How to get your lust under control

mental health Apr 15, 2023
How to get your lust under control

In my last post, I talked about why you need to get your lust under control. Today, I'll be going over how to get your lust under control. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't hard or something you either have or don't have. Getting your lust under control simply takes concerted effort.

As men, we have a difficult time getting our habits around our lust under control. Sexuality is a core part of male behavior, so it's literally a vital part of you.

This doesn't excuse poor sexual behavior that is caused by a lack of control or lack of morals. In fact, it's exactly the reason why you should be putting effort into your sexual behavior.

Getting your lust under control isn't difficult, it just takes a lot of time and trial & error. Here are the two most important concepts on how to get your lust under control.

1. You cannot control what you cannot accept

As stated earlier, sexuality is a core part of male behavior. It's been said that men think about sex every seven seconds or so. Whether this is true or not, it's undeniable that men are driven by sex and the idea of a healthy sex life. Accepting this is the first vital step to how you get your lust under control.

In our modern day, we are conditioned to shy away from our darkest, most carnal desires. We are told to be more upright and virtuous rather than animalistic and feral.

The great irony of this is that the more you deny this instinctual part of yourself, the more it fulfills its wants and needs from the shadows. This is where destructive habits start.

Porn consumption becomes a routine habit in order to satisfy this carnal part of your being. Masturbation becomes a part of that routine and compounds the habit.

Before you know it, you're stuck in a cycle of self-indulgence that you don't even want to be part of. You only stick to it because it's a habit. Most of the time, men don't even know why they do it.

As proof of the idea of denial being integral to the habit, about two-thirds of Christian men admit to watching pornography weekly. Men who are part of a religion that values chastity so highly aren't able to avoid pornography.

Christians fall into the habit because they deny their sexual side. They follow the idea, "If it causes you to sin, throw it away" and they follow it to the tee.

The problem with this kind of approach is you end up throwing the baby out with the bath water. That is to say, you create another problem by solving a lesser problem.

So how do you use acceptance to get a foothold over your lust?

Firstly, you must accept that you are a sexual being. You must accept that sex is a core part of relationships outside of reproduction.

Second, you must accept that you have sexual desires. You must accept your desire for a healthy sex life, and you must own it. You must admit that you want to have sex with hot beautiful women and you need to learn how to be ok with admitting it.

Only once you are able to accept your sexual desires and own them as part of you will you start to see progress.

2. How to get your lust under control through understanding

I've said numerous times here that understanding acts as the great equalizer between progress and stagnation. Getting your lust under control is no different from any other area you may want to improve. Understanding how to do something grants you the power to make progress.

When it comes to understanding, there is one thing that blocks many people from making any meaningful progress: black-and-white thinking. 

We are conditioned in this modern age to pursue what is good and avoid what is bad. This creates a problem because this kind of thinking prevents you from looking at the nuances in a given scenario or topic.

Rather than thinking in terms of good or bad, look at the scenario in terms of what it is. To get your lust under control, you must learn to understand that it isn't bad.

Your lust is a desire for you to have a healthy, enjoyable sex life. Any sensible person would agree that it's reasonable to want that.

To more easily obtain this understanding, there are three factors to check that can either make or break your control over your lust.

The first factor is not being able to walk away from a bad deal. When you encounter a bad deal but are unwilling to walk away, the only possible outcome left is a compromise. One or two compromises are fine, but repeated over time you feel like you can never win. This leads you to believe that you aren't good enough.

Not being able to walk away from a bad deal is one of the worst offenders when it comes to damaging your self-esteem. One of the big contributing factors to uncontrolled lust is low self-esteem.

Second, living somebody else's idea of their life. When you follow someone else's idea of how you should live your life, you become miserable. This is a test of your masculine resolve: will you allow yourself to become miserable for the sake of social acceptance?

The men who struggle with their lust are those who deny themselves at the expense of social acceptance. They believe in social scarcity, so they preserve the connections they have out of fear of not having anybody left.

Third, and most importantly, you are responsible for your actions and outcomes. Men who struggle with lust are oftentimes the ones who deny that they have a problem. They pretend that everything is fine and justify their bad habits.

The sooner you take responsibility for yourself, the sooner you realize the tremendous power there is in self-ownership. The sooner you realize this power, the faster your results will be.

It's a long road

Before you start making any progress, know that it will take a long time. You will have setbacks and you will have days where you doubt yourself. These are normal and should be expected.

The longer you keep at it, the more you will come to accept your desires. The longer you keep at it, the more you will understand yourself and the factors that contribute to uncontrolled lust.

When the day comes when you are finally free, it will be beautiful and you will be so happy. And that's a promise.

- Karl