I’m day 4 of no porn no masturbation no dating apps 
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keep going, you have got this.
It is hard as fuck, but it isn’t with it to give in to the urges. Keep yourself busy with healthy activities, teeming yourself why you are doing this any time that addict brain tries to take over.
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Keep going. I know its hard. Im in this battle with you. I pray during every urge. Im praying for you as well.
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Anyone else feel like porn is tricky because sex is a necessary aspect of life? Like, I always felt that food addiction seemed particularly rough because people must eat. I feel like porn is in a similar vein - not same but similar, and it makes things feel tougher seeing it that way.
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I am food addicted and yes, it’s hard, because I need to eat. Developing and maintaining a healthy use of food is tricky.
I imagine that it might be similar with PMO.
For me, working with the three circles is helpful.
Originally, the the three circles idea comes from SA. Three circles - Wikipedia
If you are interested, I shared my thoughts on the binge eating thread: Binge eating recovery daily check in thread (Part 3) - #2470 by DanielaJ
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Thank you!!!
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I hear you. When I was in active addiction I used to think I was entitled to watch porn because I didn’t have a partner to be intimate with. I believed it was my only sexual outlet.
We are sexual beings. You can’t chop off your sexuality, and you’re not supposed to either. Sexuality is a beautiful thing that is to be cherished and celebrated. It helps to create a very intimate connection with an other person. We are perhaps at our most vulnerable state during sex.
The dilemma here is whether watching porn is a healthy form of sexuality and it divides opinions. I find it a counterfeit of a real intimate connection. Watching an image on a screen is not a two-way-street interaction. It is a self-gratification where the performer becomes an object of my lust. I can keep browsing and taking advantage of as many as I please. Once the gratification wears off, I need a new fix - something different, something more. I might need more and more hardcore to get a new kick out of it. Moreover, most of porn industry is built on abuse and sex trafficking which are highly unethical, in my opinion. I personally don’t want to be a part of such a system. I’m not villainising the performers, don’t get me wrong.
So in the end, we need to understand what porn is and what it is doing to us and others. I still struggle with lust but I’ve made the decision to exclude watching porn from my sexuality. I’m reserving it to me and my partner, exclusively. So far, that has been immensely helpful for my recovery.
I hope this was thought provoking. All the best to you on your recovery journey.
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This is an interesting and incredibly relevant question that’s more metaphysical than physical.
Along with disordered eating, addiction to porn, masturbation, or orgasm becomes disordered when it becomes compulsory, and takes up more than 8 hours of our lives. For example, it’s so common for people with eating disorders to have “food noise” and/or an inner monologue that’s critical and constant. It then becomes less about refueling the body and more about quieting the food noise and inner critic. So too with sex addiction…
Porn isn’t natural. Nothing about it is natural. We can argue that there are pornographic images in frescoes from thousands of years ago—still doesn’t make it natural. We can look at other species that share paternity…again, it’s not porn. Porn is not natural.
From the offset, it is disordered.
Sex on the other hand is natural. There are so many different metaphysical benefits to consensual, moral, and legal sex. Yet, the moment you cannot control yourself is when it becomes disordered.
I can drink a sip of alcohol and walk away from it. I won’t think about it and won’t drink for years afterwards without a second thought. But, I’m not an alcoholic.
I am however addicted to PMO. I cannot be satisfied with just one image, movie, fap, etc. It then becomes all consuming. It’s less about sex shared with another and more about self-satisfying without any regard to self or other. PMO is a drug. It evolves into chasing a high. Weirder porn because the “normal” stuff doesn’t cut it anymore, sexual dysfunction, and planning around when you can PMO are all inevitable and classic signs of an addiction.
So, yes, sex is healthy, normal, and important in some relationships… but that’s only when it’s regularly ordered and healthy. Porn kills love. Period. There’s no “normal” or “healthy” amount of porn.
Hopefully that helps.
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Thats incredibly useful thank you. I’m trying to untangle what my feelings are. It seems to fall into 3 categories:
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Desperation to remove the sensory overload / overwhelm
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Lust
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Actually feeling sexually attracted to my partner.
Right now there is an awful lot of 1) going on. Not a lot of the other two.
The three circles is something I hadn’t heard of @DanielaJ but it makes an awful lot of sense. Thank you for sharing.
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How insightful! It’s great that you know yourself that well.
If it’s overwhelm, then it’s probably less dopamine and more oxytocin you’re after. Anything intimate, whether it’s physical or emotional, will help boost oxytocin. So, hug your partner… or hug yourself and count to 20. Have a deep, insightful conversation with someone. Meditate while doing Progressive Muscle Relaxation.
Porn kills love.
Something to explore is did porn eliminate your physical desire for your partner, or do you continue to seek porn because you’re not attracted but also don’t want to cheat?
I’ve always been addicted to gay porn. It was my outlet to be me for however long the PMO session lasted. And, since coming back out, I’ve been over 3 months clean. It took getting sober from it to see just how dysfunctional and unhealthy my marriage is/was.
Since all behavior is a form of communication; what are you trying to tell yourself?
