It’s 1812 and the Russians have betrayed Napoleon’s treaty. In retaliation, Napoleon embarks on a military campaign against the Russians with 600,000 soldiers. Considering his past military successes against the Prussians and Austrians, Napoleon was not worried about his new foe. However, there were a few unexpected difficulties for this campaign.
First of all, the road network in Russia was poor, making it hard to travel. Secondly, the agriculture base in Russia was almost nonexistent, leaving little for his soldiers and horses to forage. This was a stark contrast to his campaigns in Central Europe, where it was easy to travel and feed his soldiers. And on top of all of this, the weather was brutal. The winters were too cold and the warm spells produced too much mud, making a difficult trek even more so.
In the end, this campaign turned into a disaster and Napoleon had to retreat from Russia a defeated man. His large glorious army was now only 100,000, where the rest perished from starvation, exhaustion, and/or disease. Had Napoleon not thought of the Russians like his past campaigns, he would have had a better chance. But instead, he had fallen prey to his misconceptions about them.
And when people first embark on their NoFap journey, they too also fall prey to misconceptions. Giving them a hard time to build any meaningful NoFap streak.
Now, what are these misconceptions that cause many to fail in NoFap? Well, they are:
Sexuality
Philosophy
Timeline
In this article, we’re going to cover all three so that you can ensure that you will not only commit to NoFap for more than 30 days but for life.
So first on the dock is Sexuality.
One of the things that young men don’t get to learn about is their sexuality. And I don’t mean sexual intercourse, but sexuality. You see, sexuality is how you express your sexual energy in your day-to-day life. Instead of sexuality being caged in by sexual intercourse (or masturbation), it is instead supposed to give your life energy for whatever you are pursuing.
For example, art is an expression of sexual energy.
As well as personal projects. Heck, even a great conversation is an expression of sexual energy.
However, when someone jerks off too much, they are draining that sexual energy from their lives. So instead of being vibrant and putting energy into Life, they come off as dull, meek, and one-dimensional.
You have to realize this, you will rarely reach your full potential if you divorce your sexuality from your being. You have to let your sexual energy build up and come out through your personality, goals, social life, etc.
Everything you do should have your sexual energy behind it.
A lot of NoFap zealots just think NoFap is all about not masturbating, but this is wrong. NoFap is all about redirecting your sexual energy from fapping to living an engaging life. So when you start your NoFap journey, remember to keep that idea in mind.
But enough about sexuality, let’s get into the philosophy of NoFap.
The Philosophy of NoFap
I’m no Aristotle, but there is some philosophy when it comes to NoFap. It’s nothing metaphysical or abstract. In fact, it’s quite simple.
You see, the philosophy that underlies NoFap is tension.
In life, you are usually going to engage with some form of tension, whether it be in dating, career, conflicts, etc. Yet, the reason people struggle with tension in general is because they have a hard time dealing with any sexual tension in their bodies.
And when it comes to NoFap, it’s a crash course on dealing with sexual tension.
But funny enough, the way you deal with tension with NoFap will naturally translate to how you deal with tension in general. It’s as if the sexual tension you’ve learned to deal with is similar to the tension you feel when interacting with the world. And instead of caving into the tension, you are able to navigate it and come out successful.
Yet, when people start NoFap, they don’t realize that this is an opportunity to change their relationship with tension. As a result, they think it’s OK to fap and quit NoFap. Not fully understanding that they are failing at the key skill of dealing with tension.
And this skill will come to be useful in your dating life, career, and any area that involves conflict.
So the next time you feel like quitting NoFap, remember that it comes at a high cost.
Timeline of NoFap
Before someone starts NoFap, they get all excited about getting the “superpowers” and dive right into it. However, they seriously underestimate the NoFap journey, which causes them to cave into the sudden urges early on.
So to clear up any misconceptions about the timeline of the recovery from the addiction to ejaculations. Take a look at this post from Reddit, where it does a good job of explaining the rough timeline of your NoFap journey. Now keep in mind, everyone is different, but this is a good approximation. It’s good to have an idea of what you are in for with NoFap.
Phase 0 (0-10):
Nothing big happens here, easy to do, you are only noticing some of the changes, brain is confused, gives you a few minor urges. You might get harder urges depending on your level of addiction to masturbation.
Phase transition (8th or 9th day):
This one day deserves special mention, since it is the only day in the entire NoFap streak where you can actually feel a difference. I'd like to call this day the "phase transition". You become so energetic that day, that it's almost like you're under the effects of some drug. I remember in one of my past streaks, I was waiting for a bus and I literally couldn't stand in place as this energy was making me move around and make movements as if I'm about to jump. It was day 9 of the streak. I'm guessing that this is when all that testosterone that builds up in the first week and spikes on day 7 starts getting rapidly absorbed. This is when you finally start feeling the power of NoFap and the superpowers start to take effect on you.
Phase 1 (10-30):
Brain starts panicking and you go through a very hard urge wave (happens anywhere between 10 and 30 days, usually at around the 2 week mark). It's basically a period where the superpowers hit and you feel very energized but at the same time very unstable due to the urges. The urge wave here is the strongest and most people fail there, that's why most streaks end after around 2 weeks. Going through it is the key to a successful streak, as no other upcoming urge wave will be this hard. By overcoming it, you've shown that you are capable of going on a very long streak.
"Urge wave" - A series of days with constant heavy urges, usually 4 to 6 days in a row, basically the opposite of the flatline.
Phase 2 (30-60):
You've survived the initial urge wave. Still feeling the superpowers, but no longer unstable. Brain lost the first battle and needs time to plan the next attack. Although it will try to pull of a few more tricks, this is mostly a peaceful period. The tricks include smaller urge waves or flatlines.
