This category usually sells the opposite answer, so here is the honest version first. Nobody has measured this. A drop in libido, mood and arousal during abstinence is described again and again in rebooting journals, and it has never been the subject of a formal study — no duration, no frequency, no cause, and no recovery curve. Every timeline you were given, including the one you are now measuring yourself against, was invented by someone repeating forum lore with a confident face.
The evidence under the abstinence literature generally is thinner than its tone suggests. The best-known piece of it is qualitative: an analysis of 104 rebooting abstinence journals, in which abstinence felt impossible at first and became attainable with cognitive-behavioural strategies plus social support. Self-report, no control group, third variables not ruled out. It is worth knowing about, and it cannot tell you what month four is supposed to feel like.
It is also worth checking what you were expecting to improve. A lot of what gets promised — drive, confidence, colour coming back into things — was borrowed from a dopamine story that does not say what it is quoted as saying. Dopamine is more closely associated with the anticipation and pursuit of a reward than with the pleasure of consuming it: wanting rather than liking. Removing a strong source of wanting does not, by any established mechanism, hand back a general capacity for enjoyment on a schedule. If the plan was that abstinence would do that work on its own, the plan had nothing behind it, and its not working is a fact about the plan.
So what should have moved? The things that distinguish a problem in the first place. Problematic use tracks distress far better than frequency does, and the group that differs on depressive symptoms and self-esteem is the distressed, impaired one rather than the high-frequency one. Run that check honestly:
- Distress. Does this bother you less than it did? A drop here is a real result even at unchanged frequency.
- Control. Does your behaviour match your intention more often than it used to?
- Cost. Hours, sleep, conversations, things built. Has anything concrete come back?
If those have moved and it still does not feel like a transformation, that is not you failing to respond. That is what change looks like without a soundtrack. If frequency is the only thing that changed, you have removed a behaviour without touching what it was doing for you, which is a common place to get stuck and not a defect in you.
When it is not an app-shaped problem
There is a reading of this question that deserves a straight answer rather than encouragement. Consider a professional if you have made serious, structured attempts and nothing shifts; if low mood or anxiety is in the picture and does not lift when the behaviour does; if compulsivity shows up elsewhere too, in spending, gambling or substances; or if there is trauma underneath it, which is common and does not get resolved with habit tools. Ask for someone experienced with compulsive sexual behaviour working in CBT or ACT — that is where the treatment evidence sits, and it is honest to add that those studies carry a high risk of bias and small samples. It is still the best-supported route there is, and better than another month of waiting.
Two specific things not to wait out. A flat stretch during a change of habits is one thing; two weeks of not caring about anything is depression, and it wants a GP. And if arousal has not returned, that wants a doctor rather than more abstinence — whether porn causes erectile dysfunction is genuinely contested, with supportive case reports on one side and population studies that have not produced consistent associations on the other, and erectile problems have plenty of established physical causes. Assuming yours is the porn is how people miss something treatable.
Months of effort with nothing to show for it is a miserable place to be standing. It is not evidence that you are broken. It is evidence that you have been measuring yourself against a number somebody made up.
Where this comes from
Read the full lesson: When it's not working →
Sources and how strong they are (6)
- AnecdotalThe "flatline" — a period of dropped libido, mood or arousal during abstinence — is consistently reported in abstinence journals but has never been formally studied.Fernandez et al. 2021
- AnecdotalA qualitative analysis of 104 rebooting abstinence journals found abstinence felt impossible at first and became attainable with cognitive-behavioural strategies plus social support. Self-report only; third variables not ruled out.Fernandez, Kuss & Griffiths 2021, Archives of Sexual Behavior
- Well establishedDopamine is more closely associated with the anticipation and pursuit of a reward - "wanting" - than with the pleasure of consuming it - "liking".Berridge & Robinson 1998, Brain Research Reviews 28(3):309-369, doi:10.1016/S0165-0173(98)00019-8, PMID 9858756, and Berridge 2007, Psychopharmacology 191(3):391-431, doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0578-x…
- Well establishedProblematic pornography use tracks distress better than overall frequency of use does. People who use frequently without distress and people who use frequently with it are distinguishable, and it is the problematic group that differs on mental-health measures - most clearly on depressive symptoms and self-esteem.Bothe et al. 2020, J Sex Med 17(4):793-811, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.01.007
- Mixed evidenceMeta-analytic evidence supports CBT and ACT for problematic pornography use and related depressive symptoms, but the studies carry a high risk of bias and small samples.Systematic review/meta-analysis of PPU interventions
- Mixed evidencePorn-induced erectile dysfunction is a real clinical hypothesis with supportive case reports and clinician reports, but frequency-based population studies have not produced consistent associations. It remains contested.Park et al. 2016; JMIR 2021 international survey; Kirby 2021
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