329 days sober

Today I am 329 days porn/masturbation free.


I was introduced to porn at age 5 by a neighbor kid and struggled with a porn habit as a teen.
The thing I found most helpful was having good Men's Group and an Accountability Partner.
With those in place I was able to successfully fight porn for over 10 years.

Last year we moved to a new state, had our 4th baby, and some family and work stress.
On top of that my accountability partner (who was now in another state) and I slowly drifted apart and stopped checking in with each other.
All this led to a lapse in my integrity and I fell into my old habits.

I finally confessed to my wife December last year and it has been a bit of a whirlwind since then.
We have been going to marriage counseling, went through the "31 Days to Great Sex" book, discovered all that stuff we learned from teh book "Love and Respect" was something that hurt and confused both of us.

But today we are more intimately connected (spiritually, emotionally and physically) than ever before.

The biggest thing we have learned is that we only need one book, God's Word. Other books can be nice, but the Word is NECESSARY and the Word is the lens at which we look at all other books.
We realized there is a lot of UN-biblical stuff in mainstream Christianity.

And I had to be honest with myself and realize that I was one of those guys that kept reminding his wife of my "rights" and "needs". And the worst part was I didn't even realize I was doing it. I thought I was being a good christian man.
I feel bad about that, but I am comforted by the forgiveness of God and my wife.
My wife and I are able to recognize that some damage has been done. And that only time will heal some of those hurts. We are not afraid to talk about the past hurt, but we equally talk about healing.

After I finally reconnected with my accountability partner, I found out that he had an almost identical experience! (why didn't we just reach out to each other in the middle of this !!!!!)
We both recognized that we drifted apart and that was the start of it all.

I am a Software Developer, so I decided to make a tool to help us avoid this problem in the future.
I created AccountabilityDude
We decided to create a Slack App (If you are not familiar, Slack is like a chat room on steroids).
We created a chat room with me and my accountability partner, and every day this App post a hard-hitting question for each of us to answer.

It encourages us to keep talking and keep healing.

I would love for other people who need some accountability for the accountability partnership to use this tool too.
Feel free to share if you find it useful.