Relapsed after 5 days: Evaluation

So it's the morning after a relapse. I had 5 days away from porn and masturbation and thought I'd share my thoughts here.

I had seen several titles (just text) of porn movies on a torrent site I use. These definitely triggered the urge to watch porn but I stepped away and took a cold shower/did some pushups and felt good. Later on in the afternoon I started drifting off to sleep for a nap and found myself in some sexual fantasy which I just let myself get into.

When I woke from the nap I started browsing memes to maybe see an image of a woman or a still from a porn scene that might get me going. I then graduated to just searching r/all to see what came up and sure enough I was peeking. I just watched for a while then managed to tear myself away and call a couple accountability partners I have, to try and get the porn out of my head but honestly it was deep in there at this point.

My girlfriend came over that evening and we had sex. It was actually really great, I didn't last particularly long but because it had been 5 days of no masturbation I wasn't worried. Felt super hard the whole time, and it was good. However, that chaser effect is real. After she left, combined with the fact I'd already triggered off those cravings earlier in the day, I went back to r/all browsing.

Honestly, I came so close to pulling myself away a few times. I know I would have been resetting my counter for porn anyway, but the feeling when I had that weak fucking orgasm at the end was just shit. I knew it would be. I was just irritated that I had missed opportunities to put the laptop away. I was disappointed in myself.

So this morning my brain's feeling foggy, I'm irritable and tired. My body feels a little shaky and I'm feeling really emotionally dull. So I'm writing this to just try and get some words to the feelings and honestly look at the actions I took.

Once I'm looking for pixels, that's a hard place to come back from. Even if I'm not on a porn site once I've just undertaken the task that dopamine starts flooding my brain again. So I think it's another lesson for me to take away that I can be browsing a totally innocuous site but if I know my motive is to try and see those pixels, then I'm already in a very dangerous place.

 

Also, I'm new to this forum and figured this post should go here, but if I'm using the wrong thread, please let me know. This may be more of a journal post but wanted to share my rebooting experience so far.

 

I agree here, I think it's a much simpler way of knowing when I'm relapsing or not. Once I start looking for those pixels to stimulate me, I can feel that dopamine rush go. It's then not particularly long before I'm back surfing porn.

I also want to say, that's just what I'm doing for myself. I know everyone has their own way of doing this, I don't think there's a right/wrong to do it