My Story: Sexualizing my Childhood Trauma

Hello all,

I’ve lurked on this site for a number of years but I’m tired of being in the shadows so here I am. This is a long post and I hope I will be forgiven for that. I feel a need to tell my story, partly for selfish reasons but also in the hope that it may be helpful to others here, as it doesn’t seem to fit the more standard model that I’ve seen on this site. It’s in many ways a fairly ordinary story but it also seems to fall somewhat outside the lines of the typical experience that many people here have shared.

I’ve been viewing porn and masturbating to it for over thirty years. As a child of the 80s, I hit puberty in the age before the internet so the first ten years of so of my viewing activity was relegated to magazines and the occasional video. My viewing of porn was frequent but sporadic up to that point (I would sometimes go for weeks and even months without viewing). My habit didn’t start to accelerate until I first heard about YouPorn in 2007 and began frequenting it. Just for background, my viewing tastes have remained fairly vanilla. I like viewing heterosexual one-on-one sex acts, am not into kink of any sort, and my tastes have never veered into gay porn. Nor have they strayed into child porn, violent porn, or any other kind of extreme content. I know many folks have suffered those fates but for some reason I have always remained interested in the same kinds of content and nothing else, no matter how frequent my viewing has become. One of my main problems is that I tend to get very fixated on body parts, sort of an effect of an obsession with the “slam-cam” closeups that are such a huge part of the porn experience. Despite my problems, I have generally not suffered from erectile dysfunction and my libido has always been very strong. Probably it has been impacted to some degree by my porn usage and I have at times experienced some performance issues but I think these issues have been more due to anxiety-related factors, which likely stem from childhood issues (I may have been molested but have no specific memories of this). Generally speaking, my previous partners have all been happy with how I “perform” in the bedroom. Though I’m very curious to see what kind of lover I’d be without the crutch of porn and masturbation.

For added context, I think it’s important to include that I’m a childhood trauma survivor. Many of the attitudes and behaviors around sex that I have had throughout my adult life were learned early in my childhood. As I stated above, I may have been sexually abused but I have no memories. I do have memories of very blurred boundaries with one of my parents, including the sharing of details about their sex life when I was still only a young boy. This is a form of emotional incest. My mother also worked in a strip club for a time, right as I was entering puberty. As a child, I was lonely and bored a lot, often left alone at home, bullied at home and at school, and sometimes had few friends (though I did also have periods with more friends and have been fortunate in my adult life to have many good friends). Before I discovered masturbation, I escaped from these harsh realities by watching way too much TV, playing video games, eating junk food, and getting lost in the sports page. Once I found masturbation and porn, I was off to the races. Partly there was the natural excitement of discovering my sexuality that everyone experiences. But the seeds of sexualizing stress, boredom, and loneliness were also present and already beginning to take root, unbeknownst to me.

I first began my quest to quit porn during the summer of 2011. Since then, I’ve made numerous attempts, going as long as two months without viewing porn or masturbating. But each time, I’ve fallen back in.

I am aware that the relapses are not random but, in my case, always precipitated by emotional triggers. In the past, I attempted to quit through acts of self-will. Needless to say, these attempts have not been at all successful. I have since began to seek the help of a 12-step group, in addition to the help I’ve received here.

Two months ago, I broke up with my ex-girlfriend. We loved each other (we still do, although it wasn’t working). The sex was amazing in many ways, the best of my life really, but it also felt impacted by my porn use for a number of reasons. First of all, the more sex I got from my ex, the more I tended to crave it from her. I know that many on this site may think to themselves, “What’s the problem, you were having sex with an actual person whom you loved and you say the sex was great. So what if you kept coming back for more? Who wouldn’t?” But, for me, the wanting more sex feels the same as the kind of compulsive behaviors that accompany my porn use and masturbation. So, I never felt the contentment and satisfaction after sex that I have glimpsed is possible through a few fleeting encounters with previous lovers. Additionally, although I loved (and still love) my ex-girlfriend, I almost always felt disconnected from her once the sex was over. Often, I felt slightly depressed and almost a bit drugged after we would finish. I believe this was mainly due to the fact that our relationship started very fast and had some difficult circumstances that led to an unhealthy enmeshment. We started having sex before I really felt ready and so I was never able to feel the kind of trust and relaxation that allows a person to be completely unguarded and at ease with a partner. So, sex felt exciting and sort of risky, which activated my trauma history and prevented me from feeling truly connected in the way we all want.

