After years of wasted time and ambition, it’s time to stop and move on – G’s story
First off, thanks for sharing your stories and providing a platform to share mine.
*edit* I’ve never before in my life reflected on this story, it was personally very sobering actualize my past. “Give me the strength to change!”
I saw my first Playboy in 7th grade and still, 25 years later, recall the jolt of electricity I felt while flipping through it. By that time, I was masturbating any chance I could get to “swimsuit” magazines and just dying to peak under those triangles of cloth.
A friend of mine knew where his brother’s nudie stash was kept and introduced me to the intimate world of anatomy, I still remember those lusty photos to this day. Long story short, thus began a life-long voyage with pornography.
I grew up in a loving but pretty repressed family. Girls and relationships, let alone sex-topics, were never spoken of. Never went to prom or dances, never had a high school girlfriend. Instead, I had magazines and video stores and their disgusting masturbation video booths. I’m forced to admit to spending a God-awful amount of time driving untold miles like a zombie to stare at photos of nude women and masturbate.
At 18, I’d latched on to the first girl I’d met and moved out to be with her. It was a new town, didn’t know where the dirty bookstores were and frankly wasn’t looking. With surprising tenderness, we waited for months and respectfully and lovingly explored real live human sexuality. What a concept, though by now I had seen enough times what an advantageous 20th century women could do to a man. It was disappointing.
By the time I left town three years later, I was a known face at every adult store. I would swear off porno, destroy my magazines, shred my videos and be back at the store a week later. Heavy marijuana smoking until I was near comatose, a rented video and the night to myself was my idea of fun.
Then along came the internet! If I was presented with the accumulated hours I’ve spent staring at internet porn, I would likely faint with shame. Many times have I erased a single night’s worth of binge viewing and honestly been a little taken aback by the 1000′s of images I’d perused. Strip clubs, peepshows, the dirties, filthy sperm covered movie booths. I began, out of sheer boredom, to imagine anonymous encounters with other men and fantasized about every thin female I saw.
When my girlfriend began to gain weight, I became cruel. I was repulsed and would rather masturbate for countless hours into the night while she slept than ever develop an intimate or romantic night with her. Of course I had steered her to the outer comfort-zone of sex acts but it never proved enough. 10 long and tumultuous years later we, finally parted ways.
Believe it or not, I was/am a very normal, down to earth guy with morals and convictions. I try to be humble and caring to my fellow man and respect women. In no time, I met my current partner and we have a loving relationship.
Except, soon after the “honeymoon” period was over, I was back to my old ways. Hours and hours spent in secret, masturbating to the screen or driving to those dirty booths and peepshows. I’ve seen just about everything. I can watch a girl get (what would in any other scenario) slapped around and humiliated and I don’t care. The few times I’ve almost been caught, lying with such ease I’m ashamed how easily she trusts me.
I’ll wrap it up but here’s where it gets interesting. Some years ago, I suffered an injury that left major nerve damage. I can no longer ejaculate and masturbation is more hassle than it’s worth. My testosterone levels are low and guess what? I look at as much porn these days than ever before. With no release, there is no end to the hours I can put in. Just blanked out and watching one video after the next, it never ends. I started looking at shady nudist pictures because they imply some semblance of innocence. At this point, it isn’t even hormonal or self-gratification, just a perverted go-to when I’m bored.
To me, I don’t care what “the experts” have to say about pornography; if I’m using or abusing or consuming or addicted. Personally, if I was at a gathering with all my friends, family and community and someone stood up and outlined my past… I would want to die. I could never, ever admit to my loved ones the images I’ve explicitly searched for, the accumulated years of wasted time and wasted ambition. That alone is a reason to stop and move on. People can change, I most certainly have in many ways that has brought me to this site. Ideas and thoughts are all too welcome, Lord give me strength!
Thank you G for sharing your story with such searing honesty.
I’m convinced that people who struggle with porn are very often highly sensitive, intelligent and exceptional individuals. I know… this sounds like ego-strengthening therapy talk. But I stand by my words!
The point about your injury and current circumstances is interesting indeed. It just goes to show how ingrained the habit reflex can be.
Your account covers so many facets of the long-term struggle: binging and purging, objectification of others, dull and trance-like acting out, compromised relationships and the sheer waste of time. But above all, it highlights the simple truth that we can change.
