Relapsed, going back to zero and starting all over again, beginning to loose faith

Congratulations on your progress so far. 70 days are a long time, and the PMO beast is retreating with every single day. Only you decide if or how much you feed it though. Maybe thinking in streaks is not beneficial for you after all. Try not to endure as long as possible, try to change your mindset. PMO is simply not an option any more. And even if you relapse, you weakened the neural pathways in your brain significantly during a long streak.

Ask yourself, "What if I never saw any porn for the rest of my life?"
How do you feel about that? Anxious or excited?

Keep up the fight, we're all into this together!

 

Steven, I feel your pain. A relapse is the worst feeling. I had no idea how bad it was until it happened. It's your brain trying to trick you it'll be okay to PMO for a bit more. Your brain will trick into thinking to u can reboot when you have more classes that way you can PMO during your free time. It's the worst. Just make sure you distract yourself immediately after you get urges or think about fapping. The moment you look at P you will lose. Just hang on brother be strong. A 70 day streak is a bug milestone. One I hope to achieve soon. Good luck!

 

OK, relax. You feel pretty bad now because you are still hungover from the recent lapse. Stop beating yourself up, and move on. After a few days your head will clear. After a few more days you'll be building another decent streak. Why? Because you have a good history of solid streaks, which means you are making progress. Also, the lapses feel qualitatively worse after a good streak, so you will gain more motivation not to lapse... not to mention the resistance and resiliency you've been building up during your streaks. These do not return to zero with your counter.

 

I hear you too, going back to zero is very disheartening, but let it fuel you and make you even stronger than before you stumbled. Your hard work is not in vain and you'll rise again.

 

Hey there, take heart! Your relapse doesn't wipe out the 70 day streak & the good that you achieved.

You're climbing a mountain & you slipped down a few feet.

Get up, learn from it & move on up.

Strength.

T22.

 

Keep up the good fight, 70 days is no slouch. You are resetting the counter, but not the progress. We like counters, its mathematical, but its not about numbers. Only you know the amount of benefits you got from that 70 days streak.
The virgin shame I understand. I lived it. But many people are lying abut their sex encounters, to avoid public shame, but are just living it internally.
I met my first GF at 18yo. I stayed 5 years with her.I'm now married to a wonderful women that is the mom of my child. This is the only 2 women I had sex with in my life and I'm 40+.
Does it hurts me? Not. But when I was a teen with testosterone flowing, I was suffering from the lack of dating skills and shyness...no self-confidence.
I basically found a GF by NOT SEARCHING!

about the relapse...is that person you fantasized about is available to date? Or is that a dead end? You have to start somewhere. Doesnt she seem accessible to talk? Does she ignored you? I did fantasize on ladies, girls at school, buddies moms, etc for many years. I was watching porn videos and fapping instead of trying to date. Porn isolates you and make you weak. It kills your need to go out and date real girls. Trial and errors. This is the only way. Step by step.
Fantasizing is a big no-no. You should work on not only resisting the urge, you have to stop feeding the beast. You should wipe out all sex thoughts from your mind and keep sex thoughts only when you are in bed with a sex partner. Try a sex-less thinking pattern!

 

There is nothing wrong with being a virgin at 20, I was until 22 and that was with the woman I later married. Don't get hung up on that. I had plenty of opportunities with girlfriends, but risking becoming a parent too soon was enough to keep me at bay, not to mention my parents and her parents would have killed me. lol
Who is your fantasy girl, does she live with you? What is that situation, I'm confused?

 

There is nothing wrong with being a virgin at 20, I was until 22 and that was with the woman I later married. Don't get hung up on that. I had plenty of opportunities with girlfriends, but risking becoming a parent too soon was enough to keep me at bay, not to mention my parents and her parents would have killed me. lol
Who is your fantasy girl, does she live with you? What is that situation, I'm confused?

 

45 yr old married guy here. Living in U.S. No PMO for 15+ months. I think accountability is an important step in recovery. However, it can't just be focused on the behavior alone. We have to get to what is underlying the behavior. Fapping is just a symptom of an underlying problem. It's like having a cold and all you do is focus on what type of tissues to buy for your runny nose or what kind of cough drops to get. It's focusing on a remedy for the symptoms and not getting at fixing the root issue which is the cold. Creating a safe environment for accountability to explore that is definitely critical. That being said, it’s also important to make sure that the accountability questions we ask each other get to heart level matters. Guys have to feel safe and have a level of trust established in order to go to that level though. I see three main types of accountability. Cop accountability where the cop takes a “gotcha!” legalistic approach to the person being held accountable. There is also coach accountability where the coach tries to be very positive and encouraging and finally there is cardiac accountability where the person gets to heart level issues and matters with the person being held accountable. This gets at the underlying things that manifest with symptoms of acting out (porn, masturbation, affairs, etc.) The key with accountability is not just focusing on the symptoms which is how the person acted out (cop and coach) but to get to the underlying root issues or causes that were behind the acting out (cardiac). For me some of these issues included: perfectionism, guilt/shame, self-condemnation, feeling unlovable based on the level of my degradation, not being in touch with my heart and emotions, etc. I know for me when I started focusing on those root issues and heart level things and not just trying to control my PMO behavior is when I started seeing real recovery strides being made and began having success for the first time in my life. A couple of years ago I would not have thought it possible to go without M for even a week. Now I'm coming up on a year and half without it. Consider changing your focus, I know when I did is when the results came.

 

trust me I understand the attraction for the older women!

Being a virgin during high school reminds me of the movie American Pie...this is a satire...Remember, there is some guys banging all that moves and aren't fulfilled by it.
Try to find a girl you like/love and go from there. No sense running for your life and catch an STD for a check in the box.

 

You're not going back to zero! Is the point improving your life or accumulating days? You have done seventy days of excellent choices, a bad one does not wipe out the good ones and their effect.
I stopped counting days. It can be a motivation factor, but for me it was disheartening because I thought in that manner. And every time I relapsed sooner. Counting days became nothing more than pressure for me.
As for the virginity shame... I know how you feel. I felt like that through high school and college (my childhood experiences werent something I could brag about and didn't count for me as losing virginity). I even was envious of all the younger men having sex. I waited for the woman I am now married to and I don't regret it and she waited until she was 29.

 

Counting days is helpful for some. Not counting days is helpful for some. I like to count them, even though I reset my time often. But thats my journey right now. The important thing is to KEEP TRYING. Get that first day again, turn it into a second and so on.

 

If I may interject, everyone here is saying "good job, well done". While it's true that what you accomplished is not a small feat, you obviously failed in your quest. What you in my opinion need is a strong hand. I am still new to this, but porn addiction is just like any other, and I've gone through few of mine. Considering current way is not working for you, you need to change the pace and lane. Instead of having fantasies, tell that person what you feel or start avoiding him/her. Keep a visual reminder of what you are doing, somewhere close to you where you can see it and be reminded of why you are in NoFap. Completely block porn fantasies, find a substitute. On this part I can't help much as I have fantasies of my own and am trying few things to block them. It's proven somewhat effective to have a specific memory in mind which you use as soon as you realize you have sex fantasy. To fight fantasy with sheer willpower you need experience from trial and fail. From other addictions I've overcome, I can say that it's next to impossible to do so if you've been on your first streak.