A fellow struggler reaching out

Your Story
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Hello all,

I’ve stumbled across this community and I am posting here in the hope that it will help me with my porn addiction.

My memories are fairly hazy but I think I was first exposed to pornography at around age 13 and it has been a part of my life since. It was about 8 years ago, when I moved to a new city where I didn’t know anyone, that I realised how bad it had gotten. I was unable to go more than a day without looking at pornography and ultimately it didn’t fulfill the emptiness that I was trying to fill. An emptiness made up of loneliness and self loathing as my porn addiction had driven me down a road towards strippers and prostitutes. It wasn’t who I wanted to be and I needed to get clean.

Around this time I met my partner and life went into overdrive. Moving in together, children, busy with work and personal projects yet all the while I struggled along with my porn addiction. In the last 8 years my “best” run of sobriety was about 48 days, which to this day I am still proud of.

The wheels started to fall off around the time of the pandemic. After the initial rush to change life around and settle the family into a routine the days began to merge together. I began to struggle and I let the pillars of my recovery crumble. I removed the blocking software from my phone, I found out about the existence of VPN’s (that seem to circumvent every protection I had in place. My porn use increased.

My partner found out about my porn use and I agreed to stop, only I couldn’t. She helped me out by putting some protections in place that were outside of my control which helped for a while but it hurt her more than I can express that I was like this. She took it as personal to her (which I understand) even though this disease predates me knowing her.

Over the last year our relationship became more and more distant and just recently we have seperated, which was heartbreaking but after some time we both believe it is the right thing. With such a monumental event happening in my life I have fallen off the wagon again.

I do genuinely believe I am an addict. This disease has seeped into every aspect of my life and I am determined day by day to be better. I know that I will never be rid of this but I am looking for practical advice on how to stay clean.

I have been T-Total (from alcohol) for the last 3 years which has helped a lot as I am able to control my urges a lot more. I find I am at my worst when:

  • I am tired
  • I am stressed
  • I get stuck in my own head
  • I feel like I am rushing (racing thoughts / constantly feeling like I need to catch up)

As I sit here in a friends spare room looking at the shattered remains of my life, all the norms vanished I want to use this opportunity to put in place some good positive habits to help me manage this disease. I’m hoping by shouting this out into the void I can find other souls in the same situation I am in.

So far the good habits I have put in place are:

  • Regular exercise

Things I am looking to try:

  • Mindfulness
  • Speaking out about how I am feeling on this forum as a way to not carry the weight of this disease all by myself.

Thank you for listening. Just typing these words feels like a positive step and a weight off my shoulders.

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Welcome! Thank you for sharing so completely, including steps you’re taking that seem to be helping you. That shows you have really thought about how to be in recovery mode. You’re definitely not alone, and community and sharing with peers might be the missing link for you. I am not addicted to the same things, my primary issue is with alcohol, but addiction ties all of us on this forum together as peers with similar lived experiences. There are others with PMO addictions that manifest in a variety of ways who share here often. I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to search using the magnifying glass icon at the top toolbar for subjects like porn addiction or PMO and you will find threads to read that can connect you to other members. I’ll also tag @Matt here who I know will be a helpful resource for you.

I’m glad you’re here.

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Hi Rosa, thank you for your welcome :-). I will definitely take your advice and reach out to those with a similar addiction to mine. I feel like I need to be completely honest with myself and others if I am going to manage this and sharing my feelings and ideas for getting better feels like a positive first step.

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Thx Rosa!

Hi @Staringupfromthewell and welcome to Talking Sober! :wave: :innocent:

I lived with a porn addiction for about 20 years. It was just terrible. Everything about porn and masturbation is terrible. You’re alone, you’re wasting time, you feel regret, you put your relationship at risk - all of that and more.

Porn and sex addiction often appear together. (Personally I would argue they’re the same. I don’t like drawing a line between porn and sex addiction because they’re both about living in some fantasy world and being unfaithful to your partner. Being faithful and being loyal require a level of discipline that is incompatible with sex or porn use outside the relationship.)

You are not alone in recovering from this.

