Can frequently masturbating negatively impact my sex life?
It can in the way that anything can.
If you are spending 12 hours a day playing video games, that can negatively impact your sex life.
If you are working 16 hours a day, that can negatively impact your sex life.
The thing here is about balance and it’s also about being mindful of why we are doing things and what we are doing them for.
So masturbation is something that in our sex negative culture, people have a lot of shame and stigma about masturbation.
It’s something that is dirty and wrong.
You’re not supposed to do it.
People who are viewed as men, particularly cis men, are given a little bit more leeway to do it whereas, people who are viewed as cis women in particular are told not to along with other people who are assigned female at birth.
And so for the vast majority of us, our relationship to masturbation is messy.
Whether we agree with the societal programming we were given or not, it’s in there.
And that means that we may have messy weird feelings about something even if what we are doing is not actually wrong.
And having messy feelings about something can create impact from it that are not inherent to the activity but that are about the shame we carry from it.
Part of the reason that sex addiction is not a thing, it is not a real diagnosis is because the addiction model for sex tends to particularly on the treatment side of things reinforce this idea of sexuality is shameful, porn as a problem, masturbation is harmful, fantasizing about people other your partner is harmful.
And all of that build-up of shame tends to increase masturbatory behavior in people who are identifying themselves as sex addicts because for a lot of them, masturbation is one of their big release valves.
So if they feeling overwhelmed, if they are feeling really sad, if they are feeling like they want to just like tune something out, they don’t want to feel something, if they want to numb, a lot of times what they will use is masturbation.
And so if through the treatment process you’re building their shame, you’re going to build the behavior as well.
It’s going to create a really terrible cycle.
For regular folks, what we know from the research is that the amount that most people masturbate even if you think you’re masturbating a lot is totally fucking fine.
And in fact, masturbation often improves your health.
For people with penises who still have a prostate, regular masturbation helps to reduce your risk of prostate problems.
For people who have vulvas and vaginas, masturbation can be really helpful in terms of helping you understand and know your body in terms of helping you feel connected to your body and your sexuality, particularly since most of us have been told that our vulvas and vaginas are dirty and gross.
It can help you be better in sex with your partners because you know what you like so you can ask for it.
You understand how bodies work so you’re able to better play with other bodies.
There are a lot of positive effects of masturbation.
And just like working 16 hours a day, it can make it really hard to have a good sex life.
If you are masturbating in a way that is not a healthy relationship with it for you, that can negatively impact your sex life.
So when I talk about like a healthy relationship with masturbation, what I mean is like what are you doing it for?
Are you doing it because it’s fun and you enjoy it?
Are you doing it because you just want to clear your day from your mind?
Are you doing it because you’re feeling something and want to feel something else?
What is it that you’re looking for?
We talked – I talked in the last question that I answered about everybody is doing the best that they can with the tools that they have.
The fewer tools you have, the harder it’s going to be to be able to perform at a variety different situations.
So if you only have a hammer and you need to put together some IKEA furniture, you might be able to make it work but it’s going to be a whole product that’s going to be real challenging.
If you only have a screwdriver and you want to put some pictures up on the wall, you might be able to make it work but it’s going to be very challenging.
The reason that it is helpful for us to have a variety of tools for dealing with challenging feelings, for dealing with positive feelings, for getting through day, for self-soothing, for increasing joy for connection, is that the more tools we have, the more likely it is that we are going to be able to select a good tool for the situation that we are in and also the more likely it is that we will be able to maintain a positive relationship or a balanced or a healthy relationship with those tools.
Because again, if all you have is a hammer and somebody comes in and who is like, “Hey, I need to borrow your hammer for two weeks,” that’s going to feel really different than if you have whole tool, chest full of tools.
I think that the other ways that masturbation can negatively impact your sex life would be if you are doing it in such a way that causes physical harm or damage.
People with penises, the most common way this tends to happen is they don’t use lube when they masturbate.
It is – I don’t get it.
But a lot of people with penises grow up without having access to lube especially high quality lubes and so a lot of them just got into the habit of masturbating dry.
And masturbating dry is not necessarily bad but if you’re someone who doesn’t have a foreskin, it is really easy to cause chaffing, microtears.
It is easy to damage the nerve endings that are very sensitive and very delicate in your genital region.
And because it is mucosal membrane, if you don’t have adequate lubricant, you’re causing those tears.
