DryGuy wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2025 1:52 am
I've searched for answers to this many times, and I can relate to the need to have this question answered. I'm not willing to abstain forever, for the sake of satisfying my WD curiosity. The deal seems to be "abstain forever and keep your fingers crossed", and that's about all anyone can say. Which isn't at all satisfying for my mind.
In terms of a deal, where I trade
x weeks of abstinence in exchange for a WD, there is a cut-off point. Beyond which no sexual experience or curiosity is worth the sleepless nights and constant distraction of horniness and denial. This is a problem for those of us with bags of curiosity, but very little else to motivate long term abstinence. If I had religious reasons, or some kind of porn addiction, it might be enough... but I don't. So I need to know what this deal entails in terms of sexual denial.
I didn't want to derail your thread with a long post, since it's not what you asked for, but I don't expect much activity here. We don't have enough users here to conduct statistically-significant research. So I'll try to answer the root question for you, based on my own exhaustive search of the same question...
If I had to give one answer, I'd say give it 45 days. This is the average I've seen most often in my travels.
I saw a poll on Reddit years ago during "No Nut November", where participants were asked whether they'd had a wet dream during their month of abstinence, and the people who answered "Yes" were less than a third. Approximately 300 people responded. Which I'd say is the most significant piece of data I've ever seen. Because these are people who usually masturbate, but are taking a month off. This isn't a study of people who've been selected for that study because they've already been celibate for years (and have an established pattern of wet dreams)... these are average Joes, many abstaining a month for the first time in their lives.
I think it is worth giving it a month, to see if you're in that lucky minority, but I'd be prepared to push it out to two months.
Though having said that, if you did go 2 months of abstinence without a WD, subsequent abstinence streaks become very demotivating. Because there might be no "magic number" of days, and you've learned what ever that magic number is, it's over 60.
This is where I am now, having pushed myself to 7 weeks once, and 30 days about 4 times. There is very little novelty or hope. The thought that "tonight may be the night" is what kept me going for a long time. But having this amount of certainty that absolutely nothing is going to happen for the first month, makes me not want to bother trying again.
Of course there's always the chance that my attitude was working against me. I coped through this period of denial by erotisizing it; trying to enjoy the fullness on some sexual level (to have my cake and eat it too). I think this may have contributed to an increase in semen in my urine, and a discharging of what ever
psychological sexual tension might be necessary for WDs. And I say this, because my ab-streaks have been plagued by a conspicuous lack of sexual dreams. Whereas that one week where I abstained unintentionally (because I wasn't interested and couldn't be bothered), I had one of the most overtly sexual dreams of my life, and a dream I would have
loved to have had on night 30.
So saving up sperm, and counting days might be far too simplistic. Maybe if I tried again, and was able to completely take my mind off sexual matters, I might have a WD in far less time. I find it very difficult to test that conjecture though. I think the only way I can proceed at this point is to experiment with abstinence for its effects on my motivation, mood, and creativity.
What confounds this further, is that I've read people on /r/semenretention saying they've completely overcome wet dreams by various means, and haven't had a WD in over a year. So thinking about it in terms of "a physical inevitability given enough time", might not be anywhere near close to reality. It seems to me, that the
quality of abstinence might be just as important as the duration.
For example, there are people who can fully ejaculate without touching themselves (while awake), it's not too much of a stretch to think this could be an ability lots of us have on some minor level without knowing it. Maybe the gratification someone feels during a long period of abstinence might be some internal form of this, where semen is expelled in small amounts on a regular basis.