New here - just saying hello and sharing my story

Well the dirt hit the fan yesterday when my 10 yo daughter found my porn stash. This wasn't the first problem associated with it but I hope it's the last. I started looking at porn sometime in undergrad (back when VHS tapes were the best you could do) and haven't stopped for any length of time. I'm 47 now, married with 2 kids. Unreal. It was just part of my life. I thought getting married would ween me off of it but that never happened. During last nights 4am conversation with my wife she made it clear that sex has never been normal between us (except for the dating period and first few month of living together). We just learned to live with it but I was always with most of my sex mind on that and not on her. I'm also a photographer and started doing some candid shots. New fetish. My wife found a few of those and was horrified (rightfully). Did that stop me? No.

Anyway, I'm on day one of the reboot and couldn't be happier about it and mostly because of what I've been seeing in this forum.

I also had another addiction until recently which was anger. I was so angry about so many things but then came to the realization that needed to change, for many of the same reasons as the porn addiction. I read and worked through this book (Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger) that really made it easy to step away from those habits. Others may want to check it out as well.

I'm so glad to have found this group and see all of the support and guidance to get back to some kind of normalcy. The reboot process makes sense in my mind. I'm sure it won't be easy but maybe it wont be as hard as I think!

gm

 

Thanks and thanks for the recommendation. Much appreciated. Carry on!

 

Day 2 in and doing fine. Just keeping my mind on other things and when it veers toward P I'm remembering that there is no there there.. e.g. it's a false positive or dead end and no longer serving my needs. Really glad to have this forum to be engaged in. Keeps my motivation up and and makes this change more real, more in the real world rather just in my home and my family. This is the first time I've been part of any recovery groups or support groups. This is helpful for building my empathy and understanding for where others may stand in their personal struggles. Empathy is good. Tonight is my first group meeting so very interested to see how that goes.