Bail Me From Masturbation Before It Bends My Life

Dear Agatha,

I am an ardent reader of your column. Words are inexplicable to express my gratitude to you for the many souls you have resurrected and reinvigorated through your words of advice and encouragement. You have chosen for yourself an onerous and glorious task of shaping and making this world a better place. May God continue to bless you? Amen.

I am 25 years of age and my problem is that I have lost count of the number of times I masturbate. It is now a habitual and a daily routine for me to masturbate, and I find it difficult to stop this act of masturbation. It all started since 2001 when I was in my SS III. A classmate and friend of mine unintentionally lead me into this act by giving me some pornographic magazines to read, after which I start to masturbate. After my secondary school, it had become a part of me and watching blue films haven’t helped my case at all.  Though I masturbate, it has never affected my courage and desire to approach and befriend a woman. I once stopped this act when I was in a sexual relationship with one of my ex-girlfriends, but started it again immediately I left the country for my academic pursuit.

Right now, by the grace of God, I am in my final year and the best academic student in my school and on a first-class grade. I have been able to achieve this success mostly because I try to abstain from women knowing fully well the inconveniences, emotional stress, time consumption and most importantly the academic setback that having a relationship with a woman may cause me.

Academically, I am progressing but my private life is another story altogether. This has to do with the decision I took to refrain from sexual intercourse, a decision I am now fearful may affect my marriage later in the future.

This is because I easily get aroused whenever I am with a woman; which is also part of the reasons I totally abstain from women and have never considered being in any platonic relationship with a woman.

The major issue now is I still masturbate and do it whenever I am sexually aroused instead of sexual intercourse with a woman. I have been battling with this self-imposed problem of mine that I am now left with no option but to seek your counsel.

I want to know if masturbation affects a man's potency of impregnating a woman. If yes, please advice me on any possible solution to adopt to stop it.

If no, is it more advisable to continue with masturbation and let go of women for now, knowing what it would cost me to have a woman at this defining moment of my life? I stop masturbation whenever I am in a sexual relationship with a woman irrespective of the number of times we have sex. That I have a woman by my side is enough for me for me to stop the act.

Not minding the number of times I have sex with the girl. Please help me, as I don't want to ruin my future. 

Confused Man.

 

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Dear Confused Man,

What you need is determination to stop the act. If it is any help, a lot of men and women are going through this experience. At one time or the other, a lot of people have engaged in this act: some out of curiosity, others a combination of fear of the consequences of having premarital sex as well as inability to control one’s desires.

It happens to the very best of us. So don’t be so condemning or hard on yourself because such negative conclusions would make it almost impossible for you to have the right frame of mind to view things objectively.

Whatever reasons one may have for going into it, if not properly managed, could have far-reaching implication on one’s ability to have a normal satisfying relationship with one’s spouse.

While doctors say, it is a healthy habit and could help couples improve on their sex life, the caution is that it could also destroy it if a partner gets more satisfaction in self-stimulation, and it becomes harder for anybody to be able to do it right with him or her.

This is the inherent danger in self-stimulation. When you watch a blue film or read pornographic materials, the result is arousal. It would take a heart of steel not to get stimulated reading or watching those kinds of materials or films. The reason is simple, we all have our origins from the act of sex, so deep down it is there, the awareness of whom we are, the primitive reason we are on earth, and our total essence in life is laced with sex. If we must procreate, we must have sex. If we have to fulfill our essence, we must have children to carry on our legacies as well as dreams.

And since we are told the world is loaned to us, we have to keep having sex to produce children and to give them a better world where the dreams of more children can be fulfilled.

So, going through sexual materials only serve to remind us of whom we are and our major assignment on earth. This is the reason most people get aroused and not necessarily because they are sexually deprived or dirty minded as some people assume.

The major issue here is not your masturbation but your apparent inability to control your urges. You must first of all battle to put your urges under control because your inability to means you have a deep rooted psychological problem, more than what you are saying.

Beyond what you have said, is there any reason why you seem unable to control your urges at the sight of a woman? Think, is this the real reason you are avoiding women and not the issue of your being able to concentrate on your studies as you have led yourself to think?

To be able to tackle a problem, you must be willing to admit to the truth. What is the real truth concerning your sexuality?

If it remains just a matter of masturbation, avoiding materials as well as thoughts on the matter would help to an extent. Furthermore, being in your final year and at 25, you are matured enough to handle a relationship without it affecting your studies. Her presence is not to help reduce your sexual burdens but as a part of process to make you responsible to yourself. Responsibility means being able to resist some actions, utterances, urges that are not in line with expected behavioral norms. It is natural for a man or woman to desire a member of the opposite sex but totally unacceptable to embarrass that person with all the visible signs of one’s desire. Such signs have only one place of exhibition, the bedroom, if the conditions are acceptable to the other person.

You cannot continue to avoid interaction with women simply because you cannot control your urges. If you keep giving this as an excuse, it goes to show a complete lack of sincerity on your part.

