Okay, this might be a controversial topic. It's not my intention to start a controversial topic, but it might be one anyway, for reasons I'll describe below.

Let me also preface this post by saying that I am not trying to take a moral or pseudo-moral stance here. I'm an atheist, and I have no religious, political or moral objections to what you watch in your spare time. You do you.

Let's begin.

It's now coming up to three months since I gave up seeing escorts (I was seeing at least one every month prior, often more). I have to say that it's one of the best decisions I ever made. My finances have already improved. I feel as though my personal safety is better - I no longer risk STDs or having my head caved in by a pimp somewhere. While initially there was some frustration about not having "easy" sex, I got over it pretty quickly. When I think back on it, the sex was always pretty much overrated. Some of the escorts I saw were good people, but that fact only really depressed me when i had to leave at the end of my session.

More importantly, it has proven that even though I'm now in my 40s, I can still make changes to my life for the better, which brings me to the main topic of this post. I've been watching porn regularly since I was 16, starting with magazines and progressing to high-speed Internet in the later years. I've also spent way too much time in cyber sex/roleplaying chat rooms. Now as I'm getting older, I'm starting to think that maybe it's time I gave that up so that I have more time to pursue my passions and focus on self-improvement.

Now I'm not suggesting we all take up nofap and become monks. I happen to believe that occasional, controlled masturbation is probably healthy. If doctors say cleaning the pipes every so often helps reduce the risk of prostate cancer, I'm all for it. But fapping off once or twice a week to one's own imagination isn't the same thing as fapping off multiple times a day watching *other people* having ordinary and often terrible sex. Think about it - most of the time in porn the woman doesn't have an orgasm (despite all the fake moans) and the man only reaches orgasm by jerking off. That's hardly great sex.

More importantly, think of all the great things that could be done with the time wasted on this crap. A person could be building a business, reading a good book and learning something, exercising and working on their health, spending time in nature, learning another language... the list goes on and on. Contrast this to porn, the continued consumption of which achieves... what exactly? Shows us how to have sex? We've already seen that. Besides, if we're swearing off dating, do we really need to know that?

Now I know you're gonna say something like "Well, I don't chase women anymore, so how do I satisfy my sexual needs?", and as I said before, I'm not opposed to occasional fapping to one's imagination or the simple physical sensations in moderation. How much fapping do I think is healthy? It's a bit like the old apple test they use in the diet and fitness industry. If you're horny enough to fap without porn, go and fap without porn. If not, you probably don't need to fap and could use your time better.

Surely, as men, we should be striving to be the best we can be, right? Even if we've sworn off women and dating, shouldn't we be doing it for ourselves? Is spending hours in front of a computer watching porn really the best we can be? Do we really want to be the male equivalent of the 350 pound feminist who shows that she "doesn't need a man" by woofing down cheese burgers, expanding like a balloon and ultimately having a heart attack? Surely we are better than that.

After giving up the escorts, I want to move onto the next phase of improving my life and bettering myself, and I think this could be it.