That’s a common idea today. I have had to work to understand this more deeply for myself in my recovery.
I have started to ask myself some questions about human behaviours:
What is the behaviour?
What is actually going on, for me and for others? Is it essential (necessary), in the sense that my body will physically die without it, and if so, what is necessary, or essential, about it, and how can that need be met?
What is the behaviour, fundamentally? How do I recognize when I am doing the behaviour, vs. not doing the behaviour? What are the “gray areas” of the behaviour? Where can I gain insight into those gray areas?
Are there ways the behaviour can seem to be happening on the surface, but actually, more deeply, it is a harmful (per)version of the behaviour, and it is harming me or others? What are healthy boundaries with the behaviour, and where / when are those boundaries violated?
What are the behaviours of sleeping, shitting, and eating?
These are behaviours that have one physical thing in common: if they are not done for long enough, it leads eventually to the physical death of the individual’s body.
At the non-physical level, they have at least one thing in common too: they are environment-dependent (I have environments that lead to better or worse sleep, poops, and nutrition, and this is physical (for example, the types of food I eat) and non-physical (for example, the emotions and burdens I feel, which affect my poops as well as my sleep and nutrition)). That means they are also choices I make: I choose my environments, or at least how I react to my environments.
Since sleep, poops, and eating are environment-dependent, I have the privilege (and responsibility) to make healthy choices for myself, of how I choose to do the behaviour. I can choose to do the behaviour within boundaries that make it uplifting and constructive for me.
To take eating as an example, it is essential that I eat a good mix of basic nutrients, without excess fat or cholesterol (which in many societies in North America is far in excess of what is balanced). However it is not essential for me to fantasize about other foods I could be eating. The thing that keeps my body physically alive is not the fantasies about food, or indulging impulses to eat junk foods.
[Edit to add: another layer to this is there’s a difference between eating to subsist (merely to survive or to fill oneself) and eating to thrive. Eating to subsist doesn’t require much in terms of boundaries. There are many examples, today and in the past, of people eating barely enough to keep their hearts beating (or, alternatively, eating way too much food but the food is nutritionally empty). But eating to thrive must be done within boundaries, and establishing and maintaining boundaries takes effort and healthy limits. When boundaries exist and are respected, everyone has enough food and everyone has a chance to thrive. When boundaries are ignored or manipulated, the body goes out of balance - more and more as time passes - and relationships go out of balance too, because unhealthy, unsustainable eating causes whole ecosystems to be imbalanced, and many people in these ecosystems suffer in one way or another.]
There’s two (and more than two, probably) layers to eating: the physical layer, the basic eating of something, some type of food, without which I will physically die; and the other layer(s), the layer(s) of what I do (what I eat) and when and how.
What is the behaviour of masturbation, and is it the same as one or more of sleeping, shitting, and eating?
Physically, not masturbating does not lead to physical death of the individual’s body. That’s an important difference.
There are many different voices about masturbation, many ideas that float around in everyday news and headlines and talking points about it; it is common to hear that it has some type of regulatory or balancing effect, or some similar idea. These ideas sound to me like the whole “wine has antioxidants” script: that may be true, but I can get similar servings of antioxidants in a healthy serving of blueberries. There are other sources I use.
Since there is this fundamental difference, the question is not about whether masturbation is (physically) an essential bodily behaviour like sleeping, shitting, or eating. What the question is about - and there are probably multiple questions - will cover a lot of layers, and these are beyond the scope of this post. The important takeaway from this post is there’s one thing masturbation is not about, in my experience, and that’s physical need.
Nothing about masturbation is physically essential, in the sense that my body will die from not having it. There are other layers, non essential layers - layers that relate to when and how I should engage my sexual behaviours - but those are questions that are beyond the scope of this question (which was about whether there is a basic physical necessity).
Since this fundamental difference between masturbation and sleeping/shitting/eating exists, then that, for me, is a constructive space to start asking myself, ‘What am I / what was I doing when I masturbate(d)? What effects did that have?’
The answers to those questions are a deep and rich conversation which is under way on the TS threads relating to recovery from PMO and lust/porn/sex addiction.
