After 40+ years no more PMO. Day 4 and looks like my marriage will not be lost

New here, so grateful to find community, and the wisdom that comes from experience. I'll be starting up a (much) longer post in the Ages 40+ Reboot Logs section (and I put up a full five chapters so far here).

In brief: lost my dad to cancer when I was 10; started PMO as a 13-year old after discovering magazines and books in trash cans; became an evangelical Christian as a 16-year old; got involved in a Christian cult from early college for the next 14 years; laid aside PMO for a year or more during that time on a few occasions only to relapse; married and exited the cult at the age of 35; spouse discovers my PMO habit several times over 20+ years we've been happily married; this last time, while in bed on the phone, she give an ultimatum. That was four or five days ago, I've lost count.

I have a successful career, three lovely kids, a house in a prosperous suburb, a published book, all kinds of investment and consulting opportunities, and a secret I've been carrying for 40+ years. PMO is just NOT. WORTH. IT. "It" being everything I've put into my marriage and family destroyed, along with my financial situation (the Net Worth getting cut in half is gonna hurt!). And of course with that destruction there will be collateral damage.

I've been negotiating with PMO for 40+ years, knowing the struggles and the back-and-forth only to come back to PMO as a comfort.

Well over the past four or five days, I have done the following:

• Started listening to JK Emezi's podcast The Porn Reboot, then signed up for one of their free consultations
• Scheduled time with a psychiatrist who helps with addiction
• Started having long talks / discussions with my spouse, being honest about my PMO habits for the first time in 20+ years with her
• Deleted over a Terabyte of P on the computer (collection going back to the last time I got rid of it all, over 10 years ago)
• Deleted several Gigabytes of P on the smartphone (collection going back only one or two years, which led to the crisis which I see now as a Very Good Thing)
• Deleted several apps on the smartphone that had a 'secret' collection of favorites
• Reading Gary Wilson's Your Brian on Porn, great stuff, and ordered a few more books (namely Out of the Shadows by Patrick Carnes, and The Final Freedom by Doug Weiss)
• Signed up for the weekly accountability sessions through NoFap
• Acknowledge that this process to re-wire and re-program my mind is going to literally take years; I'm thinking that March 2023 is going to be a great milestone for me

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting, but feeling (and knowing) that this time it is DIFFERENT is making a difference. No more to shame, no more to PMO, no more hiding a part of me, last night my wife asked me, 'do you need privacy in your office?' to which I frankly replied, 'No need for PMO, means no need for any privacy for me. I'm fine anywhere and I have nothing to hide from you or anyone.'

I discovered in the consultation with the Emezi group that verbalizing and talking about PMO was freeing, was liberating, and super helpful in getting past PMO to what lies beyond. I don't need 'high five figure' coaching, my spouse resented the 'Betrayal Trauma' depiction for the second call that was setup (and I cancelled it after talking with her about it). She was okay with my private PMO as long as she didn't see it - but of course when it entered the bedroom, along with having problems with the boys we have, and connecting the dots it was time for me to change in a big way. I'm grateful it came to an ultimatum, as I see that I'm willing to pay the cost of laying PMO aside for good, and unpacking the triggers and root causes of why my brain has been wired this way for 40+ years, and that it isn't too late to change it.

Today, talking with my best friend and confidante and helper (my spouse), she wanted to know what my own triggers are. I could say it's BLT-F, easy enough to remember.

Boredom. Loneliness. Tiredness. Frustration.

I am excited about the tools I'll learn along the way to handle the triggers, I plan to listen to the remaining 250+ episodes of the Emezi Porn Reboot podcasts (I've listened to the five 'steps' of his system, episodes 253-257, you can find them on Podbean under The P Reboot). Also excited to learn via therapy other root causes, which at present I'm thinking was the grief as a 10-year old struggling through adolescence and exposed to P at a vulnerable time.

Here's my fuller-length story over at the 40+ Reboot Log.

 

Many thanks for the input @richsimm22. Early this morning my spouse asked me straight-up, whether we should discontinue relations for a period of time. I told her that I was thinking of 90 days ("Hard Mode") but would tell her in a few days what kind of length of time would be needed. We also discussed my inability to O on occasion, and that that was due to PMO.

 

Hi @Khmer11458 I don't have experience with PAWS (at least not yet, I'm 13 days PM-free although my spouse and I had O which was a surprise to me at her initiation a few days ago but that's another story).

But you next say you know the main cause: you have kept it hidden (and after 40+ years we are certainly experts at it). I just updated my own journal here with the latest chapter on the discovery by my spouse, and steps toward recovery. I came clean after 40+ years, you can do it as well. It's a hard conversation to have - but at 1am I had a choice to make - either come clean, or get a divorce. You have another binary choice: come clean with your spouse, or suffer debilitating anxiety.

I have a phrase - a mantra if you will - about this when I am thinking about what it would be like to relapse, or otherwise in any way thinking about PMO's attraction etc. And that is: "It is not worth it." Where 'it' is PMO, the secrecy, the 'excitement' of a dopamine rush, the embarrassment, the justifications.

Take the risk of losing her, and tell her exactly that you know these are the stakes. Tell her regardless of what she decides to do, that you are committed to change and that 40+ years of PMO behavior is not going to change overnight, that it may well take two full years (I found out in the past two weeks that a two-year mark is a reasonable one to reprogram and rewire your brain off all the chemicals like dopamine and endorphins).

Also don't expect her to give you a yes or no answer - expect her to be shocked and somewhat in a daze, not thinking that clearly, and of course a wide range of emotions.

And FWIW I'd be happy and honored to be an accountability partner with you, DM me for a discussion. All the best.

 

Hi @Khmer11458 I'm messaging you through the platform.

 

Hi again @Khmer11458 it is great to see you make a binary choice - to leave the past behind. Great too that you are looking to a local SAA group, that is one way to get community support.

Funny how after so many years of being steeped into serious Bible study and Christianity (for me it was about 15 years), all those verses are still there latent in my memory. And our lives are long, we tend to 'throw in the towel', and for the past 20+ years I've been officially agnostic, with full understanding of what that means. Nonetheless, powerless to change my own PMO behavior, finally (after 40+ years) admitting to myself and to my spouse that I am a PMO addict, I take (finally) the steps needed to live a porn-free life. Full of possibilities as someone who is over 50 years old, full of potential without too much grief about what I lost along the way. (Yes there is some grief and regret over 'what could have been', but appreciation at present that I can still grow and live and explore from here.)

I feel born-again, in the best sense of the word. Feelings of sexual transmutation (okay for those unfamiliar with Napoleon Hill's Chapter 11 in Think and Grow Rich, go ahead and look it up and study it) mean wonderful avenues are opening up for me. I feel strongly that I'm on the right path, and it is only day 13 of my journey. I'm no longer even thinking about the days - I'm focused now on seeing more and more changes and more and more possibilities with my spouse, with my kids, with my siblings, and with friends who are still there but whose friendships await renewing.

I read this morning: the opposite of addiction is not sobriety; it is connection. Community, openness, honesty is what is needed. Aloneness, isolation, and deceit belongs to my past.

 

Oh @Khmer11458 you can access a DM function under your Profile then Conversations.