That can increase the risk of STIs.
It can increase the risk of urinary tract infections, yeast infections.
Yes, even people with penises can get yeast infections.
There’s just a whole lot of ways that it can cause problems.
So if you are someone with a vulva and you are using your vibrator until you have thoroughly chaffed your labia, that can negatively impact your sex life.
If you are using a toy without sufficient warm-up, you can tear the tissues of the hole that you put it into.
So again, the issue here is not that you are masturbating.
The issue is that the amount of stress or strain you are putting on that part of your body is greater than the amount that is helpful for you to do or that is healthy for that tissue.
So take care of your body.
If you have a penis and you masturbate, use lube.
Please use lube.
It’s so good.
It will make your life so much better.
That gives you so many more options.
If you’re someone who uses vibrators, just use some lube with them so that they can move around some and don’t chaff your skin as much.
If it’s starting to feel kind of funky, put some more lube down.
If you’re starting to feel kind of numb, take a little break.
Just pay attention to your body.
Stay connected to it while you masturbate.
If you are masturbating because you would prefer to have sex with your partner but they don’t want to have sex, what tend – what can happen in those situations especially if it’s a longer term issue is that your masturbation also gets wrapped with any rejection or resentment or fear or upset or betrayal that you have around the way that your sex life is functioning with your partner.
And so, just be aware of like how that’s happening.
And I think it’s helpful for all of us with stuff that we do frequently to just check in with ourselves about like how is my relationship to this thing going?
I am someone who have used substances over the years and there have been times where I’ve had to like sit myself down and say, “OK, Liz, your relationship to cannabis seems to be changing pretty significantly. How is that going? Is this something that still feels like it is balanced and in alignment with your values and what you want your life to look like or does this seem like it is getting out of balanced? That this is starting to not work well for you? And if is, what do you want to do about it?”
You can do this with alcohol.
You can do it with videogames.
You can do it with the internet.
You can do it with anything.
Just looking at like how is your relationship with this going?
How do you want it to be and like what do you want to do about where it is right now?
And I think that that kind of awareness and that ability to give yourself space to think about things, talk about things, and figure things out can make a big difference in terms of making sure that masturbating doesn’t negatively impact your sex life.
If you are in a relationship with someone who is upset when you masturbate, you all need to have some conversations about that.
I think for a lot of people, there can be some jealousy of masturbation of like why are you using that sexual energy on yourself?
You should use it on me.
And we live in rape culture.
We live in a culture that in dating, teaches us entitlement to our partner’s bodies and attention and time and affection so I get where that comes from.
And everybody gets to masturbate no matter what kind of relationship you are in.
If it is a situation where you really want to be having sex and your partner is masturbating and then saying no to sex, something is happening and you all need to talk about it.
You may need to talk about it with a professional but like something is going on there.
So what is it?
Is that masturbating is more accessible to them right now?
Is it that there is some conflict that they haven’t talked about?
What’s going on?
But yeah, in and of itself, masturbating frequently doesn’t necessarily negatively impact your sex life.
Just pay attention to how much time are you using on it.
Are you using it in ways that are unhelpful for you or that can go down unhealthy paths?
Are you making sure you’re taking care of yourself while you do it?
Is it impacting your relationships?
And if so, what’s that about?
Is this a conflict between the two of you?
Is this is a way that this particular behavior has created more problems?
And just give yourself space.
Yeah.
All right.
We got a comment.
Some people prefer solo sex over interpersonal.
Totally real.
Totally valid.
And like that maybe a situation where these partners are not a good match.
I am someone who loves having sex.
I like to have a lot of sex.
I like to have sex with my partners.
I also like to masturbate.
But if I was in a relationship with someone who mostly wanted to do solo sex and then occasionally have sex with me, that probably wouldn’t be a good fit for me.
And that’s not saying there’s anything wrong or bad about them.
It’s just that like that’s unlikely to work well for me in the long term because a big part of how I connect with people is sex.
And so if that’s not on the table for them, that’s totally valid. It doesn’t have to be.
We are just not going to be a great fit.
And I think that giving yourself space for like nobody to be wrong, nobody to be the bad guy but it’s just not a good fit makes so much easier to make those calls and say like, “OK. You want this. I want this. It doesn’t seem like those worked well together. How do we want this relationship to look given that information?”
