I'm clearly not going to do this on my own

I've never done anything like this before, and I'm super nervous about this still. I'm not sure if I'll stick around or not, but I found this site when I typed "I really want to watch porn" in the icognito window's search bar. It directed me to a reddit link which led me here. I'll be honest I was hoping porn would come up without me having to directly search for it. Pretty ridiculous. But I read the responses to the reddit post and felt less alone than I have in years, so I thought... well I clearly can't do this by myself... and maybe this could make a change in my life.

So here goes.

Since I was 17, I've been a very seriously religious person. Was bapitzed Mormon in high school, served a 2-year mission, married my wife (a returned missionary herself) in an LDS temple, take my two young kids to church every Sunday, play piano in the primary (what we call children's Sunday School), the whole deal. I'm a thousand miles from perfect, but I try hard to live a Christ-centered wife, to honor my wife and my kids the way any man (as in Christian or otherwise) ought to, and to generally live in a way that I hope would make my Father in Heaven proud.

But, in at least one respect (many, really, but that's not why I'm here), I've been failing to do that for a few years now. After quitting a pretty serious porn habit not long before I was baptized at 17, I struggled for a few months but eventually completely gave up masturbation too. I slipped up one time (not with porn, just with masturbating) while on my mission, felt EXTREMELY guilty about it, and never did again. I stayed strong while also remaining a virgin until I got married, and remained solid for the first few years of our marriage. Then one day I was feeling it, my wife wasn't or we didn't have time, or something, but I was still pretty horny, and while in the shower I manipulated a shower head to get me off, felt crazy guilty, and didn't do it again for a while. Then months and months, maybe a year later, I don't remember, I did it again. Then I started doing it while on the toilet. I realized that by getting off earlier in the day I would be less sensitive and therefore go longer if I had sex with my wife later that day, and it became a combined temptation both to pleasure myself and to improve sex with my wife, or so I told myself. She would be mortified if she found out about this, so it has remained my secret, also known as my big lie to my wife.

All the while, I was making sure I was only picturing my wife when I masturbated, and somehow I rationalized that this made it OK. Then I started letting up my guard on the internet and old addictions started creeping back in. It had been SO hard the first time, but I did a decent job keeping most of the serious stuff at bay for a couple years, really. I REALLY didn't want to look at porn. But I started looking at this or that photo, as long as the girls weren't actually naked, or if it were just text, or if they were cartoons or this or that. The rationalizations were powerful and absurd. I also never masturbated while looking at this stuff. I knew this was a load of crap, but I managed to keep it here or sometimes less than this for quite some time. Then recently I started spending a lot of time on imgur, and I would find this or that NSFW link and follow it, knowing full well what it would lead to. This always felt like, well, at least I wasn't SEEKING OUT porn, but I really did know better. I just needed the excuse. Then I started finding links to full imgur pages full of porn, then more, then more, and then boom i was hooked.

It was SO FAST the way it hooked me and I was IN there. And finally I broke my last big rule and started getting off while looking at this stuff. And as incredibly awful as I feel about it, I think maybe that's when I finally realized I was too far gone. All the shame I'd felt for everything I'd done previously was one thing (and it was plenty of shame, let me tell you), but this was a whole new demon. I know in reality it's basically all the same, but also, in reality... well that's the problem, isn't it?

I deleted the imgur app on my phone so in order to find porn I'd have to take several steps to really seek it out, and so far that's done the trick, but I have no confidence it'll hold. Tonight, while feeling depressed (I suffer from pretty serious clinical depression) I battled with myself, wanting badly to look at porn but knowing that I really, REALLY shouldn't. So I typed what I typed into the search bar, hoping in all reality that what I wanted would come to me while giving me a copout that, well hey, I wasn't LOOKING for it. Total crap, I know, but this is how it works for me.

And I found this. So here I am. I want to quit masturbating completely and forever. I dont' want to fall back to what I was doing for the last couple years, and I don't want to fall forward again to the porn addiction. I want it gone. I want to take control of myself. Of just this ONE THING, I want to be the man I know I should be but have given up any hope I can be. I have no idea if this can help, but I've felt so alone with this for so long and so ashamed of myself for so long that I figured... well at least I can feel like I've got some support in this. I hope you guys don't mind another dumb newbie showing up, and I hope so, SO badly that this helps.

 

Really appreciate everyone's support. I'm not sure what I'll do here, but for me, just telling other humans about this has had an incredible impact on me. I hate lying to anybody in general, but it's really something to have somebody out there who knows what I'm going through and supports me without judgment. It's just different not to be alone anymore.