Overcoming Guilt

Hi, everyone.

I'm writing tonight because I need advice about something that has been extremely difficult for me during the course of my recovery: overcoming guilt.

Here's the short amount of required backstory...
In the last two years, I've broken up with two girlfriends. In 2016, I broke up with my girlfriend of 5 years. In 2017, I broke up with another girlfriend after about 6 months.

In the time since I have ended these relationships, I have learned a lot more about my addiction to porn/masturbation/fantasy and realized how harmful that it really has been. In both of these relationships (which are, by the way, the only serious relationships I've ever had), my girlfriend was almost always the one to initiate sex, largely due to my porn-induced apathy for sex with real people. On the occasions when I actually did have sex with them, I was (usually) very emotionally distant, which I now am able to see took a serious toll on both of them. Both of these girlfriends made excuses for me (e.g., "You just have less sex drive"), yes, but I could tell that my sexual distance was hurting their feelings a lot. (Towards the end of my last relationship, my girlfriend actually started crying while we were having sex because she looked at me and felt like I was not there at all.)

Flash forward to the present...
Today is my 73rd straight day of no PMO, which is by far the longest streak that I have ever had since starting to PMO almost daily at age 15. Lately, I have felt healthier both physically and mentally than I have felt in a long time, and that makes me optimistic.

Despite that positive news, I just can't seem to shake the guilt that I feel about hurting both of these girls. When I start having fun or thinking about dating again, I often immediately start thinking about them and some of the moments in our relationships that I now recognize as the direct consequence of my painful and selfish addiction.

...

What strategies can you recommend for overcoming guilt?

What has worked (or not worked) for people?

Thanks for your help! There's no way that I would have made it to 73 days without the assistance and wisdom of so many people on this wonderful web site.

 

Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement. Since the day that I wrote this post, I've actually had two straight very productive and very positive days where I've felt a lot of connection to the people around me. Things are looking up.