Phase 3 (60-95):
This is where the superpowers get upgraded a bit. Previously it was mostly increased confidence and more energy. Now in addition, you start becoming more disciplined and easily motivated. You start getting things done, working on yourself, thinking about the future etc. The brain has also upgraded it's arsenal and is ready for another strike. Instead of regular periods of urges and easy days, this period is much more "randomized". The brain is focused on shorter "surprise strikes" instead of longer urge waves, since they've proven ineffective against you. One day of no urges, the next complete chaos, then again no urges.
Phase 4 (95-150):
The healing phase. Brain has tried so much to stop you but nothing worked. It is weak at this point and forced to accept your new ways. Porn induced problems start to disappear, weird fetishes slowly fade, vanilla sex starts to seem amazing. Although brain has accepted you new ways, it still won't miss a chance to go back if you give it. Urges are still there, but the nature of the urges change. This is how you will know that you are healing. Superpowers are still up and running, you are getting used to this wonderful new lifestyle, focused on your goals, slowly becoming the person you've always wanted to be.
Phase 5 (?, possibly at around day 150):
It is still unknown if there are more phases. It's difficult to say how much the healing process takes, as the amount of damage porn and/or excessive masturbation had done to each person can differ greatly. Based on what people who have gone 300-1000+ days claim, there's mostly a further upgrade to the superpowers after the healing process completes. Let's find out!
Source: Click here to read the entire Reddit post.
So that’s the rough timeline for a NoFap journey. And being aware of it will help you mentally prepare for the difficult parts of the journey. That being said, some of you are probably thinking this right now:
Isn’t this all overkill for NoFap, why would need to know all of this?
I get it, why learn about sexuality, philosophy, and timeline, right. Well, just hear me out. After so many years of divorcing our sexuality from our lives, it is easy to misunderstand NoFap.
People think it’s just about not masturbating.
So they focus on repressing their sexual urges, look down on women or anyone that will elicit urges. And in the end, it becomes too much to handle, so they quit.
Yet, if you looked at our ancestors who had to explore, fight, farm, or whatever they did ages ago to survive. They rarely masturbated and one of the reasons for that was that they used their sexual energy to sustain their lives and pursuits.
Our ancestors were not as conflict-averse as the modern man because they easily could deal with the sexual tension in their bodies. Which naturally showed them how to deal with tension with rivals, threats, and difficulties.
For most of mankind, sexuality was naturally a part of the person.
But when a lot of dudes in the modern age take part in NoFap, they fall for the same mistake of compartmentalizing their sexuality (aka thinking it’s only for sex). And it’s a very easy mistake to make.
So you have to be aware of NoFap holistically before you embark on it. And with these misconceptions cleared up, you will be able to get past the 30 days of NoFap.
Example time!
For a significant part of my young adulthood, I was a conflict-averse sexual dud. I fapped once a day for the most part for almost 10 years. However, I decided to go on NoFap after finding that subreddit (before it went downhill) and reading about the superpowers.
Anyways, I committed to NoFap and dealt with all the difficulties. But other than that, I was living my normal lifestyle, where I would go to work, workout, meet up with friends, and ask girls out on dates.
Although I felt better from NoFap, everyone else around me started to see me differently. Female coworkers were telling me how good I looked. A buddy from university, that I haven’t seen in ages, straight up called me sensual (and he is straight).
Without even knowing, I reattached my sexuality with my being. Where people started seeing me as a sexual being.
And on top of all that, I was no longer conflict-averse.
In fact, I relished taking part in any form of conflict. I was just a different person. No, wait. I was finally scratching the surface of my true potential.
I was lucky that I practiced NoFap properly where I was able to express my sexual energy. But like I said, it’s easy to miss that when reading up on NoFap.
Another thing that people miss when reading about NoFap, is not giving themselves opportunities to express their sexuality.
Going back to repressing sexuality.
A lot of guys make the mistake of repressing instead of expressing their sexual energy. They try to fight something that is natural to the body.
So when people engage with NoFap, they follow their poor lifestyle of consuming social media, only going home or to work, binging Netflix, etc. This is a recipe for NoFap failure because your sexual energy has no appropriate outlet.
Think of your sexual energy as a river.
If it gets dammed up by you being stagnant and staying at home all the time, the sexual energy is going to overflow into uncontrollable urges and cause chaos. However, when you are active in various ways (physically, socially, etc), the river of sexual energy will flow smoothly with the vigor and vitality of nature. On the other side, when you jerk off too much, you are draining the sexual energy from the river, leading it to dry out and die.
I can’t stress this enough: Your sexual energy is there to get you through life.
If you drain it, you're hurting yourself. If you let it get dammed up, you are hurting yourself. You have to allow the sexual energy to flow through by being engaged with life.
So make sure to give yourself ample opportunities to express this sexual energy. This can be done through sports, social hobbies, working out, personal projects, etc. Anything that will get you more engaged with life.
Alright, let’s sum this article up.
For NoFap you have to be aware of the misconceptions of sexuality, the philosophy of NoFap, and the timeline of recovery.
For sexuality, ensure you are expressing your sexual energy through your day-to-day life.
For the philosophy of NoFap, understand that you are learning about how to deal with tension in life.
For timeline, review it to know what you have ahead of yourself.
A simple mistake people make with NoFap, is not giving themselves opportunities to express their sexual energy.
That was quite a bit we covered.
But it’s essential to understand the misconceptions before you commit to NoFap.
Because by being properly prepared, you are setting yourself up for success. Unlike Napoleon with his Russian campaign.
Until next time,
Bulcha
The Charismatic Nerd
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