Question:
Good evening.
I hope you’re in good health and doing well. A lot has happened since I last wrote. I was hesitant about writing again, but after reading your response in “How do you know about all of this?“, it motivated me to write again.
I wanted to talk about masturbation. You see, ever since I “accepted” that it wasn’t a sin and embraced the practice, I’ve struggled to keep this practice under control, which I shamefully admit led me to read more on the subject.
Could you tell me about other young people like me who rejected masturbation, how it helped them, and if they managed to incorporate it correctly? I want your help in seeing what can be done to prevent this act from becoming addictive.
Since masturbation almost always appears accidentally and in childhood, I was wondering what should be said to a child who is just discovering masturbation, so as not to inhibit them but to prevent them from developing an addiction. I see that just as masturbation is normal, so too are compulsive behaviors toward it. At the same time, it’s these acts that become problematic. For example, and to be honest, I think that in practice, most people masturbate for pleasure, not out of necessity. I started masturbating when I was 8. I didn’t do it out of lust. I think that behavior, which I later resumed at 10, led me to become very compulsive at the time.
Let’s say I fear that, under the guise of masturbating out of necessity, one masturbates for the pleasure it brings. I’m sharing observations I’ve had after much reading.
I want your help, and I apologize for the inconvenience and for continuing to bring up these issues.
Answer:
If you are hungry and you eat a good meal, it is enjoyable, but you don’t worry about becoming a glutton because you enjoyed the meal. If you’re thirsty, a glass of water feels refreshing. If you think about it, every need of the body gives pleasure when that need is met. The only difference with ejaculating is that the pleasure is more intense.
It isn’t a pleasure that makes something wrong. The danger with pleasure is that it can distract you from paying attention to what is right and wrong. Typically, when the pleasure is the primary focus, that is when the danger of being led into sin is the greatest. Thus, when a person chases after the pleasure of good-tasting food, he might be tempted into becoming a glutton. When a guy chases after the pleasure of orgasm, he might get caught up in pornography or fornication.
Thus, the answer to your question is similar to how you know how much to eat. You shouldn’t eat just because the clock says it’s lunchtime, though we often schedule meals to make them easier to prepare and clean up afterward. You should eat because you are hungry. You may adjust your eating schedule to accommodate the next meal time. What you avoid doing is thinking, “I’m hungry now!” so you eat a bunch of junk food between meals. That ends up being a good way to become fat. When you do this, eating is very pleasurable, but you don’t call it an addiction simply because you need to eat repetitively.
In the same way, you know you need to ejaculate when the urge for sex rises to a distracting level. Yet, you typically can’t relieve yourself immediately. You need to wait until you have some privacy for a while. When you can masturbate, it feels good, and it is a relief when you ejaculate. If it is difficult to reach an orgasm to ejaculate, then you are doing it too often. Don’t ever feel like you must ejaculate right then. Instead, go about your day, and your body will alert you when you need to try again.
How often you need to ejaculate will vary. It is based on how fast your body produces semen and how much semen your seminal vesicles can hold. Your rate of production varies with your hormone levels and how often you get aroused. The average young male ejaculates about twice a week; it can range from once a month to once a day, and sometimes, guys get hit with the need to ejaculate multiple times in a day. Thus, you have to gauge your current need on how distracting thoughts of sex become. That is a reflection of how aroused you are. If you are feeling like you are about to explode, then you definitely reached a point when you need to ejaculate.
If you are going through a phase where it seems like you are ejaculating a lot, realize that it will eventually slow down. It doesn’t mean you are addicted.
The danger to watch out for is when you are tempted to use pornography or lustful thoughts about sex outside of marriage to get yourself aroused so that you can ejaculate. Using sin to gain pleasure is wrong (I Thessalonians 4:3-5).