There are dozens of threads about people recovering from porn / PMO (porn-masturbation-orgasm) / sex addiction - these are the ones tagged with “PMO”, “porn”, “pornography”, “sex-addiction” for example; there are other tags but those cover most of the threads - no doubt you’ll find stories here that sound familiar to you:

https://talkingsober.com/tag/PMO

https://talkingsober.com/tag/porn

https://talkingsober.com/tag/pornography

https://talkingsober.com/tag/sex-addiction

For partners of someone living with a porn addiction, it is heartbreaking. They find out their spouse wasn’t “working” on the computer / phone (or whatever other ordinary activity) but was instead watching porn. They feel deeply hurt and betrayed. The commitment you made to each other is shattered, because the porn viewer chooses porn over partner. Many choose to leave their relationship because the emotional burden is too much to bear. (One reason for this is that it is never a partner’s responsibility to be the one holding you accountable. It’s unfair in a marriage / a partnership which is supposed to be a partnership between equals, mutually supporting and respecting one another. The emotional weight of holding someone accountable in this circumstance is incompatible with marriage/partnership, because it’s no longer mutual support: it’s one person who is profoundly betrayed - to the point where years of their life are called into question and where they cannot imagine trust - being asked to provide support that is agonizing, every moment feeling hurt.)

In my case my marriage survived my porn addiction and continues to be strong today but that is the result of years of counselling and effort. We have done marriage counselling for more than five years now; and when I attended a sex addiction recovery clinic in my city, my wife attended the group there for partners of sex addicts in recovery, which helped her get empathy and support. We also each have our own counsellors, who we see individually. We budget for this, the same way we budget for groceries: it’s essential to our life and our health.

I am sorry to hear this. It is understandable but it is still heartbreaking.

My first recommendation: visit a sex addiction recovery program or clinic, and get a counsellor, and start unpacking what’s behind your behaviour. (Be sure you have a counsellor who’s familiar with sex addiction recovery; if you’re not sure, ask for suggestions at a sex addiction recovery group.) Talking Sober is a great space but in my own experience, what I learned at my sex addiction recovery group and from my work with my counsellors (I’ve had several) has been what gave me the specific insight, and the person-to-person accountability to be able to turn things around.

There’s a good list of sex addiction recovery groups here:

Second, learn about sex addiction and sex addiction recovery. Patrick Carnes has researched and counselled extensively on this topic. (In my sex addiction recovery clinic we used his books Facing the Shadow and Recovery Zone for our group work.) There are many interviews with him on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=patrick+carnes

He also has written books on the topic:

https://www.drpatrickcarnes.com/books-videos

The most important things are A) do this for yourself, not for anyone else (successful recovery has to be about being your healthy self, for its own sake, because that is how you keep it going through the challenges of life); and B) persist: do not give up, keep walking forward one step at a time.

Keep us posted!

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Thanks Matt, I really appreciate the advice and support. I will start investigating support in the area and see what help I can get in addition to this forum.

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Since I tagged this thread as my story I decided that I wanted to think back to where my porn addiction started. It’s not something I’ve really done before (outside of my ow head) and I hope it will be a cathartic experience.

Growing up I had (and still have) Eczema, a skin condition where I come out in rashes, have itchy skin and I am incredibly sensitive to the chemicals in washing powder, shampoo etc. In my formative years it was much worse than it is now but I believe that through my teenage years it really did a number on me.

Throughout my life I have always had the little voice of self doubt in my head asking questions like “Who is going to love you when you are itching all the time?”, “What sort of person is going to put up with someone who smells so bad?” (Back in the 90’s there really wasn’t a lot of eczema friendly soaps around and those that were were made of coal tar). Those constant questions inside my head lead to a really deep feeling of self loathing. In those impressionable teenage years it built into me a fundamental fear of rejection and anxiety about talking to girls. It only got worse as puberty took hold and one day I found an old VHS tape of pornography. It allowed me to sat my teenage urges without the hyper anxiety of having to socialise with anyone. It was a secret and it gave me some relief from the deep self loathing I had.

Eventually during sixth form I met a girl I really liked and after about a year I told her how I felt about her. She tried her best to let me down gently (which I see now), but at the time I was devestated. Internally I was recieving the confirmation that all the questions my self loathing put to me were right. I was disgusting and no one would love me. It began a shame spiral that led to lots of alcohol to wash out the feeling of rejection and diving into the depths of my pornography addiction.

Looking back on this I realise how I wasn’t emotionally ready for many of the experiences I had and that, if I had stopped and opened up to my feelings I would have had a better time of it than I did. I am also greatful that I have realised this now. I have stopped running from my feelings and I am now turning around and embracing them, good or bad.

Life is never going to be plain sailing but one day at a time I want to explore how I have got to this point, let go of that past pain, anger and self loathing and start afresh comfortable with who I am now and putting to rest the mistakes I have made in the past.

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I also have eczema and thought it would prevent me finding anyone. Isn’t it funny the way that our brain tries to protect us from negative emotions by seeking out something to numb them?

