Where do I end, and my P addiction begins?!

This is something that has been on my mind massively. Since well before starting the PM reboot. Before even considering it.

Warning; this is a rant. TL;DR version is basically porn is unnatural and bad, and I think made a mess of my head and I'm still figuring out just how much.

I've been exposed to porn for effectively the whole of my life, since early adolescence. The first generation on the internet, more tech-savvy than the rest of the family put together, I had access to and a secret stash of images from the internet by the time I was thirteen or something like it. My parents had no bleeping idea, obviously. We never had a sex talk, and when it comes to actual sex, that never was an issue. I hindsight, I wish porn, and the risk of its impact and specifically porn addiction WAS discussed and addressed. I always thought of people who are anti-porn and anti-masturbation as backward, overly conservative prudes. (I guess I could be described as a bleeding heart liberal... on most issues anyway.) Everyone was doing it after all. Hush and shush, but still. How could something that everyone does be an issue, right? Everybody's crime is nobody's crime and such. Well, what a load of bollocks, turns out. It's kinda like booze. It's also everywhere and pretty much everyone drinks some of it sometimes, but that doesn't mean it's not a problematic substance which some people abuse, are addicted to and have their lives ruined by. I wish I saw porn in the same light way earlier.

Porn is, however more dangerous than booze. Alcohol has been around for millennia. Dealing with it socially and biochemically is embedded in us, in our bodies, our society. Our brains have had hundreds of generations under the influence of a tipple, and for the most part, the average Joe can handle light to moderate use nowadays.

Porn is a ludicrous hyper-stimulus. Unnatural, and with next to no historical precedent, especially in its online form. I mean there's more video stoppage out there than the length of a human life. You could (if for some really weird reason you wanted to) watch porn for all the rest of your life, doing literally nothing else if you somehow managed to say alive that way, and you'd never run out. You'd never have to watch the same video twice. How messed up is that? For a monkey brain that's built for functioning in a community of up to about a 120 other monkeys, of whom only a dozen or so are realistic potential partners due to things like age, gender and being related to the rest of the tribe.

Internet and porn, for young people... without warning and awareness? It's dumb. It's like making a nursery sandpit out of sugar and cocaine instead of sand and just letting kids play there, cause, well, when it was sand, they didn't eat it and when maybe they did eat a little, it did no harm, hey?

The thing, for me, personally is... I'm kinky. Right. I've done all sorts of stuff that I don't want to go into the details of it here. BDSM related, hurting, controlling, rough stuff. That's enough of an idea, for now, hopefully without putting too disturbing "images" into fellow fapstronauts minds.

Now it is my belief that a dominant streak and a tendency towards intense sensations and the love of an intense reaction/response from a partner has always been in me. I remember a tingle in the pit of my stomach already in kindergarten, playing doctor, or later, school-aged, playing cowboys and Indians, or even later, playing truth or dare as a teenager. I like to be on the edge of my comfort zone, and I like to bring others in there. I pursued this in an ethical, consensual manner in my adult life and it has worked for me. And hopefully will work for me again. I found some of my experiences transformational, deep and meaningful. I used to enjoy a broad variety of stuff, and I used to be creative and playful with it.

Used to be. See. All that while, I was also consuming BDSM related porn, imagery, stories, erotica, cybersex (the list goes on. And on. And on.) My focus in kink narrowed down. I wanted porn-like play. Intense. Loud. Visually spectacular. Me-focused. I wanted to treat lovers like "bitches" in porn. It was becoming less and less about exploration, curiosity, freedom and dancing along the magical, ever elusive edge of what two loving, consenting, sensible human beings can do together. And more about my cock. Getting off. Like I got used to getting off to porn. The script kept funnelling down nearly towards a single fantasy that I got sort of obsessed with (definitely from and through porn) and that was face-fucking, deep-throating and stuff around it. Trying not to be too graphic, but I need not be vague for this to make sense.

Over time, the specific woman ceased to be important. The rest of the scene, the rest of my sex life dwindled in relevance. My motivation for normal sense dropped to zero. I couldn't get it up in a "vanilla" (non-kinky) sex, most of the time, for years now. And increasingly, to get it up even during kinky, naughty sex, the situation had to follow that hard-wired script, hammered into my brain by thousands of porn videos, images and stories, as well as text-based roleplays. You see... you don't have to give a damn about a porn stars sore throat the day after. An RP partner who writes about having a cock stuffed down her throat doesn't GET a sore throat. But real people do. And me and the real people in my life, wife and other lovers, gradually drifted apart. They didn't like what I was doing anymore. Shock shock, surprise. Because I was being a selfish jerk who was using them as objects. As sex dolls helping me enact a 3D version of my favourite porn script. Love, intimacy, humanity was lost from my sex life. Ultimately, I think, THAT is the key and cornerstone of what I'm trying to fix. To leave behind. I want sex and love to be the same once again. To be capable of lovemaking. To be with a sexual partner and enjoy it, and enjoy them enjoying it. Not to be a wanker (pardon the pun) who uses others for what isn't really sex, but just a weird, two-person masturbation where one of the partners is reduced to an object. A masturbatory tool. A human fleshlight.

I'm left with the issue of going back now. Back in my memory. In my recollection of my desires. What is real? What is me? Do I like to tie people up, for example, because I actually like it and it's a cool thing to do (and I honestly believe, yes, it can be...) or do I just like to tie them up to feel powerful, in control, more able to objective and dehumanise them that way, and because I saw tens of thousands of images of women in rope? Do I like blowjobs because they feel nice, or because again... it's something I've seen in far too many videos, and they are a way of being selfish, and not fully connected to one's partner... riding on a wave of a power dynamic and a false sense of inflated self-importance, rather than a real, loving connection?

This recollection wouldn't be complete without the most shameful secret. This objectification spans the world far and wide in my (masturbatory) fantasies. Nothing was sacred. Nothing was left pure and untainted. I feel guilt and disgust. I have engaged, through porn and text-based roleplay, in scenarios which were about rape, slavery, racism, violence, nonconsensual pain and control over partners, fetishising things like school uniforms (and thus, of course... schoolgirls). I always placated myself. You don't act on these in real life. Ever. You wouldn't. You don't really wanna and you know it. So it's okay. And that placating voice was right up until the very last bit. Sure. I don't actually wanna rape anyone, be mean to a person of colour, or have sex with someone too young to give proper, legal and informed mature consent. And I do know it. Without any real trace of doubt in my mind. It still wasn't okay. Not even as a fantasy. Because that fantasy got fed. Replayed. Carved into my neurological pathways as stuff that is sexy. Taking over the stuff that is really sexy. Love and deep connection and intimacy. It never led me astray legally, but it made me a predictable, selfish, unkind lover. It led to lovers drifting apart, leaving... and wife becoming less and less interested in sex, at least the kind of sex I had to offer. Porn had morally corrupted me, and bio-psychologically damaged me, and it did it so thoroughly, and so sneakily, that I couldn't see it for a very long time, and then remained in denial/defensive thinking about it for even longer.

Now I need to reclaim who I am. I need to reconnect love and emotion to my libido. I think I'll always be kinky. Temperamental, very active in lovemaking. But I hopefully won't always be a... wanker. So now I need to reinvent myself. To slowly learn how to get it up even when my brain isn't seeing porn or experiencing a porn like a scenario. It will be hard because I not only watched porn but brought it into my real functioning. I didn't only consume porn. In the end, I fear, porn consumed me.

 

Thank you. Any encouragement at this point is welcome and appreciated. It's great not to feel alone!