Grateful for the Community

Hello all,

I first saw this community after researching the negative effects of P a little over a month ago, and I thought it was great, but after reading through some of the forums today, I'm incredibly impressed with how positive and motivational this community is. It's truly refreshing to find this sort of positive thought online, so thank you to all of you for contributing to that culture.

Although I'm new to this community, I'm no stranger to the battle against P. I started watching P back when I was around 11 or 12, and it became a regular habit fairly quickly. My parents caught me twice with graphic content on the family computer that I wasn't able to close out of before they had to use it (still makes me cringe), but as I'm sure many of you might relate to, this sort of shame simply wasn't enough to get me to even think about stopping. I thought every kid did it; all my friends certainly did. Couldn't be that bad then, right?

After losing my virginity at 17 to a girl I fell in love with before college, I had quite a bit of difficulty meeting women, and the only relationships I did have during college were pretty much strictly physical, and my feelings for these girls faded quickly. I became more emotionally numb as I grew more isolated, having a hard time making new friends as an introvert and a deeply sensitive person, and I found myself gaming a lot and watching P at least once a day, sometimes binging and/or edging. I even started turning down sex just to play video games. I joined the Army after going through ROTC during college, and my loneliness and addiction to both P and gaming continued to grow as I wasted away all of my free time in front of a computer. While I was stationed in Korea for a year, I started to drink even more than I had in college, and I ended up cheating on my girlfriend, who I was in a distance relationship with. I was so emotionally numb that I felt absolutely no guilt over it, even when I went on vacation with her 2 months later. My relationship with family was strained as I communicated less and less, and the only thing that was going well for me was my career. I was kicking ass as a Platoon Leader, and I loved the men I was so fortunate to lead for that year. The confident leader they knew was not how I felt on the inside though, and the resulting cognitive dissonance was feeding my chronic depression and daily drinking habit.

After returning from Korea, I met the woman who I married less than a year later, and she changed my life in a number of ways, one of which was telling me that in order to continue seeing her I had to give up P. I had a couple relapses, including M to a dirty story my ex had written for me (hard to believe I even did that), but overall I was fairly successful at quitting, and I didn't watch P and barely M for the next 4 years, during which time I became a Christian and cleaned up my act a lot. Unfortunately, I was not emotionally or mentally healthy when I entered that relationship, and neither was she, so 4 years later after enduring emotional abuse and experiencing a startling domestic violence incident, I left my home and decided to proceed with a divorce. After leaving, I was feeling at rock bottom and completely sexually repressed, since our relationship had been bad for a long time and sex had become rare and shameful, so I ended up relapsing and fell into the habit just like old times. I did a bunch of online research and justified it with a few articles I found saying that it was ok or that it was even healthy, but it just never felt right to me, and eventually I healed enough internally to recognize that and be honest with myself, which was a little over a month ago, about 8 months into my separation/divorce, so I finally took the plunge and quit all PMO. I'm going to continue to abstain from PM indefinitely, but I haven't determined how long I need for the O. I think 90 days is probably a good starting point for me.

I've always had memory problems (for as long as I can remember at least ), and with a girl I dated after separating, I experienced ED for the first time in my life, which I wrote off the first time as a fluke but then realized it wasn't when it happened again. I've also had fairly consistent PE, which always shakes my confidence and makes me apprehensive becoming intimate with someone new. Now I'm really optimistic about the chances of treating these problems with rebooting, and I'm already feeling a boost in confidence, energy, productivity, and mood levels, which has been amazing. I was drinking, smoking weed, watching Netflix and playing video games, and generally just numbing myself for the first several months of my separation, but I've given up all of that (except for Netflix, which I've instead just watched less of and filtered my content more), and I'm feeling so much better about myself for having done all of that. I've started to notice women with a whole new appreciation for the beauty and grace they offer this world, and I've enjoyed some of the newfound attention from some of these women, which has been an uplifting experience, especially while still in the throes of divorce.

I'm here today as a member partially because I saw an album cover (I won't tell you which one so you're not tempted to look it up), but it was on Amazon music of all places and it was a picture of a topless woman. Why that is even allowed on a site like Amazon stuns me, but I was streaming some music at work and all of a sudden there's a dirty album cover staring me in the face. I had a hell of a time trying to get it out of my head, and I felt that pull in the wrong direction, so I'm here to read some success stories to stay strong and hopefully some day inspire others with my own. Thanks for reading, I appreciate your support!

PS: I'm not an expert, but one thing that has truly worked well for me so far has been to work out every day. I go to a gym where there aren't a bunch of half-dressed girls, and it has greatly helped to improve my mental health, confidence, and discipline.

 

I was actually an Army Cavalry officer, the Marines are a different branch from the Army.