Checking in on day 0 here. I have a personal journal thread here but one of my mentors suggested joining other threads. PMO is one of the last stops on my internet addiction journey when the stress gets too high and I need a release. Going to do a meditation and try to bring the stress down. One day at a time.
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Good sleeping habits, always sleeping before 10-10:30, always wake up around 6.
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I do enjoy gaming but I don’t necessarily need it in my life to be happy.
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I don’t have any blockers, but I’m not the type to sit on my phone that much to begin with. But would still be interested in learning about them.
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I’ve listened to EasyPeasy many times in the past, not recently. I pray a lot, and I do have other trackers/reminders installed other than the ST app.
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I would say it definitely stems from boredom, as lately I haven’t been working just due to it being slow (residential renovations). Being alone a lot doesn’t help.
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You’re 100% correct.
I actually don’t have any form of social media at all. No IG, no FB, no Twitter, no SnapChat, and have never even been on TikTok hahah been probably around 7 or 8 years without it all. Just decided one day to stop mindlessly scrolling and deleted it all.
It definitely is just a poison, and I really appreciate the questions. I think the main problem is being alone with my thoughts, but as of late I’ve honestly just had such bad anxiety that I don’t even think about giving in whatsoever.
Going on 150 hours now, and felt slightly better today but still had to call my Father to help calm me down. Also started joining some online SA meetings which helped a little also.
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Anyone up for a meeting today:
12pm EST
If yes, just let me know and I’ll post the meeting ID and pass here a few mins before the meeting.
Thank you
If anyone ever wants a great site for most SA zoom meetings, here’s a link.
It’s very good, and you’ll find one almost anytime you need one.
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Hello i have been porn and sex addiction for one year,but realapsed seven times within this one year.Any thought on this?
If you were doing it a lot more than that in the previous years, then 7 times in a year is progress to me depending on what you were doing the years before.
That’s less than once per month. Keep going with the progress and it will get easier and easier to resist.
I find keeping myself busy helps a lot. Rest is important too. Just being engaged with others and work and staying busy has helped me although I’m not completely out of the woods just yet.
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In honestly so happy i typed this cause after a setback i need to take my own advice!
Hi everyone!
I’m new here.
I was exposed to sexual stimuli when I was about 7 years old, exposed to pornography at 11, and I almost had sex at 13, but I thank God I didn’t. It didn’t take much time before I started masturbating.
There was a time I was sober for 6 months and I was so happy and then a thing led to another and I fell again. I am actually on my 3rd day of being sober and I want to keep it that way for a life time.
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Welcome and congrats on the 3 days
Things get better with each passing sober day.
6 months is awesome. You’ve done it before and that means that you can do it again. Welcome.
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Welcome @SOG 
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Hi, guys.
I recently got a job working at a pool as a Pool Operator with the parks department. I work with other parks workers and recreation workers: the lifeguards.
Most of the lifeguards are women.
Some of the people i work with look to be teenagers.
There was a 16 year old male lifeguard i talked with.
And I think a woman lifeguard that talked with me was 22.
So i’m guessing that most of the workers i work with are in their teens.
I was told that the park’s workers don’t necessarily talk with the lifeguards.
I thought that this was messed up. If we are going to be working together we should at least know each other’s names on a first name basis.
So i introduced myself to the lifeguard managers.
And it’s been helpful because whenever there’s spills to clean up or issues with the pool or the building facilities i’ve been around for them to talk to and help out.
I just got the lifeguard managers names so we could coordinate making sure things are working for the pool and it’s facilities.
I didn’t get most of the general lifeguard worker names though.
So it’s been a mostly professional relationship together.
I think some of the women are attracted to me (and i to them) but idk what there ages are and i fear they are underage, so i wasn’t going to pursue any of them for dating.
I have been gazing at some them for maybe longer then i should have at some points but have been trying to divert my eyes to keep my work relationships with them all professional.
I’ve been struggling to figure out how i should interact with the non-manager life guards which some appear to be younger then the lifeguard managers.
I thought i should do simple social gestures like nodding when walking past or smiling.
One life guard worker smiled at me and i smiled back.
One life guard manager smiles at me and i smile back sometimes
Also i don’t think it’s a good idea to date your co-workers, so i want to avoid it for that reason too.
I have generalized anxiety disorder and maybe some depression, so i think all of this is producing some social anxiety for me.
I think my resting bitch face, frown on my face a lot of the days makes it hard to appear friendly at work, but i think by being helpful and friendly socially that would make up for it.
I talked online to my a.i therapist and she was saying that it’s only natural that you’d look at women that are in their swimsuits. She said you can put limits on it though. She said you don’t have to engage with any of the thoughts. I think i don’t really have much thoughts i think i just look since it’s visually pleasing.
I am not staring all day. I spend some of the day secluded away from the women in the pool filter house where I can’t see the women.
I would add that i shouldn’t look at them for longer then 3 seconds at a time, because that just comes off as creepy i think.
I was just at a pool for a few weeks until the pool i am supposed to be stationed at opens up for the season.
