How Pornography Ruined My Life

Many people here feel as though their life has been ruined by pornography, I am sure I am not the first. However, this story, I believe, is much different from much of the stories of how pornography ruined people's lives, although I am sure you all have your own struggles and have your own stories to tell.

My story begins probably sometime in my tween years. I got an Ipod touch in seventh grade and began to watch porn on it all the time. What do you expect? I was twelve. Well, wouldn't you know, it totally messed with my sexual identity. I am heterosexual , and have always been heterosexual, but being introduced to so much porn at such a young age led me to sexualize everyone around me, including younger kids. This hypersexualization led me to feel guilty, which paired with my fledgling OCD and religious obsessions led me to believe I was an evil person. I haven't thought about it in a long time but this is where my life went off track. I became extremely guilty and ashamed of myself and felt disconnected from the people around me as a result. This further led me through a period of guilt wherein I actually had an obsession that I was evil. Everything I did and everything I said was colored by this fear. Eventually, one day, probably around when I was turning fourteen, I decided that yes, I was evil and I wanted to go on with my life regardless, so I began doing that, until I met my first girlfriend. The sensation of desire, somewhat disconnected from sex because I was still a regular porn user led me deeply back into the religious obsessions. I concluded I had been "lost" but now was "found" because I was with a girl I actually liked. So I immediately went about ruining the relationship by being frightened to touch her. You see now that I had been "saved" by her now I had to abide by religious rules again, and those rules said I was to remain a virgin until married. This girl was not into that at all, especially after observing her later relationships. She liked sexually aggressive guys.

Well she dumped me. Pretty quickly too. And wouldn't you know it, I went on and had a two year obsession over her. It ruined multiple opportunities at relationships and getting laid for the extended period of those two years and when I finally got over her, finally, I got angry at God, which turned into more obsession, which led me to go even deeper into religious obsessions ultimately founded on the experiences I had from watching porn. Now, the fix was in and it was over. The obsessions got so bad I wound up in a hospital, and from there on I built myself a corner in my head away from my emotions where I would stay so that I could be doing "the right thing" all the time. My relationships with people were not very much relationships but rather us being in the presence of one another and me interacting with them on the terms of religious rules. This continued for some time until just before I left highschool at which point I got tired of the constant forcing of my hand into everything and began trying to wrest control back to my emotions from these obsessions. This process started simple enough but to make a long story short, it took four more years for me to finally wrest control of myself back into the hands of my own emotions. That point in time though, was of course, the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and so back into the corner I went, not knowing how to deal with a changing world any other way.

I am now 25 and have had sex for the first time with a prostitute. This event is significant because prior to the pandemic my goal, now that finally I had control of my own emotions, my goal in life was to get laid. The pandemic came and went, I went back into the obsessions, I worked hard to come back out, you can see the threads where I freak out and go get a hooker on this website, and now finally, at this point in my life I can see the reasons why it has gone so wrong. All of it has gone so very wrong. It shouldn't have. I am quite intelligent, I believe my IQ is between 120 and 130. I am attractive, I had multiple girlfriends in highschool although I did not sleep with them. I am in good physical shape and have a good sense of humor that plenty of people can relate to.

At any other point in history I would not have had such a terrible fate in life as to be living at home wracked with mental illness losing my virginity to a hooker at 25. This is a result entirely of smartphones and pornography. Had I even been perhaps a few years older and iphones and Ipods not have come into existence at that point in my life, let's say two years older, this would not have happened. I'd have convinced some girl from school to have sex with me or have taken one of the many offers I did get immediately and I would have been able to relate to the people around me and my emotions in a healthy way.

Instead, here I am, I have nothing. I could have had the world, I am certainly smart enough, strong enough, good looking enough. But I have nothing. This is what we have done to people with porn and technology.

 

I'm sure it wasn't great for you either but I don't think I can even describe how messed up I am because of this. I didn't avoid people because of social anxiety due to guilt or something, I avoided emotions in my mind my emotions, all of my emotions and have spent years living in a self induced trance, fighting myself all the time. I have not done any emotional development really at all in my life, the whole of my life has been a struggle against living. It's actually in a way good that I slept with that hooker because now I can understand the origin of my problems. I don't know what to do about them, but I can see where they came from now.

I basically need to rewire my whole brain at this point and I don't know how I can do that. I'm definitely talking to a psychiatrist about it though.

 

I've quit porn mostly. I have no desire to be religious. I spent a good many years very angry about religion and, unconsciously, the fact that it was preventing me from getting laid.

I've been angry my whole life I guess and I didn't know why until now. I've been 24/7 fighting against myself in my mind. I did finally stop but when the pandemic came I didn't know any other way to deal with the world but go back to fighting myself. I really am a broken person, more so than any of you.

 

Sex would have been a major part of my life had this not all happened. I am attractive and had received many offers from women in the past. Now here I am at the relatively old age for figuring out sex of 25 and I have just had an experience that has left me with an unquenchable craving. Sex isn't important but it is. It isn't important for those of us who have either been doing it all along or resigned ourselves to wait for our last relationship but not for somebody like myself who has changed his mind midway. And I didn't even change my mind really, I never thought it was wrong to have sex deep down inside me, I was just told it was wrong and I was afraid. I got over the fear in the most roundabout way possible and lost so much time doing so.