Here you are, reflecting on all the uncomfortable realities of the past, yet tasting optimism and freedom. Turning all of this around is a process with challenges, setbacks and slips along the way. But once you’ve shined this light on your habit, it’s actually quite difficult to carry on as before. You are in the process of change, and I wish you every continued success.
Related posts:
- My escalating pornography habit, and determination to stop – S’s story
- Nine years with a porn addicted husband – K’s story
- 25 years trapped with a porn-addicted husband – EM’s story
- You try to stop, but the sheer momentum of habit keeps you going – VC’s story
- Will I be happy if I stop looking at porn? – JW’s story
I know how emotive and frustrating this whole issue is. It’s...
wow this speaks to me alot. thank you.
i,m a 30 year old male who has been over looking at porn since well as long as i can remember.even before secondery school i seemed to have sex on the brain and without any outlet for this tearned to obssive masterbation.without the build up of propper relationships with girls i found myself left with just continues fantacies.i found it uncomfortable to share this with anyone so over the years although people do know i like porn the real extent of my use has become more secratif.I have spent contless hours scouring the internet watching porn.Even to the point that i find alot of it boring and not able to give me the same sence of exitment as the first time i sore it.Insted i flick from clip to clip scanning through hoping to see somthing that genurates that exitment.I am in a brilliant relationship with women who does not feel threatend by the use of porn,but my god if she new just how long i have spent looking at porn on the net she would shocked.Although she is open minded and and knows i masterbate to porn i still feel that i must delete all content from the computer after evry use.this is one of the things that has made me realise that this is not healthy.I find myself looking at porn out of boredome alot of the time and dont even feal turned on yet can watch for hours at a time.Alot of the time i tell myself after i have finished that this is the last time i will do this and then without fail i’m doing it again the next day.If i go on holiday with friends and there are no oppertunties to view porn i like the escape from the habbit but deep down know as soon as the oppertunities arrise it will just continue.
It speaks to me too. I could have written a lot of this. Sad. I definitely feel sad for what I’ve lost. I just had problems that I didn’t know how to deal with and I guess porn took them away for a while, or so I thought. I didn’t suspect it would make things significantly worse and twist my mind around. I have so much potential to have a better life. I think all of us do.
The ONLY question I have come to ask myself when it comes to porn is, does using & viewing porn enrich my life or does it impoverish my life? The choice to use porn or not to use porn IS actually a choice, & that choice is yours alone nobody else can make that choice for you.
Essentially the problem with porn is that we make an irrational choice to use porn for reasons such as to temporarily escape stress, or to avoid having to deal with difficult feelings such as perhaps feeling insecure, anxious or dis-empowered (perhaps work related frustrations) or avoiding having to assert yourself in some situation, its a long list of potential reasons why we turn to porn.
However, here’s the kicker as they say! the more we (me to) use porn the more quickly we turn back to porn once again, & those irrational choices appear to get (become) more embedded into our lives hence we end up with a regular porn habit. We are making irrational choices, we don’t even know why we are once again viewing the same old sites the same old images. We end up zombie like repeating the same old tired behavior like Pavlovian dogs. When our bell is rung back to the porn we go as it were? We end up having a pattern and in some cases “the pattern has us” the pattern has more power & control over us than we realized. Thus the task of anyone wanting to get free from porn is to brake the pattern of re-activeness, you have to aim “not to be” a Pavlovian dog. This can be done by creating a longer & longer gaps between using porn thus creating a space, a space in which we can finally begin to consciously feel & see that we do have a choice here, we are not automatons. We can choose not to be chained to the computer screen by porn.
Porn is just the latest form of flagellation, porn is digital self flagellation!! it is an expression of our own masochism.
Do you really want to be a Pavlovian dog the rest of your life !!? at the mercy & control of your irrational self?
Digital porn leading to a digital orgasm of sorts?
Digital Porn = digital self flagellation
Self Flagellation = digital masochism
**It is all your own negative stuff turned in upon yourself, negative emotions & reactions used against yourself. That’s a truly horrible painful & sad place to be. Life has to be more than such darkness.
**To me the biggest paradox of porn is that it attempts to portray the act of love making yet it turns that process into something functional & soulless, & illusory & unreachable by its very nature. Porn has nothing to do with actual love making but everything to do with making money from “the illusion of the sex act” or from the illusion of sexual glamor.