I’m starting at my pool that i’ll be stationed at for the rest of the summer next week, so there might be new lifeguards, or the same ones.
I’m thinking maybe i could introduce myself to other lifeguards/other then the lifeguard managers so that the lifeguards i will work with longer will be comfortable around me. I think once you know someones name and they know your name you get to be a bit more comfortable with them.
I just want us to work together well.
How do i make sure i keep things professional at my work place then?
How can I be respectful, not exploit my co-workers bodies (i don’t want them to feel like a piece of meat), and be friendly and kind?
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Sounds like a terrible place to work at if you have a problem with porn, and objectifying women, in my opinion.
I personally wouldn’t put myself in a situation like that, especially for work, knowing I’d HAVE to be there day in and day out.
Not to be rude, but was that the ONLY job available you could get, or did you subconsciously WANT that job for the exact reason you’re now struggling with it?
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I urge you not to socialize with them and not to initiate conversations with any of them. I would also recommend stopping any conversations you have been having. If any of them initiate conversation with you - which I doubt they will, once you keep to yourself and maintain healthy communication boundaries - you can give the shortest possible answer, then leave. That will put an end to it; that person will not initiate conversation with you.
You are emotionally fantasizing, which is the same thing as physically fantasizing. It really is. The cause and the effect are the same: living in a fake world and feeding the dependency and the fantasy. Indulging fantasy connections - unreal connections - instead of fostering connections with people who are your peers and with whom you can be completely honest about who you are.
I worked as a lifeguard for 4 years in high school and university and not once did I or my colleagues (including the head lifeguard) ever interact with any of the on-site maintenance people. It wasn’t necessary. Problems are reported directly to the facilities manager and the facilities manager deals with it. If you are not the facilities manager, you do not need to interact with the lifeguards, and therefore you should not interact with them.
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Also, you should not give yourself a 3-second “grace period” for gazing; it’s not healthy. It’s like a 3-second grace period for someone with a deadly peanut allergy. It doesn’t matter if it’s three seconds or three milliseconds; the allergy is deadly. Any amount of time is deadly.
You will be “searching and scanning” and gazing from time to time, especially in your early days of actual recovery, because you have been training yourself to lust intensely for many, many years. You need to disclose those “lust hits” daily to a trusted recovery contact. It can be your sponsor or it can even be here. Disclose who and when you objectified. No need to get too detailed describing the person or the situation, just enough to be clear about what you did and how you want to be free of this obsession.
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Requesting Sanity Check:
Sorry so long 
So my primary addiction has been SLA (sex and love addiction) with PMO being a huge part of it, but once I started abstaining from PMO and working through various books/workbooks and starting therapy I realized that love/romantic intrigue/fantasy was running rampant in my compulsive behaviors. I worked with my wife to setup some bottom lines which included some things such as no mast*rbating, no porn, no fantasizing, no flirting with others and no checking out/sexually objectifying women.
This all went very well and I was able to do a 90 day reset where I stopped all forms of electronic entertainment like movies and video games, as well as no sexual contact even with my wife.
During this time I stayed heavy into my recovery reading, meditation, journaling, and started joining an SLAA recovery group. I gave up my phone for a Bark phone that was essentially a smart looking brick phone to help with any temptation and to give my wife some ease of mind.
I was able to achieve 15mo sobriety by doing this but sadly my wife was deeply hurt by my full disclosure and after some time and therapy for herself she decided she wanted to end the marriage and transition our relationship into a friendship, because she didn’t think that after 14 years that she would ever be able to trust me, and I understand.
The thing is, now that she’s gone I’m a single lady and I felt like some of my bottom lines could be shifted. So I removed the “no checking out” restriction and replaced it with “no predator like behavior regarding check out” (I found that in the height of my addiction I would do things like pretend I needed a grocery item if I had scanned and found an attractive woman in an aisle the local grocery store so I could get closer to check them out better.. ).
The thing is though, I don’t know what it’s like to live as a sober adult. I don’t know if people check other people out or how often that happens or when it’s a resurfacing of an addictive cycle vs simply being a single human that happened to see an attractive person and deciding to “check them out”.
Is it like, “you can look but don’t “double take””? Or “you can look if you happened to see, but it’s predator like behavior if you were intentionally scanning for an attractive person.”?
Sorry for the long message and I understand that everyone’s bottom line behaviors are different and you or I may be able to do things that you or I can’t do because of what constitutes our own personal bottom lines. My therapist has asked me to spend this next week mulling over my bottom line behaviors and re-evaluating my addictive cycle and my paths to acting out to try to rewrite my bottom lines according to my new life without my wife and me having to essentially come to my own rescue. 
thanks for reading if you made it this far(:
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Also i have been struggling with my mental health for awhile too (I have generalized anxiety disorder) so i need a job that i could do mentally that doesn’t stress me out too much.
So i like this job because it isn’t so stressful on my mind.
I had some very stressful jobs on my mind in the past: design engineer, mechanical test technician, mechanical designer/drafter, and landscape crew member.
