2017 in Review (Discovering a different type of PMO tracker)

But first, a quick recap of my entire progress

2014
In February, I discovered NoFap and immediately made an 87 day streak HARD mode (although I now realize I had been cheating with p-subs).

2015
Another two or three streaks ranging in length from 30 days to 120 days and also varying in difficulty (no P vs no P+M+O).

2016
PMO'd on 12/30/2016 and made a new years resolution to quit PMO, hard mode. I made it until mid-May before starting to MO without P. Eventually I watched P in June or July. I was on and off for the rest of the year. In September, I started a job working with children and watching porn at the same time made me feel particularly gross and creepy, so I stopped. Also, around this time, I stopped creating trackers to count how many days in I am.

2017
In February, this year, I paid for and installed EverAccountable.

HOLY SHIT. What a difference that made!

I had one close friend be my accountability partner and that solidified my commitment and didn't have me rely on willpower alone. With my accountability partner viewing all my explicit content, there was no way I was going back to porn.

I had her call me out whenever she saw ANYTHING to confront me about my p-subs. The honest talks were great and I made it until about November with a very solid 8 months porn free. I also started dating my current girlfriend around March, which helped with the loneliness factor and "having sex" factor.

However, here I am having reset again in November. In November, I stopped caring about my accountability partner judging me and succumbed to urges. What's funny is that while I was resetting and PMO'ing, I specifically remember that I was coming up with a plan to change. I only PMO'd that one day and in response, I added an additional accountability partner - someone I would feel more awkward seeing my explicit content. I think my original accountability partner is someone I am too comfortable with and I took advantage of that.

So I only PMO'd that one day, and then just yesterday, a month later, I PMO'd again. I was borrowing my gf's computer for the day and halfway through the day I realized I could watch P without it flagging the EverAccountable software. I binged for a 2 hour session. Felt 'eh' about it. However, today, I felt an enormous guilt and shame when I brought it up to my gf. I had lied to her and felt like I let her down and I shared this with her (as I usually do). She was very supportive, but this feeling of intense guilt and shame is new for me. And that's a fantastic thing. In the past, I've never felt tremendously guilty or ashamed for watching porn, just annoyed at myself. But I have a fantastic partner and incredible respect for her. In many ways, I want to be the best partner I can be for her, and watching porn (ON HER FUCKING COMPUTER) is not a way to be a good partner. She might be completely understanding, but there's a feeling of "Come on Seth! Don't let her down!"

There's another thing I am noticing about my resets for the last year or so. When I was first starting in 2014, when I would reset, it would be a hardcore relapse. I would binge on porn for a week or so straight, unbelievably excited by the newfound novelty porn could offer. And then I would continue my old routines for months before considering stopping again. And when I would start wrapping my head around coming back to NoFap again, it would only be after a incredible amount of porn: PMOing until my dick hurt.

However, in the last year and a half, I have noticed the time between streaks has shortened. Everyone talks about how long their streaks are, but its much less common to talk about how short their resets are. This is the different type of tracker we all need to be using. Instead of boasting that you are 90 days PMO free, how about boasting how few days you were not PMO-free in the last year. I am proud to say that in the last year, all of my resets have been one or two days! I have not watched porn about 360 out of 365 days in 2017. And when, I think about it, this aligns with what other people are saying about PMO trackers. Instead of a purely streak-tracker, fapstronauts should make a spread sheet recording all of their activity (P, M, O, or none) instead of just the streaks. But, no matter how successful I feel regarding to NoFap, I still have yet to make it an entire year without porn. Welcome, two-thousand and eighteen. I embrace the challenge.

TLDR;
This is my year in review.

• EverAccountable has changed my world.
• Every reset is an opportunity to grow and learn.
• I'm measuring my success not by the length of my streaks, but by the length of my relapses.

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