What causes failure for long streaks? (vs short streak failures)

My short term are usually impulse or stress, my long term are, I get cocky or haughty with my treatment, I feel like I'm fine, I can watch YouTube without slipping.

 

Makes sense when you put it that way.

A long streak almost "needs" something more insidious to really be able to undo all that hard work. And even then it could still be an impulsive off the cuff "fuck it, I'm going to look at porn".

Someone told me when you relapse, you've actually relapsed much before the actual moment. That, of course, is a very "hindsight is 20/20" kind of statement. But like you say, a pattern of decisions. You start "accidentally" coming across triggering material, but closing it right away. Next week you're looking at it for 10 minutes, somehow telling yourself when you saw it accidentally you didn't relapse, so maybe it's ok to look at it? Maybe for just a bit?

Then before you know it you're breaking your standards faster than you can lower them.

 

My short streaks are killed by my "I already screwed up. Why bother. Just one more and you'll start tomorrow. "

Long streak are killed by what you described. Snowball effect. You fantasize a little. Then it's that movie that you're really only watching for the nude scene. Then it's the "I'll Google fail videos that have some girls in it" then porn.

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For me when I broke my long streaks it was because of one of two reasons. The first and most common one was that I got lazy and curious about updates on the sites I visited in the past. Once I started doing some light viewing I was already on the downward slope and bam, relapse. The second one was due to being unable to cope with feeling bad or shitty. Typically if things were going good in my life I had no desire to view porn, but if say I got rejected by a girl or just a shitty day at work I basically say fuck it and relapse, because that's what I did for years to cope.

Now I say fuck you to porn and masturbation so I don't feel like I'll slip up. I do know a relapse is still possible for me, but I feel I've made more progress during my current streak than any other and I can't imagine having pmo as a part of my life anymore.

 

Not really.

Not that I know much about Long streak relapses (because this is the longest streak I've had) but... I think the causes are similar, you become too lax with what you are trying to achieve and allow yourself to fall back to those old Porn using ways.

To be honest, I don't believe there is a whole lot of difference between long term and short term relapses.. There can be many different excuses for a relapse, that I've seen. There is plain out denial (that this is a problem), thoughts that you're missing out of something good, that using Porn can be a reward, that no one will know that you're doing it, etc...

I've seen people relapse at 500+ days and think that they're still going great. I've seen people relapse over and over, every 2 or 3 days, for months. No matter what the lie is for someone to go back, it's the usually in the same list of excuses no matter how long the streak..

Someone on Day 1 can get the same causes or reasons for relapse as someone on Day 500 or more.

 

This is a good topic. I had at least 2 relapses over 1 year each. Long streak relapses are confusing and drawn-out. Like many have said it starts with a slow slide where you make little compromises almost without consciously deciding to. There is a strange thing that creeps in where you start not to be 100% honest and even deceive yourself. Usually after the relapse itself things are a lot clearer and you can see where you started to veer off track and may even be confused with the things you told yourself or the things you wrote leading up to the relapse. It's weird how we can get blinded. I'm still not 100% sure how to combat this effect and sustain indefinite freedom from PMO.

It's like there are varying degrees of skill. First you learn how to put together a few days and PMO becomes something you slip and do instead of automatic habit. Then comes decent streaks from like 1 month to 1 year. The last skill is how to stop yourself from decaying on a long streak and restarting the cycle. I think each thing takes different concepts to learn and slightly different tools.

 

For now, just remembering how terrible was my life before i started my streak keeps me away from relapsing!