30 yo male on my last chance

Hi, apologies this is a very long post! It is a very abridged version of the last 15 odd years of my life.

I am a 30 yo male who has been watching porn and reading erotic stories since I was about 14 yo. I think the reason pornographic material, especially erotic stories, became such a big part of my life was because I lacked self-confidence and was a very shy and quiet kid. My interactions with girls were limited and I went through high school without so much as kissing a girl.

My escape was porn and my own fantasies. It was safe and less daunting than trying to experience the real thing. I never really thought too much about my habits until I reached adulthood though. Into my twenties I was still a virgin despite having numerous opportunities to have sex. As I grew more confident in myself I started to get into situations with females that made me realise I could not get an erection. I could not work out why this was happening and thought it was to do with performance anxiety or nervousness.

I was with some absolutely beautiful women and I was sometimes drunk, sometimes sober, but no matter what, I could not achieve or maintain an erection. It became another source of embarrassment and shame for me and forced me to push away women and not commit to relationships. This pattern lasted until my mid-twenties when I met my current partner. For whatever reason she became the first person I could truly be intimate with and for the first 12 or so months of our relationship we enjoyed an amazing sex life. My use of porn dropped significantly and I marveled at what I had been missing out on in life.

But old habits die hard, and as the relationship stabilised, I turned back to porn at increasing frequency. Soon it became clear that things were not good as I was not able to achieve an erection and have sex with my long-term partner. I made excuses such as I was 'stressed because of work' or 'sometimes I get performance anxiety'. These excuses stuck for months, helped by the need for me to move away for work for a year.

When I moved away from work, that's when things really spiraled out of control. I began to browse dating sites and started talking to other women and formed online relationships with several people over an 18 month period. The thrill of receiving pictures, videos and dirty messages from real people provided such enormous dopamine hits and it mostly replaced my normal porn viewing habits. I knew what I was doing was wrong and a betrayal of my partner but my moral compass was overpowered by my own selfish cravings. I had no feelings for these other women nor did I ever desire to be with them physically, I was using them and hurting them as well for my own pleasure.

My relationship deteriorated because we weren't having sex and I was showing my partner next to no attention. About 18 months ago and shortly after returning from working away from home, my whole secret life was finally exposed. My partner had suspected that I was up to something after happening upon some messages in Instagram and from there I had no choice but to confess to everything.

What followed was an incredibly painful few months for myself and an even worse time for my partner. She was devastated and couldn't understand why I had been cheating on her with other women online. We started counseling together and I embarked on my own therapy sessions and journey of self-awareness. My issues obviously run deeper than just a porn addiction. But from what I understand, people get addicted to things because of other issues in their lives. In my case it was a combination of low self-esteem, an intimacy deficit, low emotional intelligence and poor coping mechanisms. After seeing the hurt that I caused, I felt ashamed and disgusted in myself not just because what I did but because I had never truly tried to fix myself. I don't even know how things would have kept going had my partner not started to really question me. This self-loathing is a huge reason why porn is still on and off a part of my life.

I learnt a lot about porn and addiction in that first few months after everything was exposed. I realised quickly just how ingrained my habits were. Since that time I have quit porn many times but always end up finding my way back to a video I miss or an erotic story that matches up to a favourite fantasy. I have porn blocking VPNs (Detoxify, which is brilliant) and other filters installed on every device but I have still found ways around those at times when I'm feeling a sudden craving.

I feel like I have made massive improvements considering I have consumed porn daily since I was a kid. My partner is an amazing person and has tried so hard to see things from my perspective but things are by no means fixed between us. My constant relapses are something I have been hiding from her and only recently told her about. I constantly lie to her to hide my failures and her trust in me is at an all time low. She has her own mental health issues and suffers from PTSD so my behavior has caused her to suffer more than the average person would in this situation.

I am truly down to my last chance to rid myself of porn and rebuild the trust in my relationship. I have been practicing meditation, using the reboot app, still attending my own therapy sessions and dedicating time to further understanding the effects of porn and addiction on the brain and things are continually improving; but the relapses are still there. My motivation is to be the best person I can for my partner. And if it is too late for us, I still want to get better and not waste my life in a world that isn't real. I don't really know what I am expecting or looking for in this forum. I think the idea of talking about it with other people going through similar challenges can only help the process.

Thanks for reading.