Hi Folks

Hello, I'm a young 21 year old male, I have been married for just over two years now and I want to quit porn because it is eroding my relationships, my health, my mood, and my life. I have lost intimacy with my wife, I have gained weight, and in general I find it difficult to enjoy the things that I used to. I desperately want those things back, but sometimes they feel so far away...

For most of my life I grew up in a religious household being told that 'porn is bad' without any sort of explanation or qualification, and for most of my early life that kept me away from porn. I remember my first introduction to porn was by a close friend of mine. I have always been somewhat of a 'stiff' or a 'prude' so shocking me was an easy and favorite past time of many of my friends. Anyway, I remember going to hang out at his house when he brought down his laptop and decided to shock me with the classically hilarious '

Spoiler

Two Girls, One Cup

' video. At the time I was mortified, I immediately went home and I could not speak for the rest of the day. 'Porn is bad'... Was my friend bad? Am I bad? I mean I was mostly disturbed, but a part of me did... feel weird? Did I like it? These were some of the questions that I found myself asking and it lit up a sort of grim curiosity in my young mind.

After that, porn was kind of an 'on again off again' part of my life during my pubescent years. I would cut underwear models out of magazines and whenever my parents would leave home, I would sneak onto the computer and find ways to bypass the web filters to find myself drowning eyes deep in a sea of naked models. I knew 'porn was bad', but it felt so good.

I remember renouncing porn a few times, once I threw away my little handmade notebook of underwear models and porn I printed from the web. I think the thing that kept me away from porn the longest... was when I accidentally let my little brother see what I was doing. I remember it so clearly... I was in early high school, probably a freshman, and one fateful day when my parent's weren't home my brother was downstairs loudly watching TV. I took this opportunity to sneak into the upstairs office and hop on the computer. Little to my knowledge, my younger brother decided he wanted to play. With the TV still blaring I assumed it was safe, so I just went along doing what I usually did (I didn't masturbate at the time, I was just into

Spoiler

watching sex, nudity, and light bdsm

). Anyway, he walked around the house looking for me until he walked right in on my 'surfing session'. He startled me when he said my name and I remember turning around to see the shock and horror in his eyes. I thought to myself 'What am I doing? This feels wrong, and now your selfish desires have hurt your own flesh and blood the same way that porn first hurt you.'

To this day I am still horrified that I was probably the person to introduce porn into my brother's life... Anyway, after that I was able to quit for a long time, that is until I got married.

I love my wife, she is my sun and moon, and she is the wind in my sails, but when we got married it was painfully obvious that sex just wasn't going to be a part of our relationship. At the time, I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought I was a pervert, I thought I was ugly and un-sexy, I thought I simply just wasn't good enough to turn her on. Long story short, much later she came out as asexual and emotional and sexual needs have been a strong talking point of our relationship ever since. Most of the time we can meet in the middle and I can say we are much happier now than we were then... mostly.

The only caveat to this story is that... during all of this drama I turned to PMO as a kind of sex surrogate. I justified it by saying that, if she isn't going to, then I need to take care of these needs myself. So that lead to this downward spiral of fear, anxiety, depression... Watching porn made me feel good in the moment, but afterwards I could only feel guilt, shame, apathy... I found myself resenting my wife for not having sex with me, I found myself spending hours watching videos, eating, doing nothing. I'm embarrassed to say it even began to spread into my work life, where I would take bathroom breaks to 'relieve' myself. The whole time I was justifying it by telling myself that the world is miserable and 'I deserve this, I deserve to feel good'. My hobbies became dull and uninteresting, I have gained just over 60 lbs, I don't feel good about myself... All of these things couldn't motivate me to change...

What's different this time, is that I recently came out to my wife about my porn addiction. She took it in stride, she told me that 'If you can't get it from me, then I see no reason why I should be jealous...', but I could see how much I hurt her. I remembered how shitty I felt when I hurt my brother with porn, now I have done the same thing to my wife. I desperately want to change, I want to be the man she saw in me when we got married... I have been unsuccessfully trying to quit porn for about a week now. I have made progress... I used to PMO easily 4 or 5 times a day, and for the past week I have managed to keep it to once a day, but my will power is only so strong... I don't know how to cultivate lasting change. I want to stop justifying it to myself, I want to be done. So that's why I came here.

I'm somewhat familiar with the tenants of NoFap, but I never signed up for an account because... until now, I believed that porn wasn't a problem and that if it ever became a problem, I could handle it on my own. I obviously can't and I am so thankful already that this community exists. The resources are insightful and amazing, and it is truly inspiring to see so many people lift each other up... I look forward to reading and learning and moving forward with this community.