Super powerful. And a very helpful perspective that I’m going to not dig too far into just yet - sex is healthy, porn is not. For me, sexuality is healthy… porn is not. For me it seems masturbation is acceptable when not driven by porn, at least that’s how it feels for now. I use masturbation as a coping skill often, a way to avoid boredom, or simply a way to quiet the noise in my head that it’s got to get done for me to relax. When I’m authentically aroused by human sexuality though, I feel like masturbation can be healthy. Again… I could be wrong long term, but for now it sees that porn is the big distinguishing facet of healthy vs non for myself.
Thank you for the reply - I feel like you really helped untangle this one in my mind.
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Y’all I’m sorry for posting several times on this thread back to back, but the feedback I’ve got has been much more helpful than therapy so far - I feel like this group genuinely gets it.
The big issue I’m stuck with right now revolves around the loose definition of “addict”.
I’ve been in therapy for ~5yrs with the same therapist - an extremely bright and helpful person who challenges me and has the appropriate level of transparency to which I respond. I sincerely think very highly of this therapist, despite sometimes agreeing to disagree. Addiction is where her and I collide, and I have gut feelings of unease. For context too - she’s a sex therapist who works heavily within the legal system reforming sex addicts and also working with sexual abuse victims. Her whole world revolves heavily around sex and addiction, so I take her opinions around those topics pretty heavily given her academic status and career.
Anywho, I consider myself an addict to benzos. I spent a couple years taking kava kava at such high levels (5-6x the max daily dose), that I blitzed parts of my brain pretty hard. My memories fell off, I lost friends, and I fried my short term memory for awhile. It took 3mos of rough physical detox to drop the stuff - group therapy, tears, night sweats, praying, guitar playing, art, yoga, etc - just ANYthing I could do to avoid going back to there I did. And I’ve found that YEARS later (8.5) I still dream about it. I still have a major anxiety going to the dentist they’ll give me a shot that’ll numb my face in just the right way, and send me struggling with my want for kava daily again for weeks. Long winded point here - I’ve had a benzo addiction, 100% in my mind.
Porn to me is so much the same. It’s my longest running relationship. It escalates to being uncomfortable. It’s ruined my sex life before. Fortunately never PIED, but still - emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically have felt ailed by excessive porn and masturbation. I’ve turned to porn over and over again since I was 11 to feel comfort. 2yrs ago I decided to take quitting seriously and realized somehow my identity was tied up in porn - I considered embracing my unconventional sexuality and ability to masturbate repeatedly some sort of strength and cornerstone to character. I thought it sort of masculine. Moreover, it gave me great security about my own sex life - despite having a very healthy sexual and emotional relationship with my wife. I realized too, that I use masturbation and porn as a way to zone out of life - or to run from anxiety. I used it heavily to procrastinate. I also found myself scrolling porn with zero arousal or intention to masturbate - it was like a social media feed to me when using the restroom. I came to realize I was spending a ton of time on porn and letting it sort of run things - run things enough too, that I was letting it take precedent over my job or family time as well. Quitting has been a bitch, but by the end of last year I had a LOT of change under my belt - all those identity pieces were broken and I was out of the spell. I’d felt like I saw the other side of things and no longer wanted porn in my life. I knew there were better ways to spend time and energy.
So… around December of last year, my therapist - prompted by my asking - told me she didn’t think I had an addiction. Kava or porn. She simply believes I had a bad habit. Bad coping skill. That, I’d let my relationships go to far but my ability to self stop was indicative that I’m indeed not an addict, and have been mis identifying as one. Tbh, I loved hearing it. I felt no more shame or embarrassment. It felt like such freedom. We agreed too, that I could have a relationship with porn - so long as there were rules in place.
Well, I kept almost all of those rules when I let porn back in December of 2025… and here I am back on the forums because I’ve totally lost my way again.
And now guys I just don’t know - because the idea of never ever letting porn back in isn’t like how I felt about kava. I can go my whole life without kava ever again, but I don’t know if I can truly go FOREVER without porn. I don’t want an ill relationship with it of course, and I don’t know if I’m capable of balancing that… I don’t know if I’m an addict to porn or not. My therapist certainly doesn’t think so.
Either you misheard your therapist or you need to get a new therapist.
You cannot have a healthy, meaningful relationship with an abstraction. Porn is immaterial.
For those of us who talk about relearning our relationship to food, it’s not like we are updating our MySpace top 8 friends. We learn that we’ve put too much of our emotional well-being into it. We’re having a relationship with an inanimate object.
So too, you cannot have a healthy, meaningful relationship with pixels. I don’t give a shit if this person has a PhD. I’ve personally known idiots with PhDs. And masturbation can be a healthy part of sexuality. But when it’s used as an escape…that’s not healthy. By definition it’s escapism.
Here is a good gauge to figure out if something is an addiction… can you go an hour without thinking about it once? This might get some feathers ruffled since a lot of people don’t want to face their own phone/screen addiction.
We need food, water, shelter, clothing, and relationships with others.
We don’t need drugs, porn, alcohol, or that much celery in soup.
Hopefully this helps a little.
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You don’t have to go forever. All we have is today. So maybe try taking it one day at a time?
