Need Advice! Wife and I are starting a 60 day period of intentional abstinence...

So I am 60 days into my No PM journey. My wife and I have still had sex 1-3 times a week pretty consistently. Admittedly its been the best sex we have ever had.

This all came about when I was asking my therapist a few days ago how I can get over my fetish (fitness chicks and their lower torso). In the past year or two I have spent countless hours on Social media and instagram getting off and fantasizing to these girls who spend all of their waking time trying to create the perfect butt and then spend all their remaining time editing their photos and posting them to instagram. In this process, I now realize that I diminished my wife from being a woman and my partner to an object that exists to make me happy, then after stripping her of all her value except for her physical attractiveness, I started to compare her to woman who’s only purpose in life is to make their ass look as desirable and sexually alluring as possible through exercise and heavy photoshop editing. So here I am, trying to grow and heal in my marriage, and still preferring other women physically over my wife. It devastates her, and I feel like a monster as a result.

My therapist suggested a 60-90+ day period of abstinence where I can totally starve the neuropathways that have created these preferences, and also rediscover my wife with sex temporarily off the table.

Do you have any advice for me, or even motivating success stories in how your reboot has helped you overcome the same or similiar issues?

 

Oh yeah. Took all social media off of my phone months ago.

 

Good questions. I have taken all social media off of my phone. I am vigilant around throughts and fantasies as well as what I see on a day to day level. I apply a 1-3 second rule to women in real life whom I find sexually attractive. I am not using any substitutes for porn.

The only challenge that comes up is going to the gym 3-4x a week. Sometimes there are attractive girls there that hit the fetish trigger, but even then, I am not staring at them, I am being vigilant to avoid looking at them as much as possible. I dont let myself entertain any fantasies, the main trigger is feelings of shame and contempt towards myself. The mental map goes like this.

See fitness girl at gym(not from looking for them) -> Reward center in brain lights up a little -> Triggers massive shame and self hatred response towards myself despite being extremely disciplined and not checking her out or fantasizing. The shame issue is something I am working on with my therapist, because I cannot hide from the world and my “fetish” as I described it is controlled.

 

Appreciate your thoughts. My wife is working through some self image stuff that she had before we were together. So we are working on our shit together and supporting each other while temporarily suspending sex. Sex for me has become about visual stimulation and orgasm. For her its about meeting my needs for visual stimulation and orgasm while never fully enjoying it and feeling insecure. So we are focusing on rediscovering our love for each other so that sex then becomes about our a full expression of our physical, spiritual, emotional, mental and sexual connection and attraction, not just giving each other orgasms.