Hello everyone. I am a Catholic, and am a 22-year-old male person. Now, I have a big problem: I often masturbate.
I’m a 24 single male. I was watching porn and masturbating at least twice a week, sometimes a whole lot more, ever since middle school, so let’s say 10 years.
I was tired of it. I knew it was wrong, but like many sins, it’s it’s own reward, and therefore tempting, and so I kept doing it. There was some months I cut out the porn, but it would come back.
My friends have really helped me grow in my faith this past year. So first, find Catholic friends. Make sure you could hold each other accountable. I started going to daily mass, started praying a little more, and so that slightly helped. The shame I felt at daily mass - and had to sit out communion - because I screwed up gave me some motivation to change.
So, this past November, I decided this was it. I’m quitting. I’ve decided that before, but this time I had a plan. I started praying 6 of the liturgy of the hours - morning, mid-morning, mid-day, mid-afternoon, evening, and night. On top of that, I decided to give up all video - tv, Netflix, sports, Hulu, YouTube, anything with video and audio. I screwed up a few times by looking up images (non pornographic, but suggestive), which also disappeared over time.
Now, the first 2 weeks were the hardest. Constantly aroused, basically. But the prayers help. It’s hard to sin when you’ve prayed 6 times already. It just was. Cutting out video was a huge help too - so much video out there has way too many sex scenes. It didn’t take much for me to justify the next step from that. Also, this is bad, but I told myself to just get to December, and I did. But I didn’t reset my goal. I screwed up, but I realized I didn’t enjoy it. It took energy and I felt no benefit to it. It was the first time I felt disgusted by it while doing it.
But the main thing, I’d say, is to cut cold turkey, and take that energy into prayer. Over the past 8 weeks, I’ve only fell to that sin once. Good luck, and have faith!