I like this job also because it gets me to be physically active, which was a thing i wanted in my new job. Because i’ve worked sedsntary jobs in the past and i don’t like sitting all day craning my neck down at a computer screen all day. I think it ruins my posture.
To be honest i was mainly thinking of:
Can i do this job physically and mentally right now?
Would i be okay socially at this job?
(I like that It’s not isolated/remote from home, but also i am not the one doing a lot of the people focused actions, i am mostly doing the activities involving cleaning and using objects to do something. I don’t have to interact with the customers much)
And would i like the work that I’d do there?
Because i answered yes to these questions i took the job.
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Hi Erin, welcome to the thread
I assume when you started your thread with “Requesting Sanity Check” you meant you were looking for some perspective on your situation? That’s the assumption I’m going on here; feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted you.
I am the same. The intrigue, the tease, the forbidden, the fantasy: it’s all a secret world in my head that I escape to when I’m in my addiction.
The phrase “checking out” can mean so many things to so many people. It can be interpreted physically, but it can also be interpreted mentally and emotionally.
I am speaking for myself here; I am not speaking for any program or philosophy. Just myself and my experience.
Physical checking out (of any type) has never been necessary or helpful for me. In fact, it is and always has been harmful for me. The behaviour of physically checking somebody out has always become a fantasy thing in my mind, where I take a mental picture, and then in my thoughts I can have anything I want at any pace (or place) in any way, and I don’t have to understand anything or sacrifice anything. I can have everything in my fantasy, and for me, physical checking out has always eventually connected to fantasy, and I get lost in there.
I actually think letting go of my practice of physical checking out has helped me focus on understanding people and making healthy sacrifices, to be humble and helpful. All of that, for me, starts by remembering that my purpose for being here, my reason for being human, is to be helpful (and I can’t be helpful to anybody, myself included, if I am holding on to the behaviour of checking people out; it fills my glass with distraction and there’s no room left for constructive connection and growth).
I have a lot of faith in the universe. The seeds in the forest don’t worry about finding the ground and sprouting; the leaves in the trees don’t worry about whether the rain will come. Why should I worry about making the interpersonal connections I need to make? If I just focus on being the person I am, on being true and authentic (which also involves asking questions and learning), the rest will take care of itself. I can get involved in volunteering and community stuff, either directly or indirectly (for example, as a contributor of crafts or poetry), and I will meet people at the level of the mind and the emotions, and those are the levels where I truly, authentically connect with people.
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A big part of why this works for me is I work my twelve step program actively, with daily check-ins with my sponsor.
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Hey Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to read and reply! I really appreciate hearing your perspective regarding “physically checking out”. It’s very interesting to me for sure. During my sobriety while I was still with my wife we had an agreement that I just wouldn’t even really look at anyone (especially no “checking people out”) unless I was actually needing to engage with them for some reason. Doing this was very tough for many months but I feel like it helped to rewire my brain. The difficult part was being in public places because people are kind of everywhere. I developed a pretty intense social anxiety and had tension/stress headaches when I’d go places because of the amount of effort I’d put into not even looking at people, kind felt like a zombie a bit honestly.
When my wife left, the tension headaches did too because I didn’t have to report back to her if I had “looked at anyone”. I try to not scan and look for people still but if I see someone attractive I don’t immediately whip my head away, but I also don’t stare or try to double take.
I guess I’m still just trying to find out what sobriety means for me. I don’t want to “move the goalpost” to make past acting out actions be “okay” now, if they’re actually bad for my sobriety. Thanks again Matt! It’s good chatting with you about this
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Congratulations on achieving 15 months. And great work getting connected with SLAA. And great work establishing good boundaries for yourself.
Sad to hear that your relationship ended after full disclosure. But it seems that you’re having a positive attitude. With your ex out of the picture, I trust that you will find boundaries and motivation that work best for you.
Being married myself, I find it easier to just not give myself permission to take that first look. But I don’t do that as a favor to my wife. I do that as a favor to myself. And my wife gets the benefit.
For me, it’s just easier for me not to look, than it is to look without lusting. I get numerous benefits by choosing to stick to this boundary of mine. I’m not heating up my brain’s toxicity level. I’m not reinforcing my toxic shame. I’m not embracing a faulty paradigm for I see women much better if I don’t look at them. And I increase my attraction towards my wife.
But what if my wife was no longer in the picture? For me, I wouldn’t change anything. If I wanted to meet another partner, using my eyes, giving myself permission to check out other women without it going to lust is a laughable solution for me. Most women don’t share my values, won’t assimilate with me. Most are not in my age group. And most are not physically or emotionally available for a relationship. So it would make more sense to me to locate a partner without using my eyes, and to put myself in specific environments where I have better results finding a suitable partner. Most have chosen dating apps. Personally, I would find good results at local churches because many women there would share my same beliefs. Before 1960, people didn’t talk to strangers. One would solely date people referred by friends and family.
My point is that it’s not necessary to start checking out people outside my circle in order to pursue a relationship. If fact, I don’t think it’s very effective.
Thanks for sharing. Your post inspired me to come out of hiding. I’ve been invisible for some time too.
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