I'm a very real person and the reality is that I grew up a very unattractive kid. I was fat, I had very present and embarrassing man breasts (gynecomastia), I wore glasses and had a wide gap in my front teeth. I was a shy kid overall and I wasn't good with girls due to to my many insecurities. I didn't grow up with a father to teach me how to interact with women. My mother worked two jobs most if my childhood so she had no time to teach me. I learned about sex from a weak school curriculum and my like-minded bonehead teenage friends. Truly the blind leading the blind.

At the age of about 17 I discovered porn in video form and that would change my life forever. I was hooked because it gave me the sexual release that I craved so desperately. But not with real girls, but with some of the hottest, perfectly altered girls I could want or dream of whenever I wanted. All I needed was an nternet connection and a phone or computer and my God given hands and I could simulate having sex with a woman that looked like the hot girl I saw in the supermarket that day, only the girl online looked hotter, had a bigger ass, a tighter body, and could move her body in ways that girl in the supermarket probably couldn't. She could get fcked better by a bigger dck and made over the top howls of pleasure I believed to be real and sincere. In my adolescent, young adult brain it was heaven on a screen. Truly dopamine overload.

From the age of 17 to the age of about 30 I looked at porn damn near everyday, or whenever I could sneak away as a working adult. I would get off often multiple times a day. I also have a foot fetish and tickling fetish so count those videos as well and throw them into the mix. If I got tired of sex, I could transfer to watching girls showing their feet, if I got tired of that I could watch a girl get tickled and the cycle continued. Countless times I would masterbate until my dick was sore and I had a sharp pain when I got erect. I didn't care. I would wait a day and count the minutes until I could jerk off again. Most of the time I would search for hours for the next best video. It consumed so much of my time and I thought nothing of it. It was like my hobby, my pastime, my addiction. I collected thousands of videos over that time span and another hundreds of pictures. It was like a compulsion. I thought that I was fine and that my sexual needs were getting met. The act of release on a regular basis tricked me into thinking I was fine and had a healthy sex drive. I did not.

I feel like I would be so much more in life if I had not given so much time to searching and watching porn. I could have dedicated so much time to a more constructive hobby. One that would have helped me later on life instead of crippled me. I'm not depressed really, not deeply or clinically anyway. But I wish I could make up for that time with the youthful exuberance I had when I was watching porn and letting life and experience with real women pass me by.

Now I'm 32 and I have stopped since last October. Not a lick of porn since then. I decided that was it. If I wanted to have any shot at a happy life with a real woman I had to stop. Honestly, stopping hasn't been that hard. I even have a girlfriend now and last week for the first time I had real, penetrative sex for the first time ever. I was hard enough with the help of some hims (kind of sad but it helped). It made me happy though. I was slow with a rather weak stroke game but the feeling was awesome. However, now I've hit another "flatline." I have no libido...literally none. I can't remember the last time I had morning wood. Every morning I wake up to a sad flaccid penis and im reminded of my woes. Throughout my day I don't think about sex at all really. And random boners don't exist. I don't feel like a man, at least not fully. It has truly taken away some of my motivation and I feel almost empty in a way. Life feels bland.

I dream of the day when I wake up to a rock hard d*ck. I will be so overcome with joy I might cry. But for right now I'm so incredibly sad that porn ruined my life in this way. I just want to be normal. I want to feel that energy that sexually healthy guys feel. I want to have strong erections and fantastic morning wood. I want to pleasure my girlfriend so deeply without the help of pills. My girl is so supportive and willing to work with my issue, but I fear I may be permanently damaged. I have hope I guess that I will make it through this period in my life but it's tough day by day feeling like an incomplete, incapable, damaged excuse for a man.