I’ve been struggling with porn for years and years and up until it actually started causing problems in my relationship I never considered It a problem nor did realize what it’s been doing to me mentally.ive been clean for 2 months and it isn’t easy still almost a daily struggle but I’ve been so close to losing the women I love and have a newborn with. And im finally really trying to stay clean.ive gone 2 or 3 months clean before and always relapse typically when I’m in a bad mood depressed ect and then i start hiding it and lieing that im not watching it porn was always a quick fix with no immediate let downs which makes it to easy to justify watching now I’m here and wanna know what has helped people stay clean for the long haul.
Welcome Chris and glad ur here. There’s many people on here who struggle with PMO and have amazing suggestions to give
Hey there friend
Biggest thing that keeps me from PMO is self affirmation.
I try to look myself in the mirror each day and say things that I will try to focus on to help me not look at porn.
“I love you”
“You are so good that you don’t need this to validate you”
“You have bigger plans and goals for the future that porn won’t help you reach”
“It’s okay that you’re working through this - don’t give up”
And don’t beat yourself up about it. Odds are you’ve been beating yourself up for awhile because you want to quit but you can’t. Just love yourself so much that you quit for you and you’ll never want it again.
Best of luck - hang in there - it gets better - you’ve got this
Nate
Welcome Chris
I am also in recovery from porn. Like you, I realized it was having significant negative effects on me. Also I was sick of watching myself watch it. Porn is connected to human trafficking and exploitation and a whole bunch of shady and manipulative things and I didn’t want that to be on my media diet.
What has helped me is a combination of things:
- joining a recovery group at a sex addiction recovery clinic in my city (you can search those up near you or look into one of these: Resources for our recovery - #64 by NealRecoveryCA)
- staying active here on Talking Sober
- working on my marriage (porn addiction goes together with intimacy dysfunction, so you have to work on healthy regeneration in your intimate relationship)
- learning about healthy vulnerability and intimacy and fun, with myself and with the people close to me (this is an ongoing process, but the core of it is, I am learning to inject healthy fun and creativity into my life, to defuse the unhealthy “escape” temptation that comes up in low-mood situations) (counselling has helped me with this)
Take care and don’t give up. Keep us posted!
The problems are not actually caused by the porn, but the porn use is enabling them and also deepening them.
The problems have to do with intimacy. For whatever reason - often because you never learned it but there can be other causes - you don’t understand, you don’t truly understand (understand & live), what it means to be intimate.
Read this book:
Link it up with relationship counselling with a counsellor who’s familiar with sex addiction (and related problems like porn, which has a lot of overlap with sex addiction). Not all counsellors are familiar with sex addiction, so ask about that when you’re searching.
I would also recommend you look up some interviews with Patrick Carnes on YouTube.
Welcome to the community
It’s great your here reaching out with others whom understand what your going through.