The problem with using & viewing pornography of any kind is that you yourself end up being the biggest looser as a consequence of that process. The only person that gets hurt by using porn is YOU!!.
I wanted to check in and say – as of right now – I’ve thus far stuck to my convictions and abstained from porn. Re-reading my “porn testimony”, I don’t want that to be me and believe me: that was but a brief summation. When I force myself to recreate various scenes of my past, I’m not proud. Pretty disgusted, really.
By now, I’ve figured out that my brain has become wired to run a program. I’m starting to recognize the tricks my mind will pull on me to get that dose of smut. For instance, this morning I was watching some old rock concert footage. Of course the women in the front crowd were hot which makes me think of flashing and breasts and next thing I know…I’m typing “flashing rocker chicks” into the search engine. The program had started. I’d lie to myself and say I was merely looking for innocent fun. In no time, I’d justify tasteful nudity at which the head program is fully installed and running and I know where I’ll end up.
What’s working for me is being a strict guardian of my mind. I want to change my patterns and I honestly feel like an alcoholic that might not ever again be able to handle porn in any healthy way. The moment I hear the Siren’s song, hear my mind serving up the thoughts as kindling that always burns leaving me nothing, I’ve been running an interference program. Literally, in my head or out loud if I’m alone, “la-la-la-la-no-no-no-no-no-no-bzzzzzzzzz-stop-stop-stop!!!” It’s a surprisingly useful tactic for me, shake out my head and re-write the program.
Eventually I want to surpass simply not looking at porn and trace the problem to it’s roots. The odds are against me that I’ll relapse back to my ways from time to time. I’ll be in the right mood not to care and I’ll type in a site and hit enter. I write this for myself to read later that repeatedly, time after time every time it either kick-starts or accompanies a behavior pattern that decreases the quality of my life.
It’s “good” to read that others could more or less tell the same story. It’s a journey for me, as I said I’ve wrestled 100′s of times to quit but I’m going to manage it this time and prevail.
If you have a porn habit and you wish to be free from that behavior, then it is my opinion that what is needed is NOT an act of sheer will power, not cold turkey (we know that doesn’t work) but:
a) at some level you make a rational choice to avoid porn as much as possible. You have to make this choice yourself as nobody else can do this for you.
b) that you (we) place clear “boundaries around porn” such boundaries replace the inner boundaries that we have been removed by using porn. Putting in place self imposed (chosen) boundaries produces a safety net which will keep the person away from online content which they (we) know will re-enforce old porn viewing habits.
c) Having these clear self imposed boundaries also helps us to face & deal with the irrational feelings & urges that almost inevitably rise once you start to avoid porn.
d) The only danger of this approach is that someone might turn to off line porn for a porn fix if online content is no longer available. YES! this is definitely true. But the principal of creating a space or gap between yourself & porn still remains valid, this helps with the healing process.
These clear boundaries can be put in place easily & quickly by using tools such as OpenDNS or K9 web protection.
http://www.opendns.com
http://www1.k9webprotection.com/
Thanks to everyone for all the feedback here. So many insights and ideas about the nature of a porn habit. Alex – you are on top form!
In my counselling work with people who struggle with porn, I repeatedly come across the Pavlov’s dog effect. When porn images or clips are so effectively indexed by Google and all the free sites out there, “putting images to words” becomes a habit reflex.
Before the internet came along, we’d flick through magazines or sit down to watch a porn VHS video. We’d skip pages and fast-forward through the boring bits, but it was all we had to work with. There came a point where the porn product ended, until we schlepped out and purchased some more. We could still get hooked on the stuff, but there was a lot more effort and cost involved.
Now that’s all changed. Just as G describes, a trigger word or phrase pops into our minds and the program begins. Using the internet to put images to words is a substitute for our erotic imaginations. It’s effortless, no-brainer reflex.
So we seach for “flashing rocker chicks” and observe the image. But does it ever feel like mission accomplished? No. It’s a poor substitute for erotic imagination, and we always feel some level of disappointment at the result. So we search for something else. More words pop into our minds, and we follow all the trails. Before we know it, several hours have passed and disappointment still reigns. Not a happy place to be.
Many guys have a mental list of favourite terms or topics. They spend their time running through the same old searches, refining and tweaking in the hope of discovering fresh content. They spend more time searching than viewing the results; the thrill of the chase.
