Do most guys eventually return to old behaviours?

I don't know the answer. I can only speak for myself, what made recovery stick this time around. For me it was literally hitting rock bottom. I wasn't truly ready to change until my life fell apart completely (death of a parent and grandparents, divorce, job loss, lawsuit all in the same year). That was my turning point. It was far from a smooth ride upwards from the bottom as it has taken more than 4 years to get where I'm now but foundation was acceptance that I'm in a world of trouble and that I need to change no matter how rough it gets or my life is over.

 

I hope you don't mind me commenting a bit rather than answering just for myself, which I will, but I think it's important to ask: Do we just want to be like most guys? A statistic? I don't think any of us has to.

One distinction I think we should make is even if someone does relapse, which is not the same as a lapse without re-engaging the chaser effect, they may be doing better. Suppose someone had a month and they lapse. Next time two months, six months, a year and so on. We would say that guy is doing better and better right? If by a binge you mean they go for a couple of months in between the streaks where they're PMOing several times daily, sure that's pretty bad. But if they get right back on it after a day or something, that obviously makes a difference. So come to think of it, rather than just tracking the clean streak maybe people who count days will want to count the relapse streak just as closely - but if they could do that without shutting down in that state of oblivion they probably wouldn't relapse that long either.

As for me, I do think thus far it is been like what I described above. I think (and in my experience) the idea of "the opposite of addiction is connection" is on the right track towards a "secret", but it needs to be unpacked and I hope people take just a minute to read this important point. I'm listening to an interview with MIT professor Sherry Turkle talking about the difference between connection and conversation, author of the book Reclaiming Conversation. She's talking about conversation as being in real time and you watch the other person, and even in recovery meetings where you can do that there's an issue where the shares are short monologues and there's a rule where there's no crosstalk, which is in place for the good reason of giving unsolicited advice, "you" should do this that and the other when people may not know the person hardly at all. But the fact that it's a monologue is a bit problematic, not to mention a lot of times there's just so much shame peoples eyes are downcast so that back and forth conversation even when you have access to the nonverbal level ends up not happening.

If only connection was enough, we wouldn't have nearly as much issues as we do with stuff online like social media. Basically I think there is no real conversation, which means there's not enough put into a real social network - shit it's not even enough for ONE real friendship. But I have seen people go through the motion like this literally for years, and it just isn't enough. People who end up getting seriously involved in recovery probably hang out outside of meetings like going to a cafe after, but the reality of THIS addiction seems to be people won't even make it to a face to face meeting in the first place!

But there is also another sense where connection is important, and that's connecting with yourself, your deepest aspiration and struggles - including this one. Turkle points out we need the capacity for solitude in order to connect with others in a deep way, which means connecting with ourselves in a deep way in the first place. She ends this interview with the same point media theorist Douglas Rushkoff makes in the first chapter of Program or Be Programmed: You need time off the network.

What makes any recovery group real is people who have gotten real with themselves, which is what hitting bottom is about. It's not something we can manufacture, but at the same time we don't have to wait for disaster to strike. If you have the capacity to go deep you also have the capacity to listen deeply, not just share deep things whether that be secrets, struggles or insights. A disaster FORCES you to go deep, (possibly too deep for some to handle) we have the capacity to do that voluntarily.

 

Awesome stuff

 

Will power, you need a strong resolve...there's no secret or hack, it's plain will power, that you won't PMO no matter what. That's how it is for me, been almost 90 days on hard mode without a single relapse.

 

They do. But there's no secret to avoid this. You just have to understand that is your life we are talking about not just a challenge, and it will give you the mindshift.
Most guys return to old habits because they came, they force themselves to 90, suffering qithout purpose, without improving their life in any other ways and once they get 90 they say "oh sweet I did it. it means I'm cool with it" so why don't masturbate since I've been good for 90 days?
and then the circle happen.
The "secret" is to understand that this is a lifetime battle, that is better to fap one time per month for the rest of your life than stay clean for 300 days but then binge for 20. Because in the time you have you must also improve your life.
Taking myself as an example. I was miserable, out of shape, late for the degree, loser in general. I quitted and I had more time because of this, so I decided not to waste time watching something to distract me to get to 90. No, I started gym, I study more. Now I am not willing to get back to who I was because I love too much who I am.