I try not to get hung up on definitions. What someone identifies as is completely up to them. If someone tells me they’re an alcoholic, I generally believe that they have a problem with the substance. I don’t need to qualify the level of their rock bottom. Or see their blackout punch card to decide for myself. Doesn’t really matter.
I quit drinking. It’s not good for my body. I quit weed. It’s not good for my brain. I’ve been working on my relationship with food too because I want to feel good about my body and take care of it. Those items were probably never “addictions” for me but they certainly were unhealthy and they’re certainly addictions for others.
My main coping mechanism has been lust/love obsession/porn since I can remember. Using it didn’t align with my values and produced guilt and shame. I numbed that with drugs. Also, watching other people having sex is the opposite of masculine in my opinion. No matter how much it’s normalized, it’s a pitfall for many.
All of these things inhibit me from being the person I want to be. You can call me a porn addict if you want. You can say porn addiction doesn’t exist if you want. Really doesn’t matter and I don’t care to debate the point. Intellectualizing it won’t solve it. Taking action will.
You can call yourself whatever makes you feel comfortable. What’s more important is determining the action you need to take to live the life you want. If you want to use porn. Please go ahead! Everyone is entitled to explore their sexuality however they choose. It’s not my place to identify anyone’s problems with a behavior or substance. Your life, your call. The other side of that coin: don’t expect anyone else to adhere to your definitions or perspectives on anything. Live and let live.
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You can take a look at the fruit. Your life became unmanageable again. No matter the definition, the fruit will speak for itself.
I had a therapist who was wonderful and specialised in sex addiction. However, she was of the opinion that I could reconcile with masturbation. We talked about it a few times but I kept disagreeing. For me, porn and masturbation will be forever joined. If one happens, the other follows. I simply can not have either of them in my life. She challenged my view of porn, too, because “it can help explore one’s sexuality”. Once I laid down hard facts about porn industry (not sure if she was aware of those), she respected my stance and we could keep working. She respected my decision regarding masturbation, too.
A therapist can give insight but they still only offer an educated opinion. You know yourself better than they. If you want to keep working with your current therapist, you can bring this up and be honest about how you took their words and what happened. An “addict” or not, watching porn sent you to a spiral.
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Hey there,
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update and seeing so many new posts, I felt like joining the discussion.
I’ve been sober for more than 8 months now and I’m very close to my personal best. But what comes afterwards? Getting a new personal best day by day! At least that is my wish and so long as I keep staying away from the nasty stuff, I can stay sober.
The three circles method is new to me and seems to be a helpful tool to keep reminding oneself why we are on this journey. Thanks for sharing it!
For me, porn was a tool to escape reality (boredom, procrastination) and calm myself (lust, stress). Only later I noticed how I changed as a person. Feeling pressure to perform when being intimate with my partner or thinking I’m not man enough because of the size of my penis were the first symptoms I’ve noticed. But it got way worse than that, so for anybody reading this, I want to warn you because of possible triggers below (physical, but not sexual, and mental abuse).
In the past weeks, my wife and I have been talking about the past more often. During that time, I mistreated my wife, I shouted at her and even became physical some times. Our relationship grew more and more toxic and we could get in a fight over the most mundane or small topic. Due to my heavy porn consumption, I felt numb and wasn’t able to feel any kind of love for her. And I blamed her for all the negativity in our lives, saying she only wanted to argue all the time. Feelings of guilt were ignored, instead I felt apathetic most of the time and when she tried to talk to me, I felt angry. Only later I have learned how much damage I’ve done and how porn affected not only me but my wife. A loving and caring man that turned into a heartless, aggressive and lustful monster, that didn’t shy away from hurting its family.
What I’m trying to say is: if I had known what porn could do to a person (not only me, but also my partner) before engaging in any kind of relationship, I would have gotten help a lot sooner. But I haven’t seen it as a problem before it was too late. My wife has often exclaimed that she can’t live with someone who has treated her this way. I still don’t know how she has managed to stay with me all this time, but I know I don’t ever want to leave her or our kids (the second one is on the way).
Being sober for this long, I notice how my mind isn’t as infested anymore. But images and/or videos might still pop up in my mind every now and then, just like intrusive thoughts, that I can’t control. At least they don’t trigger me in a away that I want to watch something. These thoughts come and go and as long as I don’t engage in them, I’m fine I think.
When my wife and I were talking about what or who I was watching, these images were shown to me more frequently of course, since I was heavily triggered when talking about porn and my consumption of it. Still, I didn’t feel any sort of lust or curiosity to consume some.
What I don’t understand is: why am I able to remember images, videos and even names of performers from long ago? Like I still remember some material I’ve seen more than 20 years ago and these images aren’t blurry at all. Sometimes I’d like to cut off that part of my brain, because I can’t seem to forget any of it. What’s your opinion on this?
Thanks for reading this, stay strong and become a better form of yourself, day after day 
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Thanks for sharing!!
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This is such an inspiring read, thank you for sharing.
I can relate to so many of the things you have said, and as someone approaching the three month make I am glad to see some light ahead of me.
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