So learning to “shake your head out” and break up the program is the key. It’s the ability to notice the onset of a trigger, and remind ourselves that searching porn will disappoint us. We can think about flashing rocker chicks – it’s OK. We don’t need to devote the rest of the evening to another futile porn-finding mission. And every time this tactic succeeds, the old habit gets a little more dismantled.
My pattern has become – start off looking for NSFW clips on harmless sites, like the Huffington Post. They have bikini and topless shots, or links to some, of celebrities. Then, I’ll go to celebrity soft core sex clips. Then, what the hell, why not, it won’t hurt to look at a topless shot, will it. Nah. Hey, now that I’ve seen a topless shot, what harm could one porn clip be, eh? One of those porn clips with a porn star who really seems to enjoy her work – because then I won’t feel bad thinking she is being exploited. She WANTS to be there, and enjoys it. That’s okay. Guilt free. No shame. Ah, but wait, come on, for sure there’s more porn stars out there that enjoy the work, it’s just a matter of finding them. Ah, what the hell, look for any clip that looks good, because I’m searching for legal and consensual porn. They all must want to be there. Ignore that little voice that says I am destroying my sexual health and self-esteem, because no one is getting hurt. Oh, and all those hateful descriptions of the clips, with the words whore and bitch in them, no harm done. Not at all. I’m not starting to think of women as either asexual Madonnas or sluts and whores. Nah. Non I’m a decent person. And, I’m not starting to hate men’s sexuality (I think one of the things missed out on in the overall discussion is how porn can make men feel negative about men, not just women). Not at all. And hey, it’s just one last time. I’ll stop tomorrow. So go out with a bang – six, seven hours of porn. I can heal tomorrow.
Try that attitude for years and it is a slow descent into hell. Humiliating, traumatizing and depressing. I haven’t enjoyed looking at porn since my twenties, and I have still looked at it for several more years, without actually feeling good, at all, about any of it. I think the last time I enjoyed a porn was in 2000, or 2001. I STILL have looked at thousands of hours since then, and not a single one of them has been fun. Every single minute of it has been numbing, and since 2005 depressing. I could actually feel my brain chemistry change in 2005. I was looking at porn and I felt my brain shift into a more severe depression, whereas before it was a problematic habit but wasn’t, in itself, deepening the depression, as far as I could tell. God that’s painful to think about. I didn’t feel like less of a man before 2005, and then I started to really feel awful about myself when I watched porn. I felt useless.
Dear god, when is the mental health community going to catch up to this problem? There needs to be treatment programs to help people ‘dry out’ and gain some skills.
Spot on comments so far. E describes the outer-whirlpool effect I go through when justifying my decision to search for porn so so accurately that I actually feel better knowing it’s a common deception. I think a major reason I’ve never been able to succeed is trying to quit on my own. It’s not something I’d ever bring up with and I become my own arbitrator.
I subscribe to the idea of our conscious mind being the analogous monkey riding backwards on the tiger of our subconscious instincts, motives, desires, etc. The monkey mind is really a passenger looking out over where the tiger has been already. The wily monkey can, however, at least be trained to be proficient, mind and obey.
The fun of choosing to abstain from porn is wearing off, the tiger -so to speak- is getting hungry. I’ve got myself first thing in the morning thinking “Welp, too bad I’ve decided to cave in today and look at girls” and feeling a sense of confidence in my defeat. Yet I never consciously made that decision! I find myself sliding into emotional states that I, on a deeper level, use to justify caving in. I’ll make one sudden decision “You know what? It’s natural and I enjoy it and who doesn’t watch porn….” as I quick type something in.
But this time I’m sticking it out so far, actually coming here first and being allowed to circumvent my thoughts is a big help. Going to go occupy my mind with something else and sign off….
So many people here will relate to E’s account of the kind of self talk that accompanies a slip back into porn. He’s bang on the nail there.
When we’re craving a boost of dopamine, we can do the most elaborate persuasion job on ourselves. Our rational minds observe it happening, but as E describes, that little voice gets drowned out by the noise and excitement.
G – a determined period away from porn will help to restore your equilibrium. The tiger will be calmed. But you are completely right to actively distract your attention towards more positive experiences. That’s the key to riding this period out.