Facing my fear

Hi, my name is Tom, I have been using pornography in different shapes and forms for more than 40 years. That sounds like a huge number of years! I am 55 now, so I started pretty early on. My stepfather who I grew up with was an alcoholic and my mum was trying to hold it all together. I started masturbating when I was around 11 or 12. First with erotic fantasies about a girl in my class I was secretly in love with. Masturbation became "my thing" that nobody knew about. It was my secret. And I enjoyed the illusion that I was the only one on the planet who knew about it. Then soon after that I began clipping photos out of news magazines my parents had lying around. I collected and kept these photos in a drawer of my desk that was lockable. That drawer became my secret treasure. It had pictures of celebrities I fell madly in love with in it as well as pictures of random women I felt I could fantasize about. By then I began to feel guilt and shame around my secret. My habit and the shame developed with the years and became ingrained in my system. Soon after my drawer of magazine clippings I stumbled on my first erotic magazine displaying women in pornographic poses. Seeing these pictures of the naked and exposed female body in such detail was intense and powerful. I kept this magazine under my bed and used it every night. My parents were lost in the alcoholic nightmare of my stepfather, arguing, shouting, loud music and behind my bedroom door I had my magazine with naked women and masturbated. The journey went on. At the age of 18 or 19 I saw my first porn clip in my friends home cinema. Again a rush of hormones and a big step up in intensity. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. That was in the early 80ies. No internet yet! Spending my little money in stinky porn cinemas became a regular thing. By then porn was what I spent the most time thinking about, craving for, watching - it was in that sense the centre of my life. University and study, friendship, and everything else came second. Porn became the black hole to suck in most of my energy, time, and money. Needless to say that approaching career, building real friendships with real people was a struggle because constantly interrupted by my compulsive need to use porn. And the secrecy around that. Then of course in the 90ies the Internet came as another accelerator of my porn use. The sheer endless availability of a virtual endless variety of porn, even without paying money, the free stuff that's available got me into binging excessively whenever I had a moment to spare. I didn't clean the house for days, forgot my duties, my then new family with my girlfriend and our daughter. I was obsessed and was unavailable to the people close to me. By that time my compulsion became more and more painful. I felt huge guilt after a night long porn binge only hoping I would be able to hide this away from my colleagues and friends the next day. To escape that growing pain of guilt I went into another binge and then another. It got out of control. I was out of control and unable to manage my life. I had fantasies of me dying next to my switched on laptop and my daughter would find me. The shame and the pain of being unable to control my life became so strong and I really feared I would die from it. Then came a turnaround. It was 2009 and a good friend of mine introduced me to an Alpha Course in London. After the first meeting in a church in centre London I felt something positive in me that I had never felt before in that way. Although this course didn't turn me into an avid Christian I got something out of it that was very valuable to me - hope and an intimation there might be a power greater than myself. However I would call it wouldn't matter. And only a few weeks after the Alpha Course on that church's website I found a Recovery Course. All sorts of addictions were the topic, alcoholism, sex-addiction, drugs, you name it. This introduced me to a 12-Step Program for sex-addicts. I trusted my Higher Power, began working the program and stopped using porn in November 2009. I stayed clean for over 2 1/2 years. The first few month of my new-found sobriety were amazing. I literally felt re-born and my life felt good again. In 2010 I my current partner I live separated with. We had a child in 2011. The relationship was problematic and difficult from the start. She in her 40ies and desperate to have a child. I was a recovering porn addict who was never in a functional relationship. Once our child was born the relationship turned into something more and more painful and mid 2012 I started using porn again. First only occasionally and in brief instances. Quick clips at night on my iPhone. I wasn't sleeping with my partner any more by then. Although the recovery I had under my belt made a difference, I didn't binge, I didn't use every night and usually I kept it short. Also my taste in porn changed. Most of the porn I used to use I now found pretty disgusting and unappealing. My taste became more soft and I ended up only using one site pretty much. However, I was still using. It was a new habit. Guilt was the result. My relationship to my partner deteriorated further. I avoided women in my professional life as much as I could. This new porn habit went on like that. I somewhat controlled it but it was also out of control, because I couldn't stop it. When I moved out and into my own house to live separated I binged again. Smoking weed and using porn was taking over. Luckily I found this site and on September 2nd this year I stopped using porn. Yesterday I had a relapse though. I hope that writing down my pornographic biography helps me find inner strength and clarity. I never made the effort to write all this down. But I hope it's good to get this off my chest. Thanks for this opportunity to share! Tom

 

Hi, I didn't stay for very long after I posted this almost two years ago. But I came back. And coming back is what counts, I guess. I am now ready to let porn and the gratification of it go. I am even ready to kiss all my content on my hard drive good bye - for ever. I am starting a new career and I need something to throw it in to create momentum. And the best sacrifice I can think of and maybe the most powerful is giving up my lifelong addiction to porn. I believe changing this habit will pay off in the future multiple times. So, in that sense, I guess I should be grateful I have something to throw in to boost the changes in my life I want to make. It all depends on how we look at things, right?