The Harem of Imaginary Brides

As someone who struggled with it a lot of his life, C.S. Lewis once wrote that the real evil of masturbation is that it:

"sends the man back into the person of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman....Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself." (George Sayer, Jack p. 208)