Recovery Can Only Occur With Absolute Honesty

And by that I mean first with yourself and second with those around you. As an ex SO when In reading some of the thought processes of pmo addicts entering into the dating world or in new relationships in this forum thinking it’s okay to lie to their partners and twisting themselves into pretzels to try to justify their behavior I think the title of this post bears repeating. People often comment that I’m being harsh or not supportive but I just can’t see how anyone can encourage or support lying or hiding important things from people to protect themselves and say that’s a good idea? Here’s some things I have come up with.
1. Being a PMO addict is like being any other addict and it is something that 99.9% of people would want to know entering into a relationship. Would you want to know if your partner was a crack addict?
2. Yes you need to disclose it even if she does not ask you specifically about it. It does not matter what you think it matters what she does.
3. Yes it is lying when you do not tell someone something you know or suspect they would want to know.
4. You can’t say that you are not sure if they would want to know because I am telling you they do and if you are not sure and don’t believe me err on the side of caution and tell her.
5. It should be disclosed before people become attached emotionally so usually prior to sex.
6. She will find out. Let me repeat again she will find out and if she does not find out from you it will hurt a lot worse.
7. If she is going to not accept you for who you are then she never will. Give yourselves both the benefit of not feeling that pain years later and tell her early on. No you will not wow her with your amazing personality. No woman likes to be duped. It’s like guys online who add 5 inches to their height. Yes she will notice and while she may have been totally fine with your short stature she’s not okay with dating a liar and now that’s what you are. No amount of personality will fix that.
8. You are likely to relapse no matter what stage of pmo recovery you are in. So even if you think that it’s so far in your past life that it will never effect this relationship you still need to tell her. Relationships have a funny way of causing added stress and pushing you back to addiction.
9. No past addiction does not define you but you also can’t rewrite history. If you are not sure if you should tell her something ask yourself how she would feel if she heard this 10 years from now from another source. Because again she will find out. Ask yourself how you would feel if someone did the same to you?
10. Learn to think about how others feel and how your actions effect them. The ability to empathize is a huge tool necessary for good relationships.
11. Be okay with putting others feelings above yours.
12. Yes sex does matter to women. Yes your ED problems in whatever form will substantially effect your partner and your relationship.
13. But if you are honest the right woman will happily help you overcome your ED.
14. No she’s not a bad person if she chooses to leave you. No a good woman will not stand by you while you lie and continue in your addiction.
15. Do not make excuses for your addiction.
16. Do not blame others for your addiction.
17. Offer her resources to learn about your addiction.
18. Do not refuse to discuss your addiction
19. True intimacy will never be possibly without total honesty. If you don’t have honesty all you have is a pretend relationship that will eventually with certainty fall apart.
20. Pretending to be someone you are not is exhausting as is lying. Life is so much easier when you are yourself.
21. Answer all her questions and don’t be evasive.
22. Yes pmo is a big deal and pied even a bigger deal it kills relationships. Do not diminish this in your mind as a justication to not tell her.
23. And finally Know that there is a woman that will love you and accept you for everything that you are including your flaws. Pretending to be someone you are not may get the girl but it will not keep her. Owning your past and not being ashamed of who you are is a very attractive quality.

 

Of course you disagree, you are an addict who clearly has not reached full recovery yet. You have to be honest with your partner that is the foundation of any relationship. How can you believe that you can lie to your partner and have that relationship work? You say most women cannot handle it. So you are agreeing with me that this is something that most women would want to know before dating a potential partner, because it may change their decision to stay in a relationship. So you think it’s better to lie to someone, by keeping something from them and duping her to be in a relationship with someone that’s not you. Is your self esteem that low that you have to pretend to be someone you are not to get the girl? You can proceed as you please, but this is very selfish, putting yourself above the relationship and the other person in the relationship. You are not protecting her at all from seeing your weakness, the only person you are protecting is yourself. I also disagree that women are not attracted to men with emotional weakness, quite the opposite. Most women are attracted to a man that can allow himself to be vunerable with her. Because being vunerable is the only way to fall in love and become one. And news flash, all men are vunerable and all men cry. We know this already, and we expect it becasue men are human beings. You think you are hiding some sort of secret that you are weak and vunerable just like the rest of the human population from her? I am here to tell you you are not, she already knows who you are. If the person you are with does not know a huge secret about you like this, you will always be hiding your true self and your relationship will most certainly fail because it is built on lies. Would you rather be a liar or perceived as weak? Would you rather date a liar or someone that was weak? I cannot think of one woman that would rather date a liar. Not telling her does not make the fact that you are weak, and an addict with ED go away, you still are both of those things. We are all weak, men and women. But who you are is still who you are and lying about it even if you recover on your own from ED (which is highly unlikely) will cause her to feel very betrayed when she finds out that you had an addiction you chose not to share with her.

