates of prostate cancer in multiple studies - and my friend developed pelvic floor issues
- the “mental harm” is having to walk around horny all the time, constantly thinking of sex, and affecting your interactions
- even celibate people mostly masturbate, that’s not what it means. Including many confessions from priests
the “mental harm” is having to walk around horny all the time, constantly thinking of sex, and affecting your interactions
this is not a problem which normal people face. if you are constantly thinking about sex, you may have an addiction or an otherwise unhealthy relationship with sex
Hey don’t shame ppl for normal variance in sex drive. Being horny is not a disease
Well done, you’ve provided some anecdotal effects and benefits, which I didn’t deny exist.
However none of them demonstrate necessity.
Breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, shitting - those are necessities.
Having orgasms is not, no matter how much you try to convince yourself and others.
Sure you don’t “have to” bathe but you’ll have a bad time if you don’t
Porn addition is a myth. Stop perpetuating it.
I mean addiction colloquially. The existence and over use of porn does cause some people and their relationship some level of affects. I don’t think we can just hand wave it all away.
Research seems to suggest otherwise: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201808/science-stopped-believing-in-porn-addiction-you-should-too
You are preaching to the choir here. Yes I can believe porn addiction only exists in the kinds of the those in the religious community. I’m still trying to provide a larger picture to answer the question of why the government doesn’t tell you to masturbate every day.
Porn, for some people in contexts, has had drawbacks. Those people, in some contexts, have curtailed the valorization of porn writ large. Maybe this campaign has biased me to a degree as well.
I have never been to a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting but I’m not about to write the whole idea off entirely.
