My story

I guess it was probably cute at one stage. I was about 12 years old and I kept a secret collection of “cut outs” of lingerie models and film stars from magazines and catalogues. I was very secretive about it which was part of the excitement. My parents would put out the bins on a Sunday and I would sneak outside while they were busy, retrieve the pages I needed, cut out the pictures, safely dispose of the trimmings, and hide my “special folder” at the back of the filing cabinet in my bedroom. Later on, I would shut the door to my bedroom, pull out the “special folder”, lay the pictures out in front of me, kneel down and masturbate, before carefully collecting the pictures back up and returning the “special folder” to its hiding place.

I just remember how exciting it was; I really looked forward to it.

It took another couple of years before I was old enough and brave enough to get hold of adult magazines. Again, I remember the excitement. It was a real adventure making my own way into town on the bus and then spending literally hours walking around all of the newsagents trying to find somewhere that was quiet enough (and not staffed by women) to attempt to buy an adult magazine.

I used to grab a copy of The Independent and Private Eye, and sandwich the adult magazine in between in the hope that the people behind me in the queue would not notice what I was buying and that the shop owner would feel that my business was too valuable to turn away. I was, after all, obviously underage.

I would be almost breathless on the journey home in anticipation of being alone in my bedroom with a shiny new adult magazine. In fact, sometimes I would masturbate two or three times during the evening just because of the newness of the pictures.

I had only seen hard core pornography once at this stage. I was on holiday with my parents and a friend in Belgium, and I knew that hard core pornography would be available on late night television. I went to bed at the same time as everybody else one night but stayed awake until 1am before creeping downstairs to switch on the television. The volume was loud when I turned on the television and I panicked momentarily before reducing the volume with the remote. And then I saw it for the first time, hard core pornography: A women giving a man a blow job. It was mind blowing, absolutely mind blowing. I felt a wave of sexual pleasure the like of which I am not sure I have experienced since.

It would be few years before I had regular access to hardcore pornography after that but it remained with me vividly.

Internet pornography was only just starting to develop when I was doing my A-Levels and although I spent some time looking at pictures over the Internet, it was too slow and frustrating. When I got to university, though, Internet pornography was becoming more sophisticated and when I came back from university at the end of each term I had ample opportunity to access it.

When I left university, I had even greater freedom to access hardcore pornography through my own broadband Internet connection and when I was single my relationship with pornography blossomed. It is hard to pinpoint any specific incidents during my twenties that stand out in relation to pornography. I see it more as a gradual slide into harder and harder material including bondage, and the desire to see women tied up, bound, dominated, and humiliated. However innocently my browsing began (Page 3 Girls, loving couples) it always ultimately descended; and because it was a gradual process over a few hours I never really noticed just how far I descended.

I would masturbate to pornography for several hours each night when I was single. It did not interrupt my social life; it consumed the private hours alone after I got home from the party, or the date, or meeting friends at the pub.

I knew, and I have always known, that watching bondage pornography is a mental release from frustration, anxiety, and boredom. Bondage has never been a part of my sexual relationships and it does not seem to capture my interest in real life. The desire to watch bondage pornography can be overwhelming at certain times, and this has been true when I have had girlfriends in the past and it continues to be true now that I am married.

I remember having thoughts about bondage even as a child. When I was a child, I would imagine tying up the girls in my class, undressing them, and looking at them. I have never understood how I could have developed a fascination with bondage from such an early age. It feels as though it is essentially hard coded in me.

My wife knows that I have had problems with pornography in the past, and that I continue to use pornography. I feel that at some point in the past my relationship with pornography separated from my sexual relationships. Pornography satisfies a completely separate part of me; it is like a routine that I run under certain triggers.

I am a trained NLP Practitioner and sometimes it amuses me that I have a pornography addiction because I am trained to help people overcome addictions and yet I have tried and failed to quit pornography twice in the past.

I have reached breaking point recently because I am so paranoid now that the mainstream sites that I regularly visit only ever seem to be a few clicks away from sites with deeply questionable or even illegal material and I panic about what would happen if anybody ever investigated my browsing history.

The fact that browsing for bondage pornography brings me into such close contact with borderline material is causing me such a huge amount of distress now that I feel I have to do something to stop. Thinking about the shame and embarrassment that I would feel if the people around me knew about it, I feel sad and lonely. Thinking about how disappointed people would be, I feel humiliated.

In the moment, though, what is real is the excitement of pornography; and I know that it still has a powerful hold over me that I have not yet broken.

I would be grateful for any support that you could give me.