I am a married father of 2 boys, living in Amsterdam with my african wife. For years I have struggled with low self esteem, destructive behaviours, alcohol and drug abuse, and in the last few years since getting clean of drugs I became addicted to porn and online sex chat to make me feel good about myself again. This has gone back and forth with periods of recovery, relapse, crisis, therapy, but has now reached a point I am going to lose everything if I do not quit this habit once and for all. I have borrowed money from friends to secretly fund my habit and it runs into the 1000s of euros. My wife caught me again this week and I confessed everything. I was even at the point of considering selling myself for money to try and clear the debt. I cannot carry on like this and I urgently need help.
Welcome to NoFap where you are amongst friends who are here to encourage you and sometimes challenge you but not judge you. The enemy is here to steal, kill and destroy. What are your current strategies for combating the enemy called PMO?
I sat down this morning and wrote both a confession, an 8 point life/change strategy and 8 point practical steps plan to ensure I get clean fast, stay clean and that if and when I relapse I am honest about it so my wife knows I am sticking to the plan. The sites I have been on cost about 1 eur per message and with thousands of messages sent, it is very easy to spend hundreds of euros a day on them if financial constraints are removed. Luckily I have other means to clear the debts, so now my dark secret about considering prostitution is out in the open, I can fix the problem and remove one of the main rationalisations I was using to continue the behaviour. Now it is a matter of 1 day at a time, abstinence and putting all my efforts to staying clean.
Oh, my. So sorry to hear your plight. How can we help keep you clean? When are you most vulnerable? What triggers you?
Perhaps being more financially open with your wife would help? The debt element of this offers an opportunity. I assume there is a credit card somewhere and payments must be made on it. If she has an accurate picture of the money you can both get a picture of where you are or or not using porn. This might help to rebuild trust which if there are secret credit cards I must imagine is running low.
Thanks for your words of support. I am now 5 days clean and fighting hard every day to keep strong. Mornings are the hardest, waking up with the urges, discomfort and pain, bad feelings and screaming urge to run. We are still both on the floor so even getting up is hard right now, but hopefully in a few more days I can get into a routine of daily exercise and meditation when I get up. Part of my plan includes reading my wedding vows and some of the nasty shit I said about my wife in the height of my lies and addiction. The first time this happened and I was caught I wrote a suicide note and disappeared for a day, ending up with drug addicts in the park, and was only saved by a random stranger who talked me around and showed me love (god intervening again). So I will read that every day too to keep my eyes and heart open to recovery. On the practical issues and finances, I used a secret account to get away with this for so long. After a big fight I gave her the account so there are no more secrets and lies which I can hide behind. My wife manages all our finances (she is an accountant and very smart) including our business here in Amsterdam. The next very painful step to make sure I never do this again is tell my friends who I borrowed money from what was going on with me, so they know not to enable me again if I try any more devious lies to start doing this again. I have very good friends and I know they will forgive me and help me through this.
Those are excellent and very, very brave steps. Congratulations for committing so strongly to your ending this nightmare. Now that you are on the road, just hold steady--don't punish yourself. Be firm in your resolve, but allow yourself the comfort that you're doing something about it.
Check out In Case You Didn't Know for strategies and tips which may help you along your journey. Now would be a great time for you to create your official journal. Go to the Reboot Logs and find your age group and begin your journal. Copy/ paste a link here so that we can find you and encourage you along your journey.
