When I started really thinking about stopping masturbation I was going to an ACA therapist.
He was a very large, red-headed, evangelical Christian, country boy with an MA in counseling.
He suggested that I only masturbate while thinking of my wife.
I tried that and I found that my mind would start to wander off to other women.
Then he suggested that, perhaps, I should stand, look in the mirror, and repeat, out loud “I love you, I love you, I love you”, while masturbating.
I tried it and, at first, I could not stop laughing.
I persisted, but found that I could not be orgasmic, unless I had at least a nanosecond of fantasy about someone else.
Finally, he suggested that, since I was masturbating with the woman I was having an affair with, that perhaps I could invite my wife to participate in my masturbation...as a spectator.
My wife, very reluctantly, agreed.
We tried and when I was orgasmic I saw something I had only even heard about in Beevis and Butthead cartoons...my wife actually “hurled” projectile vomit across the room.
I decided that this therapist was either an idiot or just a sex addict in denial...and I stopped listening to him.
I tried masturbating without porn and that was absolutely no problem, but I still couldn’t stop masturbating.
It began to dawn on me that this was exactly like alcohol, “When I could control it, I didn’t enjoy it and when I enjoyed it, I couldn’t control it”.
Other people, most people as a matter of fact, could masturbate, but, I simple wasn’t one of them.
I decided to do whatever I had to do to stop, ...but I would only listen to people who knew how to stop, had stopped for a long time and that I would do anything they said.
That was the second best thing I ever did, after deciding to stop drinking.
I have never once regretted either of those two decisions.