Sincerity is the only weapon of help you have. You must use it effectively to maneuver yourself out of this issue. If you are unable to take effective charge of your feelings now, what assurances do you have that the self-control you cannot exercise now; you can when you get married?

It doesn’t just happen. Besides, you won’t be fair to yourself because your attitude didn’t start today. It took you several years to get to this point so you must give yourself some time to erase from your life.

Besides, this is something you cannot do on your own. You need a friend, a trustworthy female friend to help overcome this situation. She has to be a woman who is caring, understanding and very supportive.

Importantly, you need the help of God to win this battle.

Good luck. 

How Do I Wrest Myself Free From Masturbation?

Dear Agatha,

Please I am a guy who has taken to the habit of masturbation. What do you think about it and what effect is it likely to have on my sperm count as a man? Please advice me.

Maxwell.

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Dear Maxwell,

Masturbation is self-stimulation engineered to cause sexual sensations or satisfactions. It is a habit in most people that started in their teenage years. Mostly a problem with men, insecurity and lack of confidence to approach a member of the opposite sex begins this process of self-expression.

For women, lack of sexual satisfaction as well as fear of getting pregnant are mostly the reason young girls take to self-expressions.

It connotes a person manipulating his or her genitals to the point of intense pleasure or orgasm. Although many health providers say there is nothing wrong with the practice, however, once the excitement dies down, guilt and or shame takes over.

A survey on the subject suggests that approximately 94 percent of teenage males and about 70 percent of teen females have at one time or the other done it and are still tempted to do it.

Even though like all sexual habits, masturbation falls under the taboos, sexuality experts are of the view that people who masturbate tend to function better sexually when with a partner because the act of masturbation has given them full knowledge of body secrets. Therefore they know precisely how to direct their partners to fulfillments. 

Despite what most people think, masturbation appears to be a normal as well as healthy way to get sexual satisfaction. It is one that is safe and does not run the risks of pregnancy, STDs or incompatible sexual preferences.

From available facts, masturbation does not have to diminish the experience of intercourse because for many people, it is not a one or the other concept or reality. For most people, orgasm from intercourse is less intense because their own masturbation pattern differs from the sensation of arousal or response when they are with someone.

For women, in particular, the pleasure from masturbation is more intense than both the experience of intercourse and orgasm through intercourse, for different reasons. During intercourse, while a woman experiences closeness, tenderness, and lust, she does not usually get the stimulation on her clitoris that she is used to or familiar with from masturbation. This is neither good nor bad.

To ensure sex remains a unity tool between a man and woman; particularly as its affects the foundation of a good marriage, despite the pleasures individuals get from self-stimulations, partners should teach each other how to give pleasures in other ways. When partners combine their knowledge of what they have learnt about their sexuality through masturbation; they can help each other achieve an unimaginable height of satisfaction. This is the area sex becomes evolving and patented to suit individual needs.

The only negative effects against masturbation remain our moral and religious values. This is the point sexual satisfactions give way to other considerations, which are totally alien in the bedroom. The anxiety of our moral and religious beliefs bring with it a lot of issues which include the propriety of engaging in an act created to be performed by a member of the opposite sex. With this comes low confidence and very low self-esteem which all have direct bearing on our performance as well as ability to give pleasure. Your fears about being able to produce healthy sperms in the future following your dependence on masturbation are natural but lack enough grounds and medical support.

So, the issue of whether it would affect the quality of your sperm in the future doesn’t arise at all. This is because masturbation is generally not physically harmful. Frequent masturbation does not reduce your sperm count nor does it affect your ability to achieve an erection. Younger men may be able to get an erection and ejaculate every day. But as men get older, their ability to achieve daily erections may decline. This is a factor of age and has nothing to do with the frequency of masturbation. Also, there is no evidence that frequency of masturbation affects a man's ability to produce sperm.

As a matter of fact the more often a man ejaculates the more sperms he produces. Most experts would recommend masturbation as a normal part of sexual life because it has its positive effect on the quality of sex.

However, it could be a problem if the act is always enveloped in guilt. This comes from public moral perception on the issue of masturbation. Boys who generally masturbate will develop guilty feelings that what he is doing may not be correct and it may affect him later in his married life. Such feelings over a long period of time may create a low confidence and may lead to impotence. Men especially who engage in the act have a tendency to finish it up quickly before anybody catches them in the act. So, the period of erection is reduced, and if this has become the practice over time, it follows that during intercourse, he would ejaculate early.

After a while, this becomes a huge problem. Some people get addiction to this masturbation, such that after marriage also they get more satisfaction in masturbation than the actual intercourse and lose interest in sex.

Even if they do have sex, they find it difficult to beat the habit as they continue to masturbate, which in the end could lead to major marital problems.

Whatever you decide on, ensure you are on top of the situation at all times. If you are the type that cannot control your urges of self-stimulations, the best bet for you now is to begin to cut down on your habits, as your woman may not take kindly to competing with this practice of yours when she demands for your time and attention.

It is always imperative you ask yourself why you went into it. Knowing the why would help you map out the how of getting out of it. There is no way you can help yourself beat the habit if you cannot control your emotions.

Good luck.