On the subject of Chat...

I am only now Beginning to Realize that the world is full of people looking for connection.

I myself am desperately seeking an opportunity to talk, to find a friend who truly gets what I’m going through.
But because for almost my whole life I’ve managed to feed this addiction for connection with sexual chat-I find myself at a loss as to how to truly get to know people.

On NoFap there are so many of us who crave that connectivity and when you crave something like this (something that is so essential to life and well being) for a long time...the need for it becomes an obsession.

We try and say that we have it under control, that we will keep control even as we start to blur the line between acceptable and questionable subject matters.

We promise will just talk and then slowly become aware that we are doing that thing again. That we are on the verge of completely falling off this path we want so much to walk at even the hint that someone out there might understand us, that they might in fact like us and want to get to know us.

So we try to stay to the script, we are determined to behave and not delve into the overtly sexual talk right away.
Jokes and complements lead to light flirting and then all of a sudden you’ve found yourself in a situation that will give you zero connection.

Chatting has the ability to bring us so much closer but there are lines that need be set and rules we each must choose to follow.

There is a hum in your chest as your blood pumps. There is a slight ringing in your ears as that addiction starved brain begins to take control of the keyboard.

In the best situation we will realize what we are doing before photos or lewd talking is exchanged, before the web cam turns on. We move to sway the conversation in another direction and hope that we won’t go there again. The truth is for those few minutes of sharing (before the conversations got hacked by our addictions) there was truth and honesty.

In these moments we are given the choice to find true connection in the midst of this chaos or to go back down the path we’ve traveled before.
One is a walk in sunshine and full of amazing opportunity, the other is done in secret shame and will continue this cycle of feeling a “need” and then “fulfilling” it. Leaving both parties tired and frustrated at their inability to separate true intimacy from addictive behavior.

We have the opportunities to talk to one another, to share our woes respectfully in a way that triggers are avoided and where our focus is on the moment to moment discussion. Let’s not soil it by letting our fantasies about who is on the other end get the better of us. Instead let’s actually begin listening to the person on the other side of the screen.

We don’t have to choose sexually charged chat!

We don’t have to continue to tie connection (that thing we’ve wanted for so long) and sex together in this way, that makes it impossible to feel actual intimacy with another person.

Let’s try listening to eachother and enjoying this process of getting to know someone! Without any agenda of getting off at the end.

These people on the other side are struggling too and they deserve our respect more than a photo of our junk or a description of us pleasing ourself.

I say this out of true love and with the understanding that this is a work in progress, that we all are in fact a work in progress.

Let’s be better to eachother! Don’t we all deserve that?