Thank you for sharing your story, and for your courage in fighting this so long and putting in the work.

I want to let you know that it is possible to live porn free, and you can definitely do this.

With the risk of feeding you from a firehose, I’ll offer two more resources that Matt didn’t list that have helped me the most.

Easy Peasy

Sara Brewer

Easy peasy is used by a bunch of people in this forum, and there are lots of good tips and points. Pretty quick read, you could finish in a few hours.

Sara Brewer is my coach for quitting porn, she teaches a lot of mindfulness and helps you dig out the root of your thought process so that you can teach yourself to stop craving.

Best of luck to you in this journey - don’t give up! You deserve your best life.

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Thanks Liljelly, I will definitely have a look at those resource, anything that helps to open up and find the root of this is really helpful.

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That is really the core of it, isn’t it? For me too, discomfort with myself - in my case, my neurological / psychiatric conditions - contributed to my choice to drown and isolate myself in porn.

Have you ever explored self-acceptance meditation and self-acceptance thinking? For me these were helpful - still are - and I find Insight Timer very helpful for this:

https://insighttimer.com/meditation-topics/acceptance

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As a 43 year old former eczema sufferer I feel your pain on the coal tar. 80s/90s eczema treatment was super gross. My family used to call it the goop. Thanks for the vulnerability of your share. Getting to the roots of addiction helps us addicts grow back stronger. :seedling: :heart:

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@Matt Thanks for the links I will definitely check them out. Anything I can do to help with my acceptance of myself would be great. I have started doing some breathing exercises as I’m starting to realise that my anxiety is high all the time and I need to step back into the moment and be mindful to help myself get though it.

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@TrustyBird I think the Goop was an apt name for it! The medicines have come so far since then and I do feel better about my condition now than I used to.

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@Lorelai thank you. That really does put it into perspective. You are right we all looking at things sometimes and blame ourselves. I’m sorry I put my ex partner through what I did by bringing my PMO into our relationship. I only hope that I can use the consiquences of my actions to spur me on to being free from Porn.

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@BrianP I don’t think you made it all about you at all. It’s really useful to hear about other people’s experiences so thank you for sharing.

I think a large part of my porn addiction is down to two things anxiety and more specifically fear of rejection.

I am just about to hit day 4 and I have realised that I am anxious about pretty much everything. It seems to sit there in my gut and I am constantly nervous about things I shouldn’t be nervous about. Social interaction are a big one.

I was talking about “masks” with a friend of mine the other day. We all have them, a work mask, a family mask, a mask for specific groups of friends. I usually put on a brave front but my anxiety is always there. I ran a training session for work the other day and I came out of it ringing wih sweat. It was only a small group, a few of whom I had met before and whilst I had my work mask on and ran through the slides in a confident fashion, I was very anxious on the inside.

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Mine mostly cleared up in my 30s and I think a lot of it was due to diet changes. Less dairy and sugar helped me a lot. I still get flare ups when I’m stressed but those only happen on my eyelids. :nauseated_face: I feel your pain.

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I think you are spot on @BrianP . Ever since the initial rejection all those years ago I have actively tried to avoid it. I have been in relationships where I have loved someone and emotionally connected but there was always a giant gulf between the love and the sex part of the relationship.

Even thinking about it sets my heart racing and my Eczema into overdrive. It’s only this morning that I have realised that I was, in many ways, rejected in my recent relationship. That is going to take some unpacking particularly since my Porn addiction was one of the contributing factors.

It’s also really interesting that you mention trust. I also really struggle to trust that people sometimes, especially if they say they are going to do something for me. My immediate position is hope that they will but in the end I feel I get let down.

A couple of good examples, I’ve written a book in my spare time and I have sent what I have done around to a number of friends who are interesting in the genre. A few have said “yes I will totally read it” and then haven’t bothered. Now the rational part of my brain says "they have their own lives to lead and if they don’t read it, it’s ok. But the fearful anxious part of me feels rejected.

Similarly a friend of mine agreed to go out to dinner with me, which I was really looking forward to. But now it’s coming down to actually planning it she isn’t available. Again, rationally that should be fine but I feel rejected none the less.

Lots to work on, but talking with you and the group makes me feel much better about these things. So thank you for your time. I really am grateful.

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The eyelids are the worst right? I have had it round the back of my ears which is a particular lowlight.

I cut dairy out when I turned 30. It made my eczema better but I am now anaphylactic to dairy products which isn’t great! Still, it’s much easier now to avoid dairy than it was.

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