changing from bad to good

[butterflydreams]

I'm tired of feeling so bad about masturbation.

It wasn't shamed too badly when I was a kid, but it was shamed enough that I felt bad about it. I'm not a kid anymore. I'm 26. I want to feel good about it. I want to feel like my friend when she said doing it made her happy.

Over the years (and before identifying as asexual) it's taken on many meanings including being a "poor" substitute because I "couldn't get sex" and as a "punishment" for whatever I was feeling bad about.

I want to work on rewiring my brain so that something that's natural and ok makes me feel good and happy instead of gross.

Has anyone else here ever had to make a shift like this? I know negative talk about masturbation exists in abundance, so how have others dealt with that without internalizing it?

(I'm sure my mostly negative feelings about my physical sexual components doesn't help matters, but I think that would only complicate things to consider here)

[SecretLibrary]

Not really - to me, it's a bodily function that provides some pleasure and certain physiological effects which I do enjoy. I do have a libido, if a quiet one, but even so, I generally prefer masturbation to partnered sex. That tends to go on well past my tolerance and usually involves at least the suggestion of activities I don't really enjoy. I've had a few (scattered) encounters I've enjoyed, but I've very rarely masturbated and not experienced pleasure. And in a quarter of the time (at least) so it's more efficient! :)

So I didn't have to make a shift, but I'm hoping my perspective still might help a little. Maybe try to think on the reasons you might choose masturbation over sex, and accept that it's a choice you're making. Good luck! Life's too short to brood over other people's opinions and values when they differ from your own.

[Rising Sun]

Some of the reasons which made me manage to see my sexuality in a positive light :

- If people try to force you to accept that something is good, this thing will eventually have a bad image in your mind. If on the contrary you think about all the people who force others to think that something is bad (and it's the case for masturbation), you can start thinking about how horrible their dictatorship is.

- Sex and masturbation are considered as bad at least partly because they're viewed as animalistic. But are animal instincts really bad or inferior ? Is fighting our instincts necessarily noble, while these instincts can sometimes be good, pleasurable and sometimes even be life-saving ? They're the heritage nature has given us for million years. We aren't their slaves, as we can choose to sometimes fight them just for a while, and sometimes simply let them express themselves just for a while, and enjoy the moment :) We should learn to love and trust our instincts more.

I hope this helps :)

[Ficulnean]

To add to TheRisingSuns logic, empathy is an animal emotion. Even if it appears largely in humans, it's still instinctual.

But, more to point, I'd suggest some self classical conditioning. Reward yourself with something you do like either right before or right after; right before would work best. Don't have this be a reward that could occur in public.

[butterflydreams]

To add to TheRisingSuns logic, empathy is an animal emotion. Even if it appears largely in humans, it's still instinctual.

But, more to point, I'd suggest some self classical conditioning. Reward yourself with something you do like either right before or right after; right before would work best. Don't have this be a reward that could occur in public.

ooo, I like that. Kind of expecting anything like that to take a while though. This is years of negativity we're talking about here. Surely it won't come undone overnight. Still though, I'm a big fan of tangible positive things you can do to help work through stuff. I will try this.

@SecretLibrary, I've never had a partnered sexual encounter of any kind, so it's not really an issue of choosing masturbation over sex. For me, partnered sex is...well, it's something. I'll cross that bridge if/when I have to. I know I can masturbate. I don't know if I can have sex. It's becoming more and more clear to me that that is a body/gender issue. Maybe masturbation is too. I don't know. I've certainly shifted substantially away from how I *ahem* used to do things because of what I saw in media (jokes mostly) and online. Those times it really was just a bodily function. Happened to feel good too, but it was still something that had to be done.

I've moved beyond that now though. I try to do things in a way that makes me feel right at the very least. Maybe it's all to do with body/gender issues after all.

[Philip027]

I'm not really sure how to help, sorry, beyond sharing my own experiences and seeing if anything clicks. However, I don't experience body dysphoria, or any sort of lingering compulsion to masturbate (hence, nonlibidoist)

IMO if something didn't feel good to do for whatever reason, the obvious answer (for me, anyway) would be to just not do it.

I know I can masturbate. I don't know if I can have sex.

It's funny that you say that, because for the longest time I was left wondering if I would even be capable of having sex (even though I thought I'd never want to anyway), because I wasn't aware of how to go about masturbation and therefore I wasn't even sure if everything would "work" properly in a sexual scenario. It all just seemed very odd and squicky and not-pleasurable to me, and therefore I had no compulsions to try to figure it all out. Through interactions with my partner though, I pretty much figured out masturbation on my own (at the ripe old age of 28), as well as discovered the proper stimulus that would make me even want to try. And as a result of that, I became convinced that I *could* have sex; based on our interactions, everything is indeed "working" :redface:

It likely would be very conditional (I would only ever see it happening with my partner, for one thing) and it still doesn't necessarily mean that all of me wants to (I am very wary of the chances of pregnancy, no matter how many precautions are taken to try to prevent it; I don't trust them), but I still am sure that it *could* happen if the conditions were all right and it was something that both of us wanted.

[butterflydreams]

I'm not really sure how to help, sorry, beyond sharing my own experiences and seeing if anything clicks. However, I don't experience body dysphoria, or any sort of lingering compulsion to masturbate (hence, nonlibidoist)

IMO if something didn't feel good to do for whatever reason, the obvious answer (for me, anyway) would be to just not do it.

I know I can masturbate. I don't know if I can have sex.

It's funny that you say that, because for the longest time I was left wondering if I would even be capable of having sex (even though I thought I'd never want to anyway), because I wasn't aware of how to go about masturbation and therefore I wasn't even sure if everything would "work" properly in a sexual scenario. It all just seemed very odd and squicky and not-pleasurable to me, and therefore I had no compulsions to try to figure it all out. Through interactions with my partner though, I pretty much figured out masturbation on my own (at the ripe old age of 28), as well as discovered the proper stimulus that would make me even want to try. And as a result of that, I became convinced that I *could* have sex; based on our interactions, everything is indeed "working" :redface:

It likely would be very conditional (I would only ever see it happening with my partner, for one thing) and it still doesn't necessarily mean that all of me wants to (I am very wary of the chances of pregnancy, no matter how many precautions are taken to try to prevent it; I don't trust them), but I still am sure that it *could* happen if the conditions were all right and it was something that both of us wanted.

Ahh, as the old joke goes: "Doc, it hurts when I do this." Doctor: "Well, don't do that." :P

I guess I continue to try because I obviously understand that it feels good. Physically anyway. It's the headspace that's not quite onboard. Plus, like I said, when my friend told me about how it made her feel I felt so awful. Like, what? All this time? I've never felt like that :( I want to though. She made it sound so great.

I definitely understand what you're saying when you say you weren't even sure you were capable of having sex. I think it's the inverse for me. Body absolutely works. If I gave up control of my body for someone else to drive for an afternoon, they could totally use it for sex (they'd lose their deposit though). It's me who's not willing to do it. Maybe if the right partner and I got very clever about things, we could make it work. That feels like a long way off though. (Including potentially never.)

You know, in talking it out, and thinking about it more, this disconnect between my mind and my body has been present for a seriously long time. My parents definitely looked down on doing it, but it wasn't like some "evil sin" thing. I kinda think the disconnect is inherent. Seems like it was there even before I understood what anything was, or parents made their opinions clear.