Complacency on Long Streaks.

Congratulations on 9 and a half years of progress.

I think the answer in theory is straightforward. Why do you always return to PMO? What do you feel is missing in your life right now that PMO gives you? 9+ years of progress is progress, but I think if you are still craving PMO from time to time, and adhering to streaks are you really free?

My 2 cents.

 

@Caveat Emptor I've had a similar expreience but with a different result. I'm on a long streak (Day 2413 without porn) and I nearly relapsed several times (Day 458, Day 533, and Day 1914). For you

For me these near misses have had the opposite effect: they frightened me. I realised early on that this addiction was not going away, that I had to remain vigilant and keep doing recovery work but I had assumed that as resisting porn got easier over time it would stay easier. In general that's true, I'm less tempted today than I was on any day in my first year, but there are times when triggers stack up and I am feeling low or anxious or whatever and the temptation is overwhelming. That's what frightened me.

So I re-examine my tools, and my trigger list. I put new rules in place, new counters, new habbits, etc. For example, after my first near miss I got a therapist who specializes in sex related problems like porn addiction. I don't see her regularly anymore, but that was useful and it was a message I sent to myself about how serious I am about staying free of porn use. That was important.

Your relapses are giving you information, and that's the key to keeping yourself clean. Let's examine some of that information …

It is, and so we need to keep working. Establish regular habbits that are explicitly geared towards sobriety. For example, one of my triggers is working late on my laptop(s) at home after my wife has gone to sleep. So I do not do that anymore. If there's a pressing work deadline I either get up early to start work, or I stay late at the office. I will not work late at home again, it is too risky.

We're addicts, we will always have the propensity to fall back in. My first long streak was almost two years. When I relapsed I just loved it and fell straight back in to heavy porn use. Now I know that about myself I have a zero tolerance rule about porn.

Then add peeking to your list of rules. I've been doing this, though it is a subtle decision about whether to

• Keep a counter about the pledge to stop
• Make stopping a personal rule
• Somehow embody stopping as a habbit

For example, I have added personal counters for no masturbation (Day 2404) and no looking at porn-susbstitutes (Day 228) because I now see both of those habbits as ones that bring me closer to a relapse. No ogling started out as a personal rule, but at some point I decided not to be so black-and-white about it and now it's something I just don't do, because I am a guy who doesn't. It's not a rule, looking away is just a habbit. You need to decide those things for yourself and frequently step back and reapraise them.

Do recovery work. Post here in your journal every week. Do not forget that you need to avoid it. Forgetting seems to be one of your triggers, albeit a slow and subtle one. Start thinkg of techniques you can adopt to avoid forgetting. Experiment with them. Find what works for you.

Are they? No. They are in lots of places but we can avoid those places, and when it is impossible to avoid we can at least be forewarned. For example, I find business trips difficult. Alone in a hotel room after a few drinks I am likely to relapse. So I do less travel and when I do travel I ramp up my vigilance and fill my time with healthy things.

Focus on that. MAybe make a list of the things you are proud of and say one of them to yourself every morning. Remind yourself what quitting porn gave you. Add new goals to the list and work towards them

Then refresh it. When did you last write down the list of reasons why you need to stay clear of porn.

I think this links to the previous one. How many of the items in your list of reasons to give up porn are about you? Have you included reasons about other people (your loved ones, the people in the porn industry, the world at large)?

It would for me, very quickly.

 

I had thoughts along these lines a few days ago. I joined the site late 2018 and from the day I joined until late 2019, everything was great. I had one long perfect streak of no PMO and over the year I had gradually let go of P-subs. Around summer of that year, everything started to crumble. It was a very slow, gradual descent through a lot of p-subs, but I eventually went back to full PMO last year. I kept trying to restart my streak but could never even make it back to 90. I think the closest was 80ish days some time last year.

Back when I was on my first streak, I sincerely believed that PMO was what was blocking me from succeeding in life. I don't know if that's true or not, but that was the general vibe on the site at the time and I bought into that. Life did not become magically perfect after, but on the other hands, great things did happen to me even when I dropped back to PMOing every now and then. The last few weeks have been particularly difficult, but at the same time, I've had some amazing things happen to me in other aspects of my life.

It finally occurred to me that one could be successful in many facets of life but still be seemingly relentlessly challenged by PMO habits/addictions. This is not me supporting PMO, of course. I simply realized that I need to change my perspective on why I want to stop PMOing, I need to find a new form of motivation.