LongSault
Fapstronaut
This is technically a day early, given that the four-month benchmark is actually tomorrow. However, as I start early for work tomorrow, I decided to talk about being porn-free four 120 days now to save time. So, without further ado...
July 18 marks my fourth month without pornography. Back in March, I deleted all of my porn and the backups that I was intending to make. My logic back then was that if I was to relapse again, I would simply return to my porn via my backups and not bother with trying to get clean ever again. However, looking back tonight, I'm glad that I didn't make that decision.
Quitting any addiction is difficult, be it drugs, alcohol or in my case pornography. There's always a temptation to go back; it seems safer and much easier to take refuge in something that always appeared to offer a hideaway from your pain and misery. Porn didn't start that way, but it quickly became a coping mechanism for all the frustration that I went through at different stages of my life. At one point, it numbed the pain of being bullied by my peers for being too different. Another time it was for being rejected by girls and later women my own age. Yet even another time it was the overall failure of my life, be it unable to find steady employment or getting as far ahead in my life as someone my age normally would. To add to this frustration, I soon became convinced of my own inferiority, telling myself that I was ugly, stupid and destined to be a failure. Feeding my melancholy with MGTOW and incel ideology didn't help much either, as it served to reinforce the self-hatred and feelings of failure that stewed through my mind. That's not to say that porn was the cause of such thoughts (at least not the sole cause), but it was an escape... or it appeared that way for nearly two decades.
Looking back, Iit's clear that the escapism that porn provided wasn't really the psychological refuge that it appeared to be. There were nights where I would fall asleep with porn playing on the tablet in front of me on the bed. When I woke up the following morning (sometimes 3 or 4 A.M.), the porn was still playing. I don't use WiFi in my apartment, so I would go to the local library armed with a VPN and one eye opened for staff members to download content to watch later. In the end, I've probably downloaded hundreds of thousands of gigabytes, nearly filling up entire external hard-drives and spending huge amounts of money on larger memory cards to watch this content on. That's not even counting the money wasted on adult games from Steam or Good Old Games, or the adult comics purchased from Kickstarter or Indiegogo. You can imagine how much money I must have wasted trying to amass such a collection, or how many precious hours I wasted masturbating to this junk every night. For years, I dealt with chronic soreness, sleep depravity, friction burns and absent mindedness at work. Heck, I even fell asleep behind the wheel on several occasions, even when the car was moving. All of this I wrestled with for two decades, yet back in March I was almost ready to sink back to that if I slipped up again.
I don't plan on going over the same details I've already mentioned in my Two month and Three month retrospects. Suffice to say, I've taken a break from event photography, having burned myself out travelling to nearly half-a-dozen cities. Luckily, in spite of the hectic schedule, several people did ask for me to return to their annual events, something I'm very happy about, so all that work wasn't a total loss in the end. Meanwhile, life hasn't been without it's challenges; I'm on a quest to lower my overall blood glucose levels, in order to prevent developing type-2 diabetes, which runs in the family. Meanwhile, to better improve my chances, I've started exercising regularly in the gym and cleaning up my diet, eliminating foods that cause rapid glycemic spikes and increasing the amount of fibre and water I consume. For years I refused to go to the gym, but as I'm no longer in my twenties, that poor lifestyle choice has caught up with me. I also developed plantar fasciitis in my foot, but thankfully that has been recovering quite well in recent weeks (FYI: it takes a year or two to for a full recovery).
If there's one good thing that being away from porn has done, its that it has allowed me to do a lot of reflection about my past choices and lifestyle habits. I've come face to face with the fact that I'm not always a very good communicator, especially in situations that require a degree of confrontation. What's more, I've neglected my health as stated above, while also struggling of feelings of inferiority, guilt over past mistakes and - most of all - childhood traumas that have been a part of me right up to the present day, impacting my life decisions and personality traits right up to the present. The cliff notes version is that, for years, I held resentment towards my parents, my family's culture, my former classmates and above all myself. I allowed political commentators and the ever toxic manosphere to poison my thoughts and avoid taking personal accountability for many of my short comings. Over the past month, with the help of some self-help books I found at the library, I've come to see how much of my personality has been held back by these flaws I mentioned. Getting rid of porn meant taking away the numbing effect that I relied on to shield myself from much needed character growth, so being over three months free wasn't necessarily the big victory that I used to think it was. Suffice to say, I may have come a long way, but I still have a LONG way to go.
Hopefully, I'll see you all there when I make it.
EDIT: Upon some reflection, I think that my tone in this retrospect was a bit grim, so I've decided to add an addendum to end this entry on a more positive note.
