Randoman no-porn journey, Day 5

It looks like some people want to show support for my journey to stop my dependency on pornography, so I'll keep writing here. At least for a while. It gives me a sense of accountability, and I thank you deeply. 🙏🏻 From now on, if you don't want to read about this I'll put a disclaimer because I might get a little explicit. Today I've been feeling something peculiar. I'm not horny, but I feel something in my genital area. I feel the craving to masturbate. I've learned long ago that true arousal and mere cravings are two entirely different things, but this is a good reminder. I still feel no desire to open up a porn page, but I feel the compulsion to jack off even though I don't feel the need or want to. I don't even have an erection, so It's not true arousal. I'd have to manually force an erection to masturbate right now. I believe that doing that is a moderate form of self-abuse. I decided not to give in. I want to see where these sensations are going. I decided that I'm not going to masturbate unless I have a natural and spontaneous erection that didn't stem from external sources or active fantasizing. I will give in only if the thing persists for more than half an hour, by then I will believe that what I'm feeling is genuine sexual arousal. Emotionally it's been a rollercoaster. I feel like crying all the time. Things related to childhood and relational wounds. I definitely believe that Porn has a numbing effect on my emotions, that's why I'm aware that I've used it to cope and that mine truly is a dependency. I fully expect to cry in front of everyone while watching a movie. I don't want to feel ashamed for it for once, and I don't want to hide it.