Day 4 so far. I’m feeling absolutely miserable today. I have hurt my wife so much with this. It has completely ruined her self image. I love her so much and I wish I could explain to her how I didn’t watch porn because she wasn’t attractive. I watched it because I was in a terrible cycle and routine. I’m still feeling super motivated about quitting porn still but this has just made me feel like the absolute scum of the earth.
I'll share mine directly: Finishing something good. Like a productive day, or good workout, decent convo with someone.. and then the urge shows up out of nowhere. It took me very long to udnerstand that my brain was treating it like a reward...
Getting complimented is one too. Sounds a bit dumb but someone says something nice and a few hours later the urge hits..
And these are not about lust really, so they're hard to see coming
Hey everybody, I’m struggling with life in general and will most likely find myself alone a lot here soon. Is there anyone interested in being accountability partners? Feel free to comment or message me.
I wanted to write something encouraging for people. This is basically the sum of all my knowledge and experience about porn addiction (a subtype of sex addiction). I am not a professional. But in terms of what porn addiction is, here's my slightly educated opinion.
Addictions aren't just one thing or another, in my opinion. For example, Dr. Patrick Carnes found in a research project with 1000 people with a sex addiction that 97% had experienced abuse, trauma, neglect, and/or mental health. In my opinion, this means that usually people are self-medicating something with a porn addiction.
Why does it happen? I think one aspect is psychologically, people are self-medicating, but another aspect is that they are trying to medicate unfulfilled emotional needs (like the need for companionship, safe touch (not necessarily sexual), belonging, being loved, being chosen, etc.). (Per Dr. & Mrs Laaser, The Seven Desires of Every Heart).
It can also become convenience. It sort of fits the general constellation of symptoms considered "incel," but when it is easier for a person to use porn than to find a date or have meaningful friendships and other relationships, they may take the lazy way out. I'm not saying this to shame someone so much as to point out that it is easier to turn on porn than to find and maintain a relationship. Just being honest: I spend more time maintaining my marriage by far than I spend having sex with my wife. But of course I'm married because I want to truly satisfy my relationship and emotional needs, and do the same for her. It's worth being married, I'm just saying laziness can creep into things.
As for science, it's also a supernatural stimulus. Not to be crass, but the hand can do things the vagina cannot. Not to be crass, but nearly always, the women in porn are 1 abnormally beautiful (usually cosmetic surgery) and/or 2 abnormally receptive (doing things that one could argue a self-respecting person would not, or being willing to have sex with basically anyone). They are often 3 able to go an abnormally long time and 4 the sheer variety of all the women on even a basic porn website is unrealistic (try having a relationship with a dozen women in real life all at the same time). and 5 in those videos the relationship is entirely skipped (possibly the laziness/convenience factor). In a scientific experiment, a cardboard butterfly was constructed that was abnormally vividly colorful (to match what the males are programmed to seek out). Male butterflies ignored female butterflies in the cage with them and tried repeatedly to mate with the fake cardboard butterfly, to the point where they nearly killed themselves with exhaustion. Porn is the supernormal stimulus (look up the wiki if you want). It isn't real.
This leads to other adjacent thinking problems like, for single people, "if I just find a partner that is 'top 10' beautiful, I won't need porn." Many have discovered that they indeed found that top 1% partner and yet they still ended up in porn. Many men who have come out in the public to talk about the dangers of porn: you can look up their partner (not for perverted reasons) and see what I mean. It was never the sex. Porn is a supernormal stimulus that no partner can compete with.
Lastly, one of the main things I've noticed about porn is it ended up making me "slippery," a term for a person with plenty of acquaintances but no real friendships. As an extrovert, I'd still feel completely alone in crowds and at social events. I had sunk into a pattern of talking to people for what they can give me, not for their good. Changing this pattern in my life helped me immensely. Learning to ask questions about the person. Getting to know THEM. I found that seeking to meet the friendship needs of others (Within reason) led to me having my own emotional needs met and feeling better.
Now in my own life, sure, I had tons to learn. I have generalized anxiety, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, and I had a porn addiction. Now my life is way better. I can't promise that doing the things I tend to post will help everyone. It's only my experience, after all. But I think that it's helpful to think about this problem as much more than just a plain addiction, just something to stop. When you stop it, ok, but what will you put in its place? Nature abhors a vacuum. Learn to care for yourself and love yourself. You are worth it, even if you feel like you aren't.
Quick one, basically what I said in a comment a few days ago (and wanted to share here): blockers are mostly just friction. They help a bit but on their own they won't do anything if your head is still set on doing it. Youre the one who put them there so of course you will know the gaps and the ways around them.
And so Id stop expecting the blocker to save you. People deleting and reinstalling apps, stacking blockers, finding their own workarounds, repeating, doesnt work much IMO...
They (blocker apps) WILL give you a tiny pause though (friction!). Like a few seconds where you see yourself removing them and get the opportunity to do something different before autopilot takes over
The mindset around the urge and the first few minutes is where it's at. Finding the perfect blocker setup doesnt matter much, but still, a few more free seconds of having a choice!
When you’re quitting porn, you have to believe that you can do it.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to.
It’s all a belief game.
By believing that you can’t do this, you’re going to make that true.
You’re going to stay stuck.
You’re going to stay exactly where you are and that’s exactly what your brain wants.
Your brain wants you to stay stuck, because then it gets all the porn it wants.
So it’s super important to understand what you’re thinking and what you’re believing.
That’s the basis of mindset work, looking at your thoughts, challenging the default beliefs and choosing what you want to make them mean.
This is powerful stuff.
It’s like working on the operating system of your computer.
Here’s the thing, your brain is going to fight back.
It’s going to tell you that you can’t do this.
So you’re going to find yourself in this place of half belief and half disbelief. And that’s okay.
That’s actually perfect.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It just means you’re on your way.
You learn the skill of looking at your thoughts and choosing what to believe.
You have an urge for porn you choose not to believe in.
You have doubt that you can get free; you choose not to believe that either.
You focus your belief on the things that are going to move you forward, not the things that will pull you back.
I remember my brain could go a bit like "websites are porn but short clips on reddit aren't. Sexual stories aren't really porn. OF scrolling isn't reeeeally porn. Bikini pics on insta definitely not porn."
So i quit the obvious porn and felt like I was clean (doing this properly at least). But then I quickly realized I wasn't and the addiction was just rerouting through whatever loophole that was open, and there were a lot of them.... our brains are great at doing this
So I developed a special test (lol): is this objectification?
Not really developed anything but I stopped asking "is this technically porn?" or "is this on a porn site?" and switched to: am I reducing a person to a body for my own use right now? Or simpler: is this objectification?
>If yes, ditch it. Doesn't matter what platform, what format, how "soft" it is. Same loop, same wiring, same s***.
And so far no false positives haha. The addiction can't argue its way around it the way it can with "well technically this isn't porn."