Successes and Relapse

This is my first post in almost five years! Five years. It feels like a lifetime ago when I first came across this site. I wanted to share my story with everyone, because I'm trying to focus on the victories I've had in this battle, which I think is important to do when you run into a relapse.

I discovered pornography when I was thirteen or fourteen just after my father had moved us into our second tiny apartment. I quickly learned to delete temporary files from the computer he kept in the living room. Unfortunately for me, he worked long hours and would arrive home a few hours after I came home from school. Like so many teenagers in the early 2000s (and now) I was the product of a broken family, but I had a few more things stacked against me. My mother had passed away when I was very young, and dad quickly remarried who he thought was a wonderful woman who had also lost her spouse (she also was a multi-millionaire because of a lawsuit she had won). She turned out to be crazy, and I mean...c.r.a.z.y.

Her major jealousy issues spilled over and I became the focal point for most of her rage. I became literal slave labor in the household while my father put himself through college and started working. If there wasn't work to do, she invented it for me. If I protested it ended badly. While other kids in my Catholic school could wear uniform shorts, I had to wear pants to cover the scabs from the daily beltings I received.

I'm not mentioning all of this for attention or sympathy. It did help to to accept some of the things I did later when I was quitting porn to acknowledge that my addiction's origins laid buried deep in a traumatic childhood. Also acknowledging that I WAS responsible for it continuing provided the real springboard for quitting though. By the time I was sixteen I was frequenting sex chat rooms, and the number of fetishes my young brain was being warped by was astounding. I had zero confidence in my ability to "pick up" a girlfriend. I did eventually, but the damage was already done. In public I tried to portray myself as a hotshot, and in private I was wrecking myself daily with porn.

When I attended college, several hundred miles away from home, things escalated further. I began seeking real experiences outside of the computer, and I did a lot of things I am not proud of. Some of them I'm lucky to have walked away "clean" from. I'm not talking about sexual assault or public perversions, nothing quite so bad as that; it was all consensual. I'll admit that it was still damn weird; for the most part I was putting myself in positions to be used, and I'll leave it at that. Girlfriends came and went, and I cheated on just about all of them in some way shape or form (pornography and chatting is cheating, fyi).

After I graduated I went to work immediately in a pretty stable job. My addiction followed, growing and warping as I continued to feed it. Chatrooms were my favorite by far, and some of the things I "roleplayed" with people are truly sickening. I met my last girlfriend, who wasn't the best person in the world to begin with. When she discovered my habit, things fell apart completely. It was ugly, and it made things worse. After she left, I would spend up to eight hours daily feeding my habit. Then, after I slipped into deep depression, I started contemplating suicide.

That's when I decided it was time to quit. It took me a year of persistence, but I finally hit a streak where I went into autopilot. Before I knew it, I was passing the 90 day mark! Then the 180 day mark! Then a whole year. For any self-doubters or people who don't think this stuff works, HERE IS WHAT I ACCOMPLISHED AFTER QUITTING:

-I'm now engaged.
-I can now play THREE different instruments (mandolin, guitar, and the fiddle. I started less than five years ago).
-I was promoted at work.
-I began a Master's in Classical History, and am about to start my thesis.
-I've started learning Latin.
-I've traveled all over the U.S.; so far my favorite trip was to Cape Canaveral to watch a Falcon 9 rocket launch (from 3.5 miles away).
-I'm planning my first overseas trip to Italy for three weeks this summer.
-My net-worth has TRIPLED; I now invest in both my retirement as well as dividend paying stocks. My car is paid off, and I'm paying extra on my mortgage. I also make less than 60k a year.

I did all of that after I quit!!!! Quitting is what made it all possible. It was hard, but I did it, and I'm damn proud of what I've accomplished.

But, its been about a year since I've relapsed. I'm right back to my horrendous habits. I've been sucked into online role-playing again, and nearly cheated on my fiance a few months ago. I say nearly, it was just a thought of "maybe I could." That's as far as it went, but its a thought that really scared the hell out of me. I'm not asking for advice, because I know exactly what I need to do! It is a wake-up call that this addiction can come back once you've beaten it down. I think this time stress with school got the best of me, and I turned to old habits for comfort instead of facing it like a man! I'll be posting about some of the many things that have helped me along this journey for others to follow, because coming here and writing is step ONE in getting better.

SO HERE I GO AGAIN....DAY 1! Time to muster my forces and start the march to war against this enemy again. When we go into this fight, and make no mistake its a fight, we have to treat it like we are a real soldier, going into a real battle. We are, our lives depend on it. Pornography is ripping our civilization apart! DEFEND IT! Sacrifice and persistence.

 

Thanks for a kind reply! I've been through a lot, but I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Latin is tough! Its a LOT of memorization. I recommend before your class checking out Udemy.com. There is a basic Latin course there that breaks things down very concisely, and the instructor provides some good exercises with each lesson. Latin takes discipline! You will also lose a lot if you don't stay on top of it, at least weekly. Make flashcards, and copy/recopy vocabulary and word endings.