That said, when we were having regular sex, I felt no need to look at porn because she satisfied me completely in the bedroom (though, as I said above, I felt emotionally disconnected most of the time) but when the problems in our relationship began to intensify and sex was no longer happening daily, I began to turn back to porn and masturbation, out of frustration and anxiety. As long as my ex was willing to be my personal porn star and give me as much supply as I wanted, whenever I wanted it, I didn’t feel the need to look at porn or masturbate. Once she began to somewhat restrict access, due to the problems in our relationship, I needed to find other ways to get my fix.

The other interesting thing is that my ex was upset about my porn use, in a way that no other previous girlfriend had been. Part of why I find this interesting is that she herself is very beautiful, a seductress if ever there was one, and she posts sexy pictures of herself on social media. She’s not, she knows it, and she knows how to wield it. She’s not a bitch about it but she knows that she’s pretty irresistible to a large percentage of the population, both men and women. So she is a sexual object, especially for many of the men who are friends with her on her social media accounts. I’m not suggesting in any way that any of the harassment she has received over the years is in any way her fault or that she is responsible. I’m just observing the dynamic that she experiences as a result of posting pictures of herself that many men then use to objectify her (I did this as well when we first started dating so I am no angel). There’s a certain irony in the fact that the woman who had the strongest negative reaction to my porn use is also far and away the most objectified of any girlfriend I’ve had. I’ve had other very attractive girlfriends but none who used their sexuality in the way she does.

Anyway, my porn use became a central issue between us, because she felt convinced that I desired the women in the videos more than her, that it began to significantly affect our relationship. In particular, it affected the frequency of our sex as the relationship continued, due to the overall tension it also created between us.

Now that we are broken up, I miss her so much it shocks me (though the breakup was mutual and I decided to go no-contact with her, partly due to fears that I was caught in a destructive pattern with her and would continue to sexualize the stress that our interactions were causing me). I also miss sex with her to the point that it is agonizing. I wake up every morning lost in the most excruciating fantasies about the sex we had together. This seems perhaps partly normal but also seems to be happening to an unnatural degree in my case.

As for what I’ve done in response, I have not viewed porn in 37 days. I haven’t masturbated or orgasmed either, though I’ve had some brief flirtations with temptation to masturbate over this time. I have pictures and videos of her and us but I haven’t viewed them in over a month and a half. Viewing them activates the porn addict in me. There’s no difference to me between seeing those pictures and videos and seeing actual porn videos. Except for the fact that if I were to see them now, in the aftermath of our breakup, it would trigger feelings of intense grief and horny-ness, which would be followed by shame due to loss of self-control. Also, they are a pale imitation of the actual experience of being with my ex. Although there was a feeling of overall dissatisfaction for me in the relationship and after making love, there was and still is also a lot of love between us. I felt loved and adored by her, especially in the bedroom, and this is something that I miss intensely and know I cannot hope to get from jerking off to videos of her or videos with strangers. My self-respect depends upon not looking at any of those pictures or videos. I would just delete them but feel like I can’t take the risk of seeing them right now so they remain in a hidden folder on my phone. So far, so good.

It’s excruciating though. I haven’t seen much in the way of the topic of the connection between porn viewing and objectification of partners in these forums. It seems like most guys (and some women) are struggling with cravings specific to porn. In my case, I have experienced that for sure but what I struggle with much more is the effect that porn viewing and objectification of the female form in general has had on me in my daily life. Although I have women who are friends and I’ve had my share of girlfriends, I have a hard time relating to women without sexualizing them. Especially if they are strangers. And, even when I am involved with someone and regularly having sex, I feel compulsion and dissatisfaction. The more sex I get, the more I want. I realize that there is a sex addiction component operating here (though I’ve never cheated on a partner and am not promiscuous). That’s why I’ve gotten involved with a 12-step group (there’s also a love addiction component for me, as childhood feelings of abandonment are activated in the aftermath of a breakup and the urge to break no-contact becomes stronger and stronger over time). These behaviors and their grip on me bother me to no end and I wish to be free of them.

So, I’m coming out of the shadows for the first time, at least in this forum. I’m 37 days in without viewing porn or orgasming and have largely stayed away from masturbation, though as I said there have been a few dicey moments with that. I’m aspiring to do 90 days and see where things stand at that point. I’m under no illusions that 90 days without these behaviors will magically cure what ails me. I’ve been masturbating to porn for over 30 years and reinforcing compulsive behaviors during that whole time. So, three months is probably not sufficient to rewire the system.

I’m interested to hear from any other guys (and gals) who’ve struggled with obsessive fantasizing about sex with partners and ex-partners, as well as objectification of them and others. I wish to develop healthier ways of relating to sex and it would help to know I’m not the only one who struggles with this particular issue.

Thanks to anyone who’s taken the time to read this. I hope you found something in it that helps you.