My Problem

Porn has been my major vice since I can remember. I have been using it since around the age of 13. Started when I found my father's stash of books magazines and video tapes back in the mid 1990's. As with most pubescent males, once I found out what I can do with myself, I spent as much time as I could with doing it. This doesn't mean that I spent every waking hour, but at least once or twice a day it would happen. Things got worse when the internet became prevalent and I moved out on my own. The early 2000's while in college became a time when porn became easily accessible. Sure I had girlfriends and sexual partners, but masturbating was something for me to love me and I would do it at least 2 to 3 times a day and when I didn't have a partner or were by myself in upwards of 5 to 6 times a day if not more. I found the love of my life during that time, my wife of now 7 years who I have known for 10.

Before I met her, I was in a dry spell for a year without having sexual contact with another. Due to my high masturbation habits, the first month of sex with her resulted in me having a hard time getting off if I did get off, we are talking about upwards of an hour or two having sex without ejaculation, the wife at the time thought I had some super human stamina, how can a healthy 22 year old not be able to get off. This eventually subsided and sex became good again. After knowing what I know now, this was caused by my porn/masturbation habits. She knew that I masturbated, what guy didn't, but I never let her in on how often or what I watched/looked at while doing so. If it wasn't for her letting me have sex, I fully feel that I would have had full on erectile dysfunction by now!! Not saying that I didn't masturbate during this time, I just didn't do it nearly enough as I was getting laid all the time!! Obviously the constant sex wasn't going to stay forever, life happens, kids, jobs, etc.

By this time, internet porn was so prevalent, with the youporns and pornhubs all operational. Masturbating to video clips became boring as I watched the same clips over and over again. Then came the scenario porn as I am sure many of us have watched, the teacher hitting on her student, the parent of a friend, the cliche pizza delivery driver having his way with the customer that can't pay, watched them all and fantasied about them all!! But this too became boring, so the to keep the habits up, I had to find more stimulating material. This started when I signed onto an old email account and found an email conversation I had with a female before I met my wife where I was able to convince her to send me nude photos of her self, thinking about that encounter I once again masturbated to it. Finding this to be exciting, I wondered how many other females would send me naked pictures of them to me. Starting on craiglist, replying to the posting females posted in the casual encounters section, this became not enough as there were not many of them in my area, so I posted to the casual encounters and found that most who replied were spam, but the every the ones that were not and would send me pictures were worth it at the time as I could masturbate for weeks on them in the beginning. This too became old as there were not many women on this site. By this time, I had an iPhone, which made it sooooo much easier to find willing participants to send naked pictures of themselves as well as sooooo much easier to look at porn in discrete locations, which lead to you guessed it more masturbation!! Now that I had the smart phone, such apps as kik and meetme.com became my go to place to find women to send naked pictures of themselves to me. This all changed when a year ago, my wife found out what I was doing when she went to answer a text message from a friend of mine, like most I apologized profusely proclaiming that I would never do this again, we even went to couples counseling where I used this time against her and pick apart our flaws the whole while not working on myself and not thinking what I was doing was so bad as I was not meeting the girls, not whole heartily noticing how upset my wife was about what I was doing. Once we stopped counseling cause we were "healed" I went back to it focusing now on email and cragislist again as I learned not to do the apps as you get caught!! Remember I never dealt with my main issue and simply proclaimed that the issues we had were the problem!!

Eventually, you need to wake up and realize what you are doing is effecting not only you, but everyone you care about!! Luckily, she found out what I was doing and confronted me while on a family vacation this year. Not the best time for this to come out, but it did and I am glad it did. Yes she was pissed and had every right to, all that counseling working on us, nothing changed!! But that time I did look at myself really realized what I was doing to her, my family and myself and vowed to not do that again. When we got back, we went back to the marriage counselor, who referred me to an individual counselor and am now working on myself. Going through my deviant behavior cycle and my other issues that I have had. The counselor suggested I get onto yourbrainonporn.com. I resisted at first, proclaiming that I can cold turkey my porn habits, which worked for awhile, but once again my flawed think took over. My wife just caught me looking at video's on youtube of girls strip teases. Once again I proclaimed it isn't porn, but in reality, I would easily masturbate to it, so yes it is porn. I needed something as masturbating to just your thoughts is a long long process when you are so use to getting help!! So now that I know I have a problem and working on it with a counselor, I need added support!! I finally decided to check out that website and in the support section it had a link here, where I can find support for my problem. I am ready for change, I have hit the bottom and do not want to be there anymore, I understand I am probably reaching a lofty goal, but I want to stop masturbating, I know it wont happen over night, but I am going to start with not doing it for a week starting now. That is my story, there are several like it I am sure, but this is mine. Thank you for having this forum and I am open to all advise you all might have.

 

Thank you very much, I think the journal will help out a lot and the specific goal setting.

 

Thank you for that. Initially, with my wife 10 years ago the sex was worse, we have a great sex life today, generally at minimum once a week, but usually at least twice. My son is older, almost 8, so that is not our issue, but when he was younger I was in the same boat as you, and it seemed my masturbation habits increased at this time and was probably a big contributor to my current problems. One of my biggest problems is that I thought that I needed to get off at minimum of once a day if not more, if I didn't I would feel down. Working with my therapist, I used it as a way to relieve stress, one of the things I am working on is other stress relieving activities, like exercising, breathing techniques, yoga and the support from this group. I want to thank everyone on here for being brave enough to post and help each other out, it helps knowing I am not alone in this fight.