Last night before bed, I watched a video by Natalie Etched on YouTube entitled "How to Forgive Yourself for Past Mistakes." In it, she made me realize that my biggest mistake - one that I had paid little attention to trying to solve in the past (though I may have acknowledged it) - is not properly addressing the underlying self-loathing that has plagued me for most of my life. She said (and I'm paraphrasing) that if you loathe yourself, then create the self that you want to be. She also said that one should adopt a neutral sense of self, or something to that effect. No one is fully good or fully bad, so if someone holds themselves to an impossible standard, then he/she might berate his/herself for falling short of this. Trust me: having been raised religious, I know this feeling all too well.
Since childhood, I loathed myself. I didn't feel good enough, tall enough, financially secure enough, or good enough for my family's standards. As a result, whenever I made a mistake, I would beat myself up for making a mistake, while using that mistake to justify the self-hatred that was always under the surface for most of my life. See? You said/did X or Y! That proves you aren't good enough!
So, on a positive note, I think the past two months made me realize how much of this problematic thinking has affected me for most of my life. I've now taken steps to change and fix this, rather than seeking the refuge of ideologies that subtly push a victim narrative by assigning blame on society's social ills or one's personal failure on some other. Such ideologies include MGTOW, the incel/black pill ideology or the many flavours of red pill or anti-woke personalities on YouTube. While I still watch the occasional YouTube video, I now prefer photography tutorials or history documentaries to listening to the junk of anti-woke or manosphere-adjacent talking heads; I haven't lent them an ear for a few months now, with no intention of looking back. It's now clear that all that content did was justify the victim narrative, which manifested in two forms. On one hand, it made me blame others for my own failures, or refusing to correct my own flaws or better my life because I saw it futile. It was much easier to sit in front of a screen and rant and rave against some other group (i.e. the so-called woke, gynocentric society and/or people's shallow looks preferences). it's so refreshing to not hear this junk.
Meanwhile, something else happened that I never thought possible: I met a lady who finds me attractive and wants to get to know me. Having convinced myself that I was ugly, I thought that no girl would ever want to get to know me or find me attractive, so this is a huge change.
So, to summarize:
- I've given up self loathing
- I've began to forgive myself for past mistakes
- I didn't mention this, but I've also began getting my finances in order for the first time. I had a meeting with a financial advisor regarding opening a tax-free savings to save with interest. I'm also going to begin saving up for a life insurance plan, which I intend to pay into monthly.
- I've began working out and getting in shape
- I've met a girl who's interested.
- Given up victim narratives and listening to the online voices who push for and promote it. I've also distanced myself from politically-charged commentators and their divisive rhetoric.
So, I guess this past four months has been a lot better than I gave it credit for. Cheers!
July 18 marks my fourth month without pornography. Back in March, I deleted all of my porn and the backups that I was intending to make. My logic back then was that if I was to relapse again, I would simply return to my porn via my backups and not bother with trying to get clean ever again. However, looking back tonight, I'm glad that I didn't make that decision.
Quitting any addiction is difficult, be it drugs, alcohol or in my case pornography. There's always a temptation to go back; it seems safer and much easier to take refuge in something that always appeared to offer a hideaway from your pain and misery. Porn didn't start that way, but it quickly became a coping mechanism for all the frustration that I went through at different stages of my life. At one point, it numbed the pain of being bullied by my peers for being too different. Another time it was for being rejected by girls and later women my own age. Yet even another time it was the overall failure of my life, be it unable to find steady employment or getting as far ahead in my life as someone my age normally would. To add to this frustration, I soon became convinced of my own inferiority, telling myself that I was ugly, stupid and destined to be a failure. Feeding my melancholy with MGTOW and incel ideology didn't help much either, as it served to reinforce the self-hatred and feelings of failure that stewed through my mind. That's not to say that porn was the cause of such thoughts (at least not the sole cause), but it was an escape... or it appeared that way for nearly two decades.
Looking back, Iit's clear that the escapism that porn provided wasn't really the psychological refuge that it appeared to be. There were nights where I would fall asleep with porn playing on the tablet in front of me on the bed. When I woke up the following morning (sometimes 3 or 4 A.M.), the porn was still playing. I don't use WiFi in my apartment, so I would go to the local library armed with a VPN and one eye opened for staff members to download content to watch later. In the end, I've probably downloaded hundreds of thousands of gigabytes, nearly filling up entire external hard-drives and spending huge amounts of money on larger memory cards to watch this content on. That's not even counting the money wasted on adult games from Steam or Good Old Games, or the adult comics purchased from Kickstarter or Indiegogo. You can imagine how much money I must have wasted trying to amass such a collection, or how many precious hours I wasted masturbating to this junk every night. For years, I dealt with chronic soreness, sleep depravity, friction burns and absent mindedness at work. Heck, I even fell asleep behind the wheel on several occasions, even when the car was moving. All of this I wrestled with for two decades, yet back in March I was almost ready to sink back to that if I slipped up again.
