quick question

So dramatic, Colin. Maybe overly dramatic? I doubt a one time burning is going to turn his heart into one that is only satisfied by burnt offerings.

@SpouseofPA just burn the images. I'm sure your SO isn't going to turn into some fire crazed ritualistic temple priest who's sole love in life is to come home to his printer and zippo and offer to the NoFap Gods a worthy paper picture sacrifice of deflowered stars.

 

Ha, perhaps you're right Ruff. The idea of burning images seems rather dramatic too but I was a little OTT. Knee-jerk response I guess.

 

I agree that burning these just for the sake of destroying them would be a waste of paper and a good bonding experience. How I would do this is I would find a nice spot to have a bonfire, weather permitting of course. Once you've found a good spot and evening for weather, I would bring a lawn chair that would fit the both of you. The next step would be to build a bonfire together. Get the logs, kindling, and then have the both of you crumple up the porn images and stuff them under the kindling as tinder. After that's completed then both of you start the fire together. Once the fire is up and going then both of you sit in the chair together, holding each other, and basking in the symbolism that the destruction of porn has brought to your relationship a warmth and unitiy that only true love can bring.

The "I dont have time" excuse is, imo, bullshit. He obviously had the time to be an addict and made the time to be one so he's perfectly capable of making time to be in recovery and to do things that pertain to it. As for anxiety around other women, well, he might need a level of professional help you are unable to provide. Has he looked into therapy?

 

This exactly. People make time for what is important to them. Whether it be fitness, tv, cooking, knitting, reading, skydiving, their career or anything else. If it's important to them they'll make time for it.

 

AHHH!!! That's like asking "what is the meaning of life?" prob can't solve either one, but they are both worth working on!!!

so your primary care physician may be able to help some. Perhaps what your guy needs is some anti-anxiety meds to temporarily create a space for him to work on the real issues. PCPs will sometimes do this, although more likely refer to a psych dr.

Some employers also provide Employee Assistance Programs that will include some counseling benefits for free. might be worth looking into.

you're right that it may not help him, but there's TWO OF YOU in this mess. and furthermore you're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT that you have a right and need to express how you are feeling as well. sounds to me like you are doing very well.

absolutely. 10 mins is a fine amount of time. could be done in a stall - plus will make a great story for later . plus it would be a way to START - which is prob the main thing right now.

not unless he can get one with no women around at all. otherwise just jumping from one frying pan into another. the meds might really help him here.

I would love it if this was even marginally true. and maybe for a non-addicted brain it is. but for a brain in which the reward system is hacked, it is profoundly not true. We PAs do things al the time that are not in accordance with our values and what's we feel is important. IMO that sort of thinking is just a logically tight way to blame. helps no one.

 

I'm an addict and it is true for me. You don't get to excuse everything by saying "we have a hacked brain". We have to take responsibility for our actions or lack thereof and this includes the inordinate amount of time we spend indulging in our habit or avoiding what needs to be done for recovery. This idea that we're all victims doing things we don't want to do, as if we're possessed, is crap.

 

Didn't say I was excusing anything, let alone everything. gotta argue the words that were said, dude

again - didn't say otherwise. in fact I STRONGLY agree!!

so as a PA you have never "woken up" after edging for hours and thought "WTF?!?!? why did I just do that?" Did you instead, sit down and made a conscious decision that PMO was the most important use of your time for the next two hours, and that it in fact was more important than your job or wife or whatever? I know I didn't do that.

this is NOT playing a victim card as somehow you accuse. it is owning and taking responsibility for the objective fact that I spent time on things that were not the most important to me. to judge what is important to an addict by where he spends his time is spurious and misleading. it only creates a means of blaming him. Recovery is the process of owning that, not being a victim, and unf'g the programming.

 

Not once and I've done more than just PMO. I don't wake up after a binge session as if I had just come back from being the wolfman during a full moon. I knew what I did and I knew why I did it.

You might not have intended to do that but that is what you did. When we choose to do things that will take us down the rabbit hole of PMO we are consciously making the decision to sacrifice what is truly important to us in order to satisfy what is important to us in the present, which is our own selfish desires.

How is it misleading? Obviously our own selfishness is more important than the other important things in our life. If it wasn't then we would have made the sacrifices needed in order to keep them safe. You see you sacrifice for the things you love. This is why every decision comes with a sacrifice, because it will show you what you love.

That's the ultimate tragedy of addiction...it's misplaced love.

You do know the definition of blame is: "assign responsibility for a fault or wrong." If you are taking responsibility for your actions then you are accepting blame, so I don't really understand what your hangup is with blame.

Anyway, I blame myself for allowing this thread to get derailed. Sorry, @SpouseofPA

 

Interesting thoughts on this thread… I know for me personally, it isn't like I was making a conscious decision to neglect my significant other. I would tell myself it isn't a big deal, and I would rationalize why it was ok. I never sat there and thought, "Now, should I be a good partner and tend to my responsibilities as an adult, or should I spend the evening with PMO?" The guilt would come afterwards. And this is the very definition of denial. I refused to even acknowledge that my behavior was destructive to my relationship and to myself. I would even use her apparent disinterest in intimacy as a justification for it. I know it can sound at times like we're avoiding direct blame, and I'm sure there are a lot of PA's that do… But for those of us on here who have owned up to our destructive actions, we're not making excuses for our behavior- we are simply trying to understand it.

 

Hello, @SpouseofPA. I wonder if this post might be of some value.

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Well, I would say he honestly has to catch and correct himself when he realizes he is oogling, staring, or fantisizing. Yes it is hard. Yes it is daunting. Yes it is overwhelming. Just like being in a room full of psub fantasy girls, and trying to figure out which one you are supposed to focus on (the correct answer is none). I certainly like Kenzi and Rockstar's approach with the "top up, bottom down" approach. I will probably butcher it, but essentially if you are staring at boobs, ask what color eyes (or some other feature on top), likewise if you are looking at their butt, then what kind of shoes to they have on. I can say I don't practice it, but it makes sense and will use it. The whole point of this is retrain ones own mind. Yes our brains want to instinctively scan for novel females. As soon as you do that: stop, and think of something else - count the gum on the sidewalk, admire the trash in the street, contemplate the meaning of life.

 

Yeah it probably gets worse before it gets better. The addiction wants to continue and wants to fight and feed itself. I don’t remember half the things I did as a PA, or even realize its affect. Gradually they will lessen themselves and not be as frequent. I don’t know when they will stop altogether. Perhaps another thing he can do while looking at you and if he gets any flashbacks, is to make eye contact with you and touch you. These two things can both be grounding and imprinting. Hopefully another option to help short circuit the behavior.

 

A PCP will likely only give meds and maybe recommend a therapist. They are not really trained for this kind of thing. IMO meds may help if he has anxiety (I have very bad anxiety, anti-anxiety meds don't help me) but he needs to look into himself if he wants to try to get better. Pushing anxiety down only makes it worse and harder to deal with.