I probably don’t fit in here, but…

For starters, I’m a real-life lesbian, aka *not* the kind you’ve seen online (I can assure you that 95% of that stuff is fake af). Also, I’m probably older than some people on here. I’m on the autism spectrum as well, though I don’t believe that has a huge impact on how my brain responds to pornographic material.

I didn’t start viewing video material until I got a smartphone in 09 & was already arguably an adult. Before that it was just a couple of times viewing magazines 2-3x in an old truck in my neighborhood as a kid, playboys at my uncle’s house 1x, and some laughable 70s gay male VHS tapes I saw 1x in college. Other than those isolated incidents some occasional erotica reading or, you know, a few of those choice scenes in popular novels that get passed around in 7th grade.

I discovered M on my own when I was under 10 & didn’t even know what I was doing. I eventually read a book my very religious parents had but never used called “How to talk to your kids about sex” by a Baptist publisher, so it was filled with faulty information, such as “99% of homosexuals M’ed in childhood or adolescence.” I was not well versed in statistics at the time so it didn’t occur to me that all so 99% of all *humans* M, mostly starting as young people. That was the beginning of my guilt and self-hatred as an internally homophobic lesbian, but that’s another story.

I felt very guilty about M’ing and would try to stop at times, but I just couldn’t. I stopped feeling guilty as a teen when I realized I was not harming anyone. I didn’t really fantasize anyway. It just felt like a very pleasant physical act to me. My relative inability to fantasize is probably part of autism spectrum, actually.

I never felt that M interfered with my life in any way. There were times when I could go 2-3 weeks without M’ing and not even notice, but it was always a part of my life.

In terms of P, my use increased verrry gradually over time after I got the smartphone. I never felt great about viewing P because 1) the women in hetero material usually do things that are clearly physically painful to them and it’s very obviously exploitative, avd 2) the lesbian stuff is so fake and far removed from the reality that it was not a turn-on to me. The only thing I watched for years was women enjoying themselves solo and one or two sites that had natural-looking women who appeared to actually be excited about being with other women.

Still, for the longest, I would have brief P “kicks” where I’d watch every day for a few days or 3x in one week but then not watch for a couple of weeks or so. That didn’t seem problematic at the time.

I married the love of my life in 2016, a wonderful lady who is the best person I’ve ever known. She knew that I viewed P on occasion and never thought it was a problem. She didn’t feel jealous or anything.

In recent years I started reading a ton of fan fiction, a lot of which is more or less erotica, which has a tagging system that lets the reader choose very specific scenarios. But it also inevitably exposes you to the idea of behaviors you’d never considered before. That is when I became interested in certain kinks. Subsequently, my tastes in video P became less and less discriminate to the point that I was regularly viewing things I never would have 10 or even 5 years ago.

Cut to now: it has escalated especially over the last several months because I was on medical leave (depression, exhaustion, anxiety, burnout) from my work and am now unemployed. I have struggled with what to do with the rest of my career and have felt worthless.

With so much time on my hands I have filled the void with P. The amount of time spent with it has increased dramatically, and I began to view more and more sketchier stuff. The breaking point for me was when I started visiting a random roulette style video chat site. I won’t go into detail except to say that I don’t recognize myself anymore.

It has begun affecting my relationship with my wife and I in subtle but negative ways, mainly in terms of my inability to O with her. And there have been times I’ve spent with P that I should’ve spent with her. We even had a conflict about this a couple of weeks ago. And yet I still continued until yesterday.

I read up on the role of dopamine. I believe my medical situation, job loss, and loss of identity due to giving up my previous career has left a void in my life that I tried to suppress by flooding myself with dopamine rather than dealing with my real emotions.

So many things have happened in the past year & a half that have led me to want to stuff my emotions down and not feel anything: my best friend from college died suddenly due to a freak accident at home, my cousin was killed in a car wreck and my uncle was injured, my mom was in a car wreck the next day after dropping my uncle home from the hospital. She is still in a brace and on longterm physical therapy. The pandemic. The world in general.

Real life got too hard so I just pushed everything away. I can’t stay like this. I want to enjoy things again, to love my wife as she deserves to be lived, and appreciate the small things again. I don’t want to stay numb like this even though there are hard things in my life.

I would appreciate any encouragement if you’ve read anything here that you relate to. Thanks for reading.

 

I’m feeling depressed today and a lot of physical pain. I have very bad tension in my shoulders plus aggravation from longterm lower back problems. I am having trouble doing anything productive so I’m watching a tv show and feeling like a loser. I know I don’t want to PMO but I don’t know what else to do. I forgot to take my meds this morning so my brain is very sluggish and tired. I also have ADHD.

 

Thanks for your kind words. I’m really hoping it will help.

 

Day 2

I have had urges today but was able to suppress them long enough to not give in, so far. I’m not taking anything for granted.

The urge happened when I was getting frustrated with my work. I’m going to guess this is part of the pattern. I started feeling frustrated, had a lot of feelings of self doubt. I got hyperfocused on planning rather than doing because I felt overwhelmed by the work task. That’s when the urge happened.

 

Thanks for the kind and extensive response. My diagnoses are recent. Semi-verbal boys who bounced off the wall got assessed for autism & ADHD when I was a kid, not quiet tomboyish girls who read all the time and made good grades but stood on the fringes of social life.

One of the gifts of the spectrum is stating things clearly and directly. One of the not-gifts is having people interpret directness as being rude when my words only mean what I say, nothing behind them, but directness works well for writing.

My job I had to leave was being a tenured professor. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do or felt I had the ability to do. Getting through all the study I had to do was very hard because I don’t deal well with abstract concepts, and that’s all a PhD in any subject is. I had to suppress my autistic traits carefully and constantly in order to pass in the academic world. It was a lot like being gay and in the closet. I had to scrutinize and mask every word, action, and make sure I created the illusion of adequate eye contact.

My dad is a retired Baptist preacher. Obviously there were conflicts when I came out to him & my mom. He didn’t come to the wedding when my wife & I got married. I have experienced a lot of hurt.

It doesn’t really matter how long you go to school or if you’re smart or anything. Anybody can get sucked into addictive behaviors. I am also a recovering alcoholic. I think that’s part of why this stuff seems so obvious to me now that I stepped back and examined.

 

It’s day 5 and I’m still hanging in there, but just barely.

 

You got that right. I think I relapsed today. It was MO without the P. Is that a relapse? Probably so.