If you are having ED problems in bed, trust me she is already considering leaving. She thinks its her fault. It makes her feel horrible. PMO addiction at the very least gives her an explanation for the ED that is not her. And if you are in a long term relationship it is impossible to recover from ED without the help of your partner. I know I cannot reach most men, and in a few years you like a large number of men on here will be back on this site saying their wives or partners left them because they lied about the PMO and how horrible they feel and why they cannot figure it out. The delusions of addicts are strong. What I am saying is the truth, and I know you do not like it because you do not want to hear it. She will find out. When she finds out you have been lying to her for so long, the betryal will be too much to handle. And telling her that she can’t handle men who are vunerable is going to met with “that’s total bs.”

 

Right and my post did not say day 1 but early on in the relationship before you become intimate. You have to reveal these important things.

 

I’m female and I dated a pmo addict so I am speaking from personal experience. So is the poster below me. If you jump over to the SO forum you will see you are dead wrong about the way women feel about this. 99% of women want to know and feel betrayed later in the relationship when they do find out. We are all weak to err is go be human. I am telling you as a woman weakness is not a turn off. And even if it is we would rather have that than date a liar.

Failing to reveal something to someone you know they would want to know no IS LYING! Again if you don’t believe me head over to the SO forum. And most women will not ask if you are addicted to porn that’s not a thing people ask. Would you ask if someone was addicted to crack. And what question is specific enough? Do you have an addiction have you had one in the past? Just be honest.

And since it appears you have found the cure to pmo then why don’t you share I mean if it’s so easy to just quit porn and have your ED go away why are there so many people on NoFap? Has your ED gone away?

 

It’s lyin

So you are going to tell your girlfriend that you are not ready to have a baby and that’s why you want to hold off on sex but the real reason is because you are doing a 90 day porn reboot? Come on dude that’s lying! And she’s likely going to press you on not having sex! Then what? It is not intuitive to ask if someone is addicted to porn? You know that and you are banking on the fact that she won’t ask then when she does found out you will say but you did not ask me specifically so it’s not lying! Let me know how that goes.

Your post demonstrates that you have had many relapses so just as I pointed out this is not a linear process. You have never stopped pmo for more than 2 months but yet in 90 days you are going to be totally cured and have no issues again? I know you can’t see this but this thought process is delusional and it’s your addict mind playing tricks on you. It will tell you anything to trick you.

Lying is a very unattractive trait. Many people will date a porn addict but no one wants to date a liar. And you are lying. You can’t recover from an addiction in a relationship without telling your partner you are hiding a huge part of who you are. If your girlfriend was a crack addict and trying to quit and did not tell you joe would you feel?

 

Are you saying fat you think the pill makes a woman fat? Because A that’s not true it causes weight gain in some but not all and B you don’t get a say in if your girlfriend takes the pill. Many women take it for medical reasons, cramps, etc. you are entering a relationship knowing you are going to lie! That is so unfair to her. I understand you are weak and struggling but why bring another innocent person into your misery? Don’t date until you are strong enough to be honest.

 

Here’s what I suggest go over to this post https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.p...which-do-you-want-expect.145398/#post-1186967. And read some of the posts by addicts now in recovery as well as SO’s. I also suggest you read some of the journals or reach out to some of the other men that are in recovery. What you will see is that when you are an addict, your whole mindset is set up to keep you addicted. So your mind says “its not that bad. It’s just porn.” Or “she is never going to find out.” “I am going to beat this as soon as I stop porn my ED will go away.” “It’s not lying if she does not ask.” Your mind wants you to keep getting those dopamine hits, to keep feeding your addiction. Just reading you say that you don’t have problems with relapses but then that you have never been clean for more than 2 months. How does that mean you don’t have problems with relapses? Or that if she does not ask specifically that’s not lying? If you minimize your behavior if you tell yourself these lies, then it’s a lot easier to slip up. Oh its not that big of a deal let me watch some PMO. The point of NoFap is that maybe just maybe you can snap out of it enough for one minute to hear what we are saying. To the non addict mind what you are saying above is preposterous and does not make logical sense. But in your mind, it does I get that. That’s the addicted thinking. You can see how addicts change once they are in recovery. You have the benefit of knowing you have a problem. Many men have no clue that porn addiction is a thing, but you do, so you can be honest and fix it early on.

