How do I let go of my porn-addicted past?

Submitted by a reader on Tue, 01/06/2010 - 23:19

a reader's picture

I started looking at porn when I got the internet when I was 16. From the time I was 16 to the time I was 22 I looked at porn around once a week on average. Then I realized at some point that I had a hard time connecting/meeting women and I started to feel horrible about using porn. To the point it made me feel sick and gross and I felt ugly.

I was always shy around girls and every girlfriend I had I couldn't connect with, which made me feel bad and that certainly didn't help me with my relationship to porn.

It was like a drug. If I went a few days or a few weeks or even a few months without looking at porn eventually I would end up breaking down - out of sexual frustration for not getting any real sex or something inside me would convince me to look at porn. Then I finally said I had enough and I got a really awesome girlfriend and I was porn free for 2 years.

Real sex is a million times better than anything porn can offer. I have watched porn a few times since over the last year out of loneliness/boredom but I feel like I'm over my dependence. Now I makes me feel sick and I feel really horrible about my life having looked at it for so long in my adolescence. I feel like it stole some much of my youth and normal sexual development. I have major regrets. I just wish I never looked a the stuff in the first place. I want my teenage years back but I know it's impossible.

I don't know how to feel okay with my past and I feel enormous pressure to get a new girlfriend and have real sex now that I am single again. I just want to be pure and untainted but porn has left a mark on me. And I want to find a girlfriend because being with a woman totally keeps the demons at bay and is a very healing experience. I'm 25 now and I'm just worried that because I missed out on learning to connect with real women when I was younger and using porn instead I will have a hard time in future relationships. How do I let go and be okay with my past now that I'm no longer using porn?

Porn is a kiss that bites. Thank you for hearing my story.

Hi A,

Thank you for sharing your experience here. Finding self-forgiveness is essential for moving on, and letting go of the resentment and regret that so many of us have carried.

I think it's important to remember that compulsive behaviours and addictions always have some form of positive intent behind them. We might habitually use porn in order to fill the void of boredom, loneliness or social awkwardness. We might be using porn to numb ourselves and somehow muddle through negative feelings.

So at the time, there were reasons why you developed the habit. And there came a point when you decided that there are better life options than porn, and you followed them. You faced up to the false promises of the habit and made changes. Never lose sight of just how positive this achievement is.

Sometimes, we can end up feeling like we're victims of our own porn behaviour. We might even write ourselves off as damaged goods. That's why it is so important to give ourselves permission to forgive. We'll still experience feelings of shyness, low confidence or loneliness but now we have the freedom to address them in positive ways. Pornography is no longer our default coping mechanism, and that's worth a lot.

I hope this is helpful, and wish you every continued success.

I started using porn when I was 14 years old mainly because I was shy, & lonely & didn't know how to connect with girls & felt very insecure and lacked self confidence. YES! I do have regrets about my past porn usage, I regret the stupid waste of time which I cannot get back, I regret the waste of money too but all these things are water under the bridge and its vital not to beat ourselves up over things we cannot now change on a practical level.

**I think of it this way, once you have come to see how negatively porn affects us & that its best avoided were possible. Once you know this & once you start avoiding porn & avoid using porn then a slow healing process starts to happen. Every person is different so how long this healing (recovery) process takes is also going to vary a good deal but you have started that healing process. You have let go your need for porn.

**Now you have let go of your porn need (porn dependency) & now you have started along the healing pathway you have less baggage to get in the way of meeting someone nice, less baggage to get in the way of finding a loving relationship. Your 100% right & I agree with you nothing is better than a loving relationship, you cannot have real intimacy with a porn image or porn movie. Having a girlfriend or partner or wife cannot ever compare to porn. Porn is nothing but smoke & mirrors, porn is nothing but a hall of illusion it takes you no where, it cannot satisfy our deepest longings for love, for human contact, for closeness etc.

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No.1 Its very very important to try & deal with or sort out your feelings about your porn past if those feelings are bothering you. Why? because sorting out those feelings with help you move forwards & help keep you porn free, will help you avoiding falling back into old habits.

No.2 try to get some counseling or therapy to help sort out those remaining feelings.

No.3 Sorting out those left over feelings will help your healing process & consolidate your present gains, help keep you porn free.

No.4 Perhaps to some degree we also start to grow up & grow out of the need for porn over time. We are so used to feeling terrible about ourselves because of using porn we almost forget what it is to feel good again about who we are.

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Another useful way I tend to think about porn is that porn is just really a mirror. It reflects my own distress & my own vulnerabilities, my own insecurities, my anxieties, my anger & frustrations and so forth. The more I use porn as a comfort blanket the more I'm not really dealing with my deeper distress, deeper unexpressed emotions. I'm bottling things up & I often feel bad some time later on after using porn.

So here is the paradox?. This also means that when you DON'T use porn as an emotional crutch, the inevitable is going to happen. Meaning all those unexpressed feelings, those old previously bottled up emotions come rising to the surface and this can be quite challenging (even quite difficult too) the easy response is to go and do more porn. The harder option is NOT to fall for more porn. But with some courage to face up to the old feelings , & allow them to be expressed (felt) this is the way out of the labyrinth which is the porn hall of illusions. The key is allowing yourself not to bottle up or push away your pain, your distress, I know what your going to say. Is THAT IT? the answers is YES! that's a major part of how to get free from porn. Feel the feelings and DON'T run away!! sounds so simple but its true IMO.

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Its like saying don't mistake porn for sex!! Porn actually has almost nothing to do with real sex.

**Don't mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself!?

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The greatest problem with porn is NOT actually the porn, but the struggle we have with ourselves. The struggle is our relationship with porn & thus the struggle is really inside ourselves. The struggle is like an internal wrestling match between the rational self (reason & logic) and our emotional self & our libido (sexual self) all these things pulling in different ways.

All these various elements trying to gain control, using porn seems to pull the self more out of balance, resulting in reason often loosing in the struggle. However, when we stay away or steer clear on porn the psyche will always come back into a new balance & here reason regains control and emotions & sexual energy settle into a condition. The struggle quietens down, is less fractious less torn, less driven & given time a better balance is gained once again.

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For the best results & deep healing, to strongly consolidate the letting go of an old porn habit (porn dependency). I know this may sound rather extreme perhaps? but I have concluded that a) sexual abstinence i.e. refraining from masturbation or any kind of sex. Why? because we are dealing with the body-mind & this allows for healing on a physical level too, b) put in place internet content filtering to block or remove access to porn or explicit or even soft porn content i.e. anything that might trigger you. Such as OpenDNS or K9 web protection, c) have regular face to face counseling or therapy i.e. weekly if you can, d) try to find new activities that take you away from "screen time" & reliance on the internet. Preferably fun social things that bring you into contact with real people & women. Such activities will really help ground your healing process in the real world as opposed to the virtual one. I'm only suggesting process that have worked well for me but such choices have to come freely from you, I wouldn't for a second want to impose them on other people. But these choices do lead to away out from the labyrinth & hall of illusions that porn can create.

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It is good that you acknowledge that you have had a problem with porn in the past and that you do not want to go down that road again... that is a huge step in recovery! I don't know what advice to give you except offer a good book reference that might be helpful...
"Erotic Intelligence" by Alexandra Katehakis teaches people who have had issues with sex/porn addiction how connect with self and others, and to not use sex/porn to escape anxiety and psychological stress. It really is a helpful book. Good luck to you.

http://www.eroticintelligencebook.com

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