How My Addition Happened

What is this post?

Why I'm writing

This post is going to be very long, so I don't expect anyone to read the entire thing. I write it in hope that I can:

1. Sort out my own thoughts
2. Be more honest about my situation with myself
3. Help others who are going through similar struggles

I need to sort out my own thoughts because I have a lot of thoughts about my addiction that are not collected in an organized fashion. I'm unsure of my sexuality (if there even really is such a thing) and not sure what exactly I'll do after this reboot. Writing down my thoughts in this organized fashion is an attempt to make me think through all of the facts of my life rather than just calling on a few out-of-context memories when I am deciding what to do.

I also want to be more honest with myself. Whenever I've been at my worst in terms of pornography addiction, I've convinced myself that what I'm doing "isn't really that bad" (more about that below). I don't want to do that anymore. Writing my experiences down will hopefully help me accept what I've done and move on. The strange nature of my addictions has led me to feel ashamed; I don't talk about it with anyone. Hopefully telling people about my past -- even in an anonymous forum -- will make me feel less ashamed for what I've done.

Finally, I want to help others overcome these addictions as well. Having a record of what happened to me will hopefully be a warning to people earlier on the path. My story shows (at least in part) how to progress through these types of temptations.

What I'm writing

I divided my thoughts on my addiction into two sections:

1. History: how I became addicted, where I am now
2. What's the point?: things I've discovered, questions I still have, where to go from here

History

The beginning

The first time I can remember masturbating was when I was reading something non-sexual (it involved a woman in her underwear). I had masturbation explained to me very poorly, so didn't know what I was doing and didn't think too much of it. Since I didn't think that I was doing anything wrong, I continued masturbating quite frequently.

Honestly, masturbation didn't even really feel that good; I just felt like I needed it. Most of the scenarios that I pictured were about nudity without sex (I was too young to really want sex). I think I only actually fantasized about sex with a girl once.

During this time, I didn't feel good about masturbating, but kept doing it anyway. I even masturbated a little in public, which I'm super ashamed to think about now. Everything here got much worse when I encountered pornography for the first time.

Escalation

My first experience with pornography came when I was searching for pokemon art (yes, really). While I didn't masturbate at the time, it was the start of the escalation from fantasizing about nude women to fantasizing about specific fetishes. I started looking at some somewhat sexual art (but nothing technically explicit) and eventually discovered sites with erotic stories. I started reading stories about adult diapers, which progressed to furry transformation comics. The transformation comics progressed to comics and erotica of furry mind control until those were the only things that interested me. I progressed to the point where I was using pornography to masturbate multiple times a day.

I justified to myself that my situation wasn't really that bad. After all, I wasn't watching real porn with actual humans. But it was over this time where I began to think I was asexual (I had no any desire towards actual humans, only furries and mind control). It was also the worst time of my life. I was sad and angry a lot and always blamed it on others. I didn't think that it had anything to do with my addiction (although I probably wouldn't have considered myself addicted), but as I found out over the next year or so, it mostly was.

Recovery

For the next while, I didn't have access to a computer and thus couldn't read or view porn for a while. This was good because it gave me a chance to recover, but bad because I didn't learn how to deal with the temptations of having a computer. Despite this time being very difficult, it was one of the best times of my life.

At the beginning, I still masturbated quite frequently to fetish scenarios. With some effort, I went from masturbating daily to masturbating only once every few months. When I felt the urges, I learned to fill my mind with other things.

This time allowed me to get rid of most of my sexual fetishes. Diaper and transformation content no longer appeals to me at all.

Escalation II

This time came to an end quite abruptly when I went college. As I studied for and then worked in a computer-related job, I was at a computer much of the time and the internet was essential to a lot that I do. While I didn't want to view pornography for the first while, I still looked at furry art since I use it for inspiration of my own drawings (there's a lot of good art out there too). My first re-exposure to pornography were accidental as a result of looking for art. But my usage was still pretty infrequent; I only relapsed only once every few months.

I said that not using porn for months got rid of most of my fetishes, but it certainly didn't get rid of all of them. All of the content that I masturbated to was still furry mind control erotica; other stuff didn't really appeal to me.

Over a few years, this escalated more and more slowly. I'd do good for a while, then relapse a few times in a few weeks, then do good, then relapse again. It was easy to justify my addiction. Since it wasn't actual images and didn't involve real people, it "wasn't real pornography". Since it didn't involve exploited people, I "wasn't hurting anyone". Since it was about furries, it "didn't affect how I see real people". Since I didn't really identify myself with the addiction and I wasn't using it every day, I "wasn't really addicted". Of course, over time I read erotica more and more frequently until I was using it multiple times a week. I also escalated to images, video porn, and audio porn.

It was once I acknowledged how bad my addiction had gotten that I joined this site (and my history from there can be read in my reboot thread).

Over this time, I still didn't really feel attracted to real people, but went on many dates anyway. Why this is and how it played into my addiction probably deserves its own section.

Dating

So if I don't feel attracted towards people in real life, why do I want to date women and eventually get married? There's a few reasons:

1. Sex is real; pornography is fake. If I'm being honest with myself, if the fetish-heavy furry mind control content I consumed was possible in real life, I'd be trying to experience that. But it's not. It's fake lies that will make me unsatisfied for the rest of my life if I try to pursue them. Actual sex with a woman is real.
2. I need someone to talk to. Many of my friends that have encouraged and corrected me in the past have moved on with their lives. Having someone permanent to help me become better would be immensely valuable. I'm very introverted and having this deep of a relationship with someone would be great.
3. I want a family. I believe that I can't experience everything life has to offer without becoming a parent.
4. I don't feel like I'm trying in life unless I'm trying to get into a relationship. I don't know why this is, but I don't want to discount that.
5. Masturbation is self-centered. I want to be less focused on meeting my own needs and more focused on helping others. All of the benefits above are great, but if I enter a relationship, I can also help someone else get these benefits as well. If I refuse to do that, I am a selfish person.

