A whole life with porn

Hi all.

As a cathartic exercise, and to take the opportunity to vent to others who can probably relate, I want to talk about the realisation that porn has been an almost constant part of my life since I was a kid.

Growing up with an older brother who shared a bedroom with me, it wasn't long before I found his porn stash. Times were different then; it was the 1980's, so you got your porn from a newsagent or a petrol station. My brother had a kind of scrapbook, with all of his favourite pictures cut out and stuck into a notepad. I guess it was the 80's version of bookmarking your favourite porn sites! There were all sorts of different things in there, and he had a pack of playing cards he bought from Greece that had hardcore sex in them. At this point I was about 8 or 9, and I got into a lot of trouble for taking them into school with me (as I remember, when the dinner-lady came over I tried to stuff them down a drain). It was around that time I started masturbating to fantasies. My view of sex was already starting to be warped by porn.

As I was bullied in school, I used to truant and go and set up camp in one of the many woodlands in between home and school. My young obsession with sexual fantasy, coupled with raging pubescent hormones, left me masturbating frequently through the days. I would watch women walking their dogs, and imagine having (consentual) sex with them. I then acquired porn magazines from a shop that I knew the girl in, and started using porn as a replacement for imagination. The older woman who lived next door was always very physically flirtatious with me, which I loved, even though I was still only about 14. It was just another sexualising experience in my life.

From about 16 I started having girlfriends, which lessened the need for porn use, though it was still there in the background on days I wouldn't have any sexual contact with them. Then, with the internet starting to come through in a big way, I could talk to women and have dirty conversations with them, and as time went on, we could exchange pictures. I never considered how unhealthy this behaviour was; in my mind I was essentially indulging in interactive porn, even though it was quite obviously cheating.

9 years ago I found my wife, a beautiful and intelligent woman, who was a very sexual person. By this point, I was suffering some erectile dysfunction (I was 27). I was smitten with her, and felt the lust she brought to the relationship would help me move past this need for outside sexual stimulation. I was wrong. I continued to use porn and sometimes use messaging sites to exchange graphic pictures with other women, all the while telling myself I wasn't hurting anyone, because I wasn't doing anything 'physical'. Then my wife found messages on my tablet to a woman I'd had a one-night stand with when I was younger, being explicit and sending picture messages to each other. My wife was convinced I was having a physical sexual relationship with her, and why wouldn't she? Wanting more and more explicit pictures to masturbate to, I would tell this woman that I would visit her and have sex with her. It broke my wife's heart. Somehow she managed to see the good in me, and chose to stay with me if it never happened again and I stopped using porn. I have stayed true to part of this, as I have accepted that what I was doing was still cheating, and so I have not been in contact with other women. But porn use and masturbation have continued, and though I have consistently tried to give them up to have a more intimate and respectful relationship with my wife, my addiction is strong enough that I keep failing and letting her down.

So here I am. This will be my final attempt at NoFap, because I cannot let my wife or myself down any more. I am looking into psychosexual counselling as well, as this time I will not fail.

Porn isn't evil, it doesn't make us choose to obsess over it. If we're honest, the majority of the well-produced stuff out there looks fake enough that we know its fantasy. But, for me, it has tainted almost half of my life. I'm ready to be with my wife properly, even if it means abstaining from anything sexual for a decade. Because she is so much more important than porn.

 

Apart from repeatedly reminding myself that my wife is more important than an explicit image or video, I think it's going to be trial and (hopefully little or no) error. Given how difficult
I have found confessing when I've looked at porn and masturbated, I think having some kind of software that logs every Internet site for my wife to see will be a deterrent. There's a group called sex addicts anonymous (SAA) which has a group near here, which I'll look into attending. I'm considering psychosexual counselling, but I read somewhere that they expect you to keep having some kind of sexual activity, which given my PIED, I'm a little hesitant at. I already exercise, which I read somewhere is beneficial. I'm going to start looking back into meditation again, as lots of people on NoFap recommend it. Apart from that buddy, I'm just going to put everything I have into staying strong, and remembering what matters most, ano what doesn't matter at all.

 

That's a good point. I've made a promise to myself to cut back on how much time I spend on devices, just to limit the temptation to even look. I think meditation will help in some of that down time. It's almost 30 years to undo. I'm definitely anxious about the journey.