imagination as a substitue for porn = relapse

Even if your opinion is wrong (and I believe you're absolutely right), imagining the same thing as porn makes no practical sense. If the purpose is to remove porn from your life, mentally holding onto it is entirely self-defeating. It's just like DiCaprio's character from Inception. He was addicted to the memory of his dead wife and it haunted him for most of the movie

 

well I agree that imagination for long periods of time is considered a relapse (for us). Like if you go to ur bed with the intention of imagining sex, "Oh, I'm ganna go to my room and think of girls"; yea that's bad.
But if your in bed already and a thought pops up (and come on, this DOES happen) and you imagine something for 5 minutes or something - yes its bad but you weren't planning on it. This happened to me today, maybe thought of a girl for like 2 minutes and then I went back to my normal routine.
No you should not do it, but its certainly not as bad as porn, masturbation, or both.

 

In general, I think relapses are only problematic when one relapse leads to another one and you escalate at some point. In the beginning I was often struggling with sexual thoughts, but I never touched myself. Eventually, my fantasies were getting shallower. I am not 'diving into them' as much anymore. It's like I don't even have the ability to do so. I don't even need to control myself.

My journey was a steady progress, may be one step back at some points, but two steps forth immediately afterwards, without a single act of masturbation or edging. Was I relapsing because I couldn't control my thoughts during some episodes? (From mindfulness I have learned that it is not about controlling your thoughts, by the way - it's about permantly looking beyond them. Your thoughts are like clouds, ever-changing, ever-moving. You never know what comes next. Just don't forget about the clear blue sky that lies above.)

 

Yea, I was referring to imagining real women. But yea, fantasizing/imagining should be avoided (at least when we are rebooting)
I mean when I was a little kid I thought of all the girls from school all the time. But we are addicted to Porn, so we shouldn't imagine women right now because we are trying to reboot the brain.

Right. I was talking about going out of your way to go to your bed and lie there and imagine.

Yea. However I think real porn does not equal imagining real women.
But imagining a porn scene is similar to watching real porn.