I don't plan on going over the same details I've already mentioned in my Two month and Three month retrospects. Suffice to say, I've taken a break from event photography, having burned myself out travelling to nearly half-a-dozen cities. Luckily, in spite of the hectic schedule, several people did ask for me to return to their annual events, something I'm very happy about, so all that work wasn't a total loss in the end. Meanwhile, life hasn't been without it's challenges; I'm on a quest to lower my overall blood glucose levels, in order to prevent developing type-2 diabetes, which runs in the family. Meanwhile, to better improve my chances, I've started exercising regularly in the gym and cleaning up my diet, eliminating foods that cause rapid glycemic spikes and increasing the amount of fibre and water I consume. For years I refused to go to the gym, but as I'm no longer in my twenties, that poor lifestyle choice has caught up with me. I also developed plantar fasciitis in my foot, but thankfully that has been recovering quite well in recent weeks (FYI: it takes a year or two to for a full recovery).
If there's one good thing that being away from porn has done, its that it has allowed me to do a lot of reflection about my past choices and lifestyle habits. I've come face to face with the fact that I'm not always a very good communicator, especially in situations that require a degree of confrontation. What's more, I've neglected my health as stated above, while also struggling of feelings of inferiority, guilt over past mistakes and - most of all - childhood traumas that have been a part of me right up to the present day, impacting my life decisions and personality traits right up to the present. The cliff notes version is that, for years, I held resentment towards my parents, my family's culture, my former classmates and above all myself. I allowed political commentators and the ever toxic manosphere to poison my thoughts and avoid taking personal accountability for many of my short comings. Over the past month, with the help of some self-help books I found at the library, I've come to see how much of my personality has been held back by these flaws I mentioned. Getting rid of porn meant taking away the numbing effect that I relied on to shield myself from much needed character growth, so being over three months free wasn't necessarily the big victory that I used to think it was. Suffice to say, I may have come a long way, but I still have a LONG way to go.
Hopefully, I'll see you all there when I make it.
EDIT: Upon some reflection, I think that my tone in this retrospect was a bit grim, so I've decided to add an addendum to end this entry on a more positive note.
Last night before bed, I watched a video by Natalie Etched on YouTube entitled "How to Forgive Yourself for Past Mistakes." In it, she made me realize that my biggest mistake - one that I had paid little attention to trying to solve in the past (though I may have acknowledged it) - is not properly addressing the underlying self-loathing that has plagued me for most of my life. She said (and I'm paraphrasing) that if you loathe yourself, then create the self that you want to be. She also said that one should adopt a neutral sense of self, or something to that effect. No one is fully good or fully bad, so if someone holds themselves to an impossible standard, then he/she might berate his/herself for falling short of this. Trust me: having been raised religious, I know this feeling all too well.
Since childhood, I loathed myself. I didn't feel good enough, tall enough, financially secure enough, or good enough for my family's standards. As a result, whenever I made a mistake, I would beat myself up for making a mistake, while using that mistake to justify the self-hatred that was always under the surface for most of my life. See? You said/did X or Y! That proves you aren't good enough!
So, on a positive note, I think the past two months made me realize how much of this problematic thinking has affected me for most of my life. I've now taken steps to change and fix this, rather than seeking the refuge of ideologies that subtly push a victim narrative by assigning blame on society's social ills or one's personal failure on some other. Such ideologies include MGTOW, the incel/black pill ideology or the many flavours of red pill or anti-woke personalities on YouTube. While I still watch the occasional YouTube video, I now prefer photography tutorials or history documentaries to listening to the junk of anti-woke or manosphere-adjacent talking heads; I haven't lent them an ear for a few months now, with no intention of looking back. It's now clear that all that content did was justify the victim narrative, which manifested in two forms. On one hand, it made me blame others for my own failures, or refusing to correct my own flaws or better my life because I saw it futile. It was much easier to sit in front of a screen and rant and rave against some other group (i.e. the so-called woke, gynocentric society and/or people's shallow looks preferences). it's so refreshing to not hear this junk.
Meanwhile, something else happened that I never thought possible: I met a lady who finds me attractive and wants to get to know me. Having convinced myself that I was ugly, I thought that no girl would ever want to get to know me or find me attractive, so this is a huge change.
So, to summarize:
- I've given up self loathing
- I've began to forgive myself for past mistakes
- I didn't mention this, but I've also began getting my finances in order for the first time. I had a meeting with a financial advisor regarding opening a tax-free savings to save with interest. I'm also going to begin saving up for a life insurance plan, which I intend to pay into monthly.
- I've began working out and getting in shape
- I've met a girl who's interested.
- Given up victim narratives and listening to the online voices who push for and promote it. I've also distanced myself from politically-charged commentators and their divisive rhetoric.
So, I guess this past four months has been a lot better than I gave it credit for. Cheers!
Last edited:
