I am struggling with masturbation

I was an atheist growing up and found god in my mid 20s, not a zealot I don’t think but I found it through mysticism and philosophy. (That’s one of two confessions here, I don’t tell anyone I know because they’re all staunch atheists and it’s not something I really want to debate, I respect their choice and they don’t need to know my private spirituality) I’ve always had trouble with porn since I’ve been 8 years old, the first time I saw it was on a particular bad night where my mum got taken to hospital and I was left alone for the night, I flicked on one of the channels in my parents bedroom and a late night sex show was on. There was a dominatrix type woman in black and red leather gear with fantastic breasts, black hair and really rouge lipstick and my first erection happened. I’ve kept it a secret ever since, when asked about it or it’s discussed with friends I’ve always been shy and either said I don’t watch it or jack off at all or changed the subject. Anyway it wasn’t a problem too much for most of my teenage and early adult life, I always condoned it with arguments such as it’s not hurting anyone and science says it’s good for stress and prostate. But at some point I realised it’s probably bad for my soul and tried to stop doing it. For the last few years I’ll go stints of weeks and months without thinking about it and then I’ll just break or crack and it’s like this urge when I’m alone to do it just comes out and is completely unreasonable to my thinking of I should stop this. It’s like a compulsion to see boobs and because it’s two clicks away in the palm of my hand it’s difficult to cut out all together. Makes me feel good for 5 minutes then I feel a terrible heaviness in my heart of guilt and shame that I didn’t have the will to resist again. It always follows with thoughts like well it’s back to square one and here we go again. Anyway there’s my two confessions that have been weighing on me that I’ve felt would either be messy conversations to have in person or just not good to have full stop

Posted Jun 12, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

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