 

Just like @Awedouble said, there is a huge difference between a relapse and a lapse. When I first struggled with my PMO addiction, I was not able to fully quit, but the way I pulled myself out of the hole (escalation, desensitization, loss of emotions to reality), I started to go on consistent streaks of 8-15 days at a time, sometimes reaching 20 a few times, and the way my streaks would end would sometimes be to very soft core things and the lapse would be very short, I would never search out for the extreme and also the sexual tension was building up that I didn’t even crave the extreme anymore, the soft stuff was more than enough to have me finish in 5 minutes or less, when before I would need 30-50 minutes per session WITH extreme porn fetishes/genres.

After about a year of doing this, and once again I was going on decent streaks with absolutely no binge, so basically I was PMOing on average 2 times a month, sometimes 3 and even sometimes just 1 a month. During this year, I noticed overtime reality was coming back, my brain was recovering, and my attractions to girls was coming back, my emotions was coming back, I was becoming myself again.

Now let’s just say after that year was over, I was perfectly fine. I would PMO once or twice a week, and I was healthy mentally and physically. I would get horny and even sometimes hard in public from sexy women, and my emotions/romantic side for women also returned after disappearing for over 3 years.

The only problem I would state was the chance of falling back into the addiction, and that’s exactly what happened, about 2 years after beating the addiction, I’m now once again back in it. I relapsed because I was slowly beginning to PMO more, going from twice a week, to once every other day, to every day, to multiple times a day, then once again escalation, desensitization, distance from reality, it all cane back after. I am once again a full blown addict, and this time I’m gonna be done for good.

Long story short, the chances of you never watching porn or masturbating ever again in your life is very small, but it’s not a bad thing. Just like other addictive things, if you don’t abuse it, it won’t be an issue. For example, some people drink alcohol, and some are alcoholics, one side does it for fun, while the other is full on addicted, the same thing can be implied with porn and masturbation.

 

went a year and a half with No PMO. I met someone that I really likes and she rejected me.After that I relapsed for about 6 months. If I had any doubts that I was addicted I confirmed it over the six months...

 

A few quotes to make you think:
"Be open to everything be attached to nothing." - Wayne Dyer (zen).
"Can you love without any kind of expectation?" - Lao Tzu (true love)
"Care about what other people think of you, and you will always be their prisoner." Lao Tzu

YOU ARE ENOUGH

It's an illusion to think that we need someone else to make us feel complete.
One of our greatest fears is that we will end up alone. That's why we fear rejection or stay in toxic relationships. But you can have hundreds of friends and still feel terribly alone.
What we are looking for is already within us and because of our pursuit to find it, we can not see it.
Ongoing pursuits are wearing us out and constant people-pleasing obstructs the development of our authentic selves.
Contentment is not to be achieved outside. Contentment is achieved within.
We can spend life time to extract from the world only to conclude that we still feel empty. No amount of money, friends, partners or material possessions will do the job if our contentment isn't already internalized. Paradoxically, contentment only reveals itself when we stop looking for it. It appears spontaneously when we're completely immersed in the present moment, consumed by what is, without the need for anything to change.
We are empty because we want to be filled, but by embracing emptiness, we eradicate the need to be filled and therefore become full.
If you're alone right now, embrace it. Realize that you don't need other people to feel content. In fact, their presence may even prevent you from manifesting what you really are.
Socializing can bring you much joy and there's much happiness in sharing, helping, connecting, supporting. BUT there's a difference between social interactions for the sake of one's search for completeness and voluntary engagement with other people, without needing them to feel complete. You are enough.

 

A simple way to look at it is rather than just whether you'll return to old behaviors, have you started with the new behaviors?

Not doing an old one is always only half the story. I don't think it's about having one or more categorically good behaviors either, (and then go on autopilot with them without paying attention) you have to work with it all together. You can have a diet and exercise regimen that supports reboot, it doesn't have to be totally technical from the beginning but for example depending on whether you focus on cardio or strength training you'll want to eat different things, it needs to balance. Same could be said for social diet and social exercise so to speak, and the intellectual equivalent with what you feed your mind. And of course there's a question of how one informs another category, for example if you read about something on the social and/or intellectual level it may be informing the physical.

If there is one principal that underlies all these details though, it's to continually examine what you're doing. Not a black and white judgement, but see what's causing what and adjust accordingly. If the solution is the right balance of all these things then looking for something like a magic bullet will not get you there and might actually distract you from the work of putting that plan together.