Since I adjusted myself to have weird fetishes that definitely wouldn't have existed if I hadn't been exposed to porn, I also believe that I can learn to love and be attracted to real people. To me, this is less a matter of my innate characteristics and more a matter of choice. I can choose to love a woman if I want to. And if I can choose that, the reasons above mean that I am obligated to choose that.

Getting married and adjusting myself to love real people is a nice ideal, but in practice my dating life has been much more messy. I've been dates with a lot of women, but never in a real relationship. Most of the time, women told me they were not interested in me. Other times it just never went anywhere. I don't blame women for this because (a) I don't want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't like me anyway, (b) I respect women's choices, (c) as mentioned above, I'm not really attracted to people, so I can't blame people for not being attracted to me, (d) I only want to have sex within marriage and I want to marry someone who's a part of my church, which limits my options a lot, and (e) I'm perfectly willing to accept that I have flaws that would make someone not want to enter a relationship with me (some of which are mentioned above, but even during my most porn-free times I've never been in a relationship).

However, that doesn't stop me from being frustrated with my lack of a relationship. The frustrating part is not that people reject me, but that I'm not really sure what I can do about it. What am I doing wrong? What can I do to be better? Am I not kind enough? Am I just being nice without showing my true self? am I just having bad luck? Am I just not trying hard enough? Am I so flawed that I'll never be in a relationship and trying is not worth it? I don't know the answer to any of these questions and I don't even know where I'd start on answering them.

And I feel much the same way about my sexuality adapting to real people. I do think that's it's possible, but I'm not really sure how. What do I do to do that? Is rebooting enough? How do I actually love rather than just being attracted? Everyone seems to imply that finding a spouse was somewhat instinctual for them; do I not have those instincts or am I just misunderstanding?

I do have some plans to change how I'm approaching dating in the next couple of months, but if that doesn't work I'll be at a loss. I hope to talk to a lot more people, ask more women on dates, and find good ways to handle rejections.

Current State

That last section was a bit of a downer, but my life has been getting better during this reboot (currently on day 34). I felt terrible after my pornography usage had escalated to more than once a week. So I joined this site and started to change. Here's what's been working for me so far:

• I made a commitment that if I relapse, I'll donate money to a charity. I'll also be accountable on here if I do that. I'm stingy enough that this is great motivation.
• I made plans of what to do when I'm bored.
• I upgraded my internet blocks to be much harder to bypass (that's another very long post that I plan on writing in the future, so I won't go into detail here).
• For most of each day, I physically unplug my computer from the internet.

Of course there's a million day-to-day decisions that I have to make as well, but the above have been effective.

And of course I still don't feel I'm a "normal person" with regards to sex yet. I still am not attracted to real people in the sense that I see / hear other people describing. I still look at a lot of furry art (I've restricted what sites I can use and how I can use them with my blocker) since trying to not view any art in the past has actually made me more likely to relapse.

This is an evolving situation and so I don't believe any of my feelings or strategies are permanent. I may need to adjust strategies if I relapse. And my feelings towards others will hopefully change, but that will take time and effort.

What's the point?

Principles I've learned

Here are some things that I've learned throughout the process:

1. masturbation is a problem

• it can escalate to worse things
• it is about fake fantasies, not real life
• it is not not serving or caring about others
• it doesn't make you a better person
• it discourages relationships
• it can make you desire to masturbate and view porn more (the "chaser effect")

2. Porn with fetishes is destructive

• it can change desires temporarily and perhaps permanently
• mind control porn is really about rape

3. porn escalation is subtle, you may not notice it happening
4. there are effective strategies to recover from pornography
5. writing down all of my thoughts helped me feel better about all of this and feel more free of it

Questions

These questions aren't necessarily directed at you wonderful people on this forum (they're more of a way of asking myself what I need to do next), but I am super open and would love some respectful advice. If someone has experiences similar to me, I'd love to hear what they think.

How should I proceed with dating?

What is causing my dating failures?

Is the 90 day reboot arbitrary? Will I feel more recovered after then?

Are my still existing fetishes (I've now had them for over 10 years) permanent? If no, how can I recover from them?

If I cannot get a romantic partner, can I ever fulfill my sexual desires without being unhappy or addicted?


Thanks

If anyone read this, thanks for reading my long rant! Hopefully this post helped you in some way. If you have any experiences you'd like to share with me, suggestions on what to do in the future, or questions, please respond!

 

Sort of? I like a lot of people, but I don't think I feel attraction in the same way as other people do. I don't really have instincts to rely on when dealing with romance, but I feel that I can choose to like women.

 

Also, if I may ask, what similarities do you see?

 

I'd really like to give this question an honest answer, but I'm not sure what you mean exactly. "The way I would anyway" meaning as a friend? I don't like most people as friends and my natural instinct is to not like people at all. I can overcome that and learn to appreciate others, but it's not an easy thing to do. "A small buzz of emotional attraction"? Perhaps sometimes; I'm not really sure what "emotional attraction" means either.

 

I don't think I've ever really felt like that no. I've been happy with people, but I just call that "friendship".