 

Right followed by “I have PIED but it gets better with long streaks of abstinences [sic] one time ...” and your comments in your second post that PIED is easy to overcome all you have to do is stop watching porn. To me that says I’m not like other addicts I can stop easy. But I’m not sure what this matters? Your biggest and most problematic delusion is that your SO won’t find out. Did you read the comments from addicts on the post I sent you? They all wish they had been honest.

 

Exactly! What I think pmo addicts struggle with is that they don’t think any person could ever love them for who they really are. So although to us lying is clearly a very bad choice to them it’s the only choice. It’s not just the pmo that for them just piles on top of other issues of not being worthy. Not all people that have low self esteem are pmo addicts but almost all people that are pmo addicts have low self esteem, feelings of shame and fear. For many the low self esteem leads to some type of addiction. When you feel bad you look to something to feel better. Others particularly men who feel rejected by women turn to porn and once you are a pmo addict you know that’s an issue and you have more shame and fear judgment. But the thing is there is someone that will love you we all have flaws but we are all worthy of love. Even the most attractive people have been hurt, rejected and had their hearts broken. As an ex SO I see how unfair this is to a partner, but I can also see the addicts mindset that he or she has to lie. They think eventually they will tell her they just have to get their foot in the door. But as time goes on you pass a point where now if you tell her she will view it as concealment so you just keep lying. I’ve had men not tell me they had children, not tell me they were moving away in two weeks, or that they had an STD. Of course you don’t want to be rejected but you are who you are.

I wish there was a formula for self esteem. I do think with age it grows. I am 40 and I looked much better at 20 but my confidence is 10 fold what it was then. I am happy with me and if no one loves me for who I am then I’m okay being alone. Kids are exposed to porn during their most vulnerable time. Anyone who remembers adolescence knows how awkward and insecure you are. But it’s also when people learn to interact with the opposite sex and start getting past that. These days with computers and cell phones people don’t interact and then they find porn and it seems like the answer . Others who grew up in a different time felt shame surrounding sexuality and so rather than learning to express it in a healthy way they hid in shame alone with porn.

And to many it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. You are a pmo addict you lie to get the girl, she finds out and leaves you and instead of seeing that she left you for lying you are convinced that it’s because you are a pmo addict so the next time you lie again.

One thing I have noticed is that the men who are extremely uncomfortable discussing porn use early on or who say they never watch are the men who have issues with porn. Men who openly discuss it usually do not.

 

How long ago was high school and how long have you been in recovery? The biggest thing is will it effect a relationship now? Do you relapse a lot? My advice is all couples should discuss porn use early on. It’s part of getting to know your partner sexually and just be honest and let her guide what she wants to know. If the genres where something you could be arrested for or gay porn I think you need to be open, because these could effect your relationship or her. If you are a pmo addict even in recovery you can’t watch porn even as a couple so if she’s into that you need to know. Just have a discussion about porn. Don’t feel ashamed . That leads to addiction and secrecy. Own your past. But know it’s not your future.

 

Congrats on the 240 day reboot, but your counter is set at 22? So have you relapsed? If so this may be more of a problem then you realize and it may be best to be direct about the problem when you do start dating. If it is as you have indicated 240 days free and a year, then I think you do just have an honest conversation about porn use and say something like using porn is unhealthy for me. In high school I had a problem, and became addicted. Then answer what questions that she has. The thing is if she asks you want type of porn you watched, I think you need to answer. If you are evasive or lie, then that starts the spiral of deceit and can cause more problems then if you just told her. If she does not ask then I don’t think you have any reason to offer the type of porn, again unless it is illegal or something that calls into questio your sexuality. By illegal I mean child porn, because that could come back to bite you later in the relationship and I fully respect all sexual orientations, but if a man was bi sexual I would want to know that. If instead you have relapsed then I think you do need to be right out front, because clearly it is something you are struggling with and will continue to in a relationship. A common misconception is that once PMO addicts get into relationships their problem will be solved because they will have access to sex. However, since PMO addiction has nothing to do with sex, that never happens. The added stress and pressure to please another in bed sends them right back to where they were. At your age and I think in general you cannot use innuendo and expect your potential partner to ask or know what PMO addiction is, you have to be direct, most people have no clue. Not on the first date, but when you realize it is becoming serious and before failing to reveal would be concealment. That usually means before her emotions become involved. Good luck!