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Thank you for the response. Just to press the point, is the worst that would happen to a hypothetical child that he or she would end up like you? Is that so bad?Posted in the wrong place.
To be clear, I'm describing the life I used to have; I'm not living that way any more.
I don't think I could claim that it's the worst that could happen. My porn addiction was far more manageable and less destructive than, say, what I've seen of the median meth addict. There were pleasures and pursuits beyond mindless self-indulgence. But it was not a good life, and it absolutely was not getting better with time. I observed myself slowly degrading, becoming less in very tangible and concrete ways, losing my humanity and degenerating into something verging on the insectile, as bitter regret and the need to escape that regret grew more and more to define my existence through habitual loops of pointless escapism and empty stimulus-response. Lying awake in the early hours of the morning, I would remember what it felt like to have someone I loved lying next to me, and know for an absolute certainty that I would never, ever have that feeling again, and the pain of that was considerable. At the time, I joked to my family that my purpose in life was to serve as a cautionary example, but the joke wore thin the worse it got. Toward the end, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about being dead. One of my main objectives in my current life is to do what I can to help my children and nieces and nephews avoid ending up in a similar place.
...All this is to say that, in my experience, the question of whether sex is or can be better than masturbation depends on the mentality of the assessor. In my own experience, I know for a fact that masturbation appearing preferable was a consequence of profound dysfunction. I am at least somewhat confident that my own experience generalizes at least to some degree, but this is pretty obviously a question that grounds out at one's values. At a minimum, I'd endorse what you wrote here.
Wow apparently I misclicked because my question was meant for someone else, apologies.
I did wonder about the double-reply...
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