Porn Has Destroyed My Mind and Sexuality

I'm 27 years old, a Singaporean Chinese. I've been a porn user since I was 10 or 12. A month ago, I had a newfound motivation to deal with my anger problem, since it has cost me many friendships. Things were going great; I had a morning ritual everyday to keep me disciplined, to brainwash myself not to get angry. And then, I got curious whether if porn was an attributing factor to my anger... That's when I realized I had an addiction, and life has been hell ever since my struggle with cold turkey.

I think the fact that I tried to stop watching porn made it even harder to stop it, specifically because the type of porn I'm addicted to is especially deviant. It has an extremely taboo nature to it, so trying to stop it everyday was merely tempting me to consume it all the more. I've relapsed several times over the past few weeks when I gave in to that feeling of deviance.

Things got even worse when I tried to make myself empathize with victims of this deviant act, thinking that if I empathize with them, know the kind of suffering they go through, I'll refrain from masturbating to this kind of porn, that I'll guilt myself outta it. I was wrong, dead wrong. Not only did I started masturbating to those victim stories, in my mind, I've started associating this sexual fantasy with real life rape.

Yes, I'm addicted to rape porn. What was once an imaginary fantasy has just exploded into something deadly.

I'm not sure how it started, to be honest. How did most pedophiles become pedophiles? One day, all of the sudden, I just stumbled onto some rape scene on a TV show, and I got turned on. Should you execute me for that? Put me on trial for a desire I never wished for? God knows I've beaten myself up over the past weeks, just contemplating locking myself away and tossing away the key. I've taken measures to change my sexuality, but it seems that the more I tried to do - watching documentaries about sexual assault, weaning myself off porn, guilting and criticizing myself - the worse it got. It's like, the more I tried to defeat it, the more I crave for it, and the more relapses I had.

I haven't given up yet, of course, hence my confession here. I've removed most of the triggers that led to my masturbation. I've planned to do jogging every morning starting tomorrow (something I never do at all), hoping that exercise could provide the dopamine to affect my sex drive and confidence somehow. I've changed the password to my wireless connection several times, and I'll be changing it again after posting this, so that I won't have access to the Internet. The password will be handed over to the therapist I'm seeing, only to be returned after the 90 days challenge. Naturally, this means I've also planned to tell my therapist about everything about my paraphilia.

Part of me wished that I never associated real rape with rape fantasy, to be honest, wishing that I remained ignorant about "the harmful effects of porn", so that I might've treated porn as just some harmless virtual simulation I would never perform in real life instead of a dangerous deviance I need to be constantly afraid of. I'm not saying that the NoFap process is to be blamed, but... one could only imagine how things would've turned out differently. I mean, I saw a few girls at my local library just a few hours ago, and all I thought about was how I wanted to tie them down and do awful things to them. That never happened before with real girls I met. Ever.

But yeah, something's obviously wrong with me. I was at the library because I wanted to borrow self-help books that teach people how to overcome biastophilia (desires of rape), but big surprise - there is no sympathy or concern for would-be rapists. I found nothing on the subject, period. God knows what my therapist would do to me if I confess to her my horrible desires, being a woman herself.

A little about my backstory, for those who care about the environmental causes of such desires. As a kid, I was a constant target of bullying and I was beaten a lot (with a tiny cane) by my parents as a form of corporal punishment. I'm not a misogynist; I don't have anything against women. In spite of the two crushes who rejected my confessions, I made some great friends with many female classmates and teachers. And yes, I'm single and without a girlfriend. And no, I'm not going to go out and find one to somehow boost my confidence and feel good about women. After hearing my desires, you would probably advice me to stay away from women for their safety anyway.

There's also one more thing that might be relevant... I was molested as a child. But you know, I really should stop telling people that, because "molested" feels like such an exaggeration.

I was about 10 or 12 - yes, around the same age when my porn use started, whether if you wanted to make that connection or not. I was skipping class in a public toilet stall when I saw some guy jacking off in the next stall. I peeked, and he got angry. He busted into my stall and forced me to rub him off. I cried, but not really because of the disgusting nature of the act and more because of how aggressive this 20-something was acting. I was way too young to knew that I was being "molested", so-called. All I knew was that some jerk was shouting at me, and I was terrified not by the molestation, but the shouting itself. And also the kicking in of my toilet stall, of course. He had to kick twice or thrice before the door bust open.

But you know, I never associated it with my rape tendencies because 1) it's textbook cliche, the whole "his bad childhood led him to desire rape" nonsense, and 2) I wasn't really traumatized, not consciously. Most of the time, in these cases, children associated their molestation with their sexuality in one way or another, which left their own sexuality and confidence distorted. For me, I was lucky to have been naive enough to register only the shouting and the guy's violent door-kicking as the only bad things that happened to me, so I cried it off and went on the rest of my day, continuing playing hooky. I didn't remember it like it was something traumatizing; I merely forgot about it like it was just some trivial and unfortunate incident.

However, subconsciously, it might've altered something. I don't know; I'm no psychologist. The coincidence of the age being near the same time I got into porn... it is a bit alarming. It would be nice if that was the answer to my paraphilia; at least I would have an excuse for being the horrible human being I am today, not just... some would-be rapist spawned from hell like Ted Bundy.

I'll be honest with you. As a child, I have wondered if I could've been a good person. I was more innocent, full of child-like ideals about love, about friendship, and about justice, not this messed up individual. So yes, I am aware that porn has taken all of that from me (well, porn and the bullying and the parental beating, but you know). It will take me a long time to get over my sexual desires. In fact, even after the 90 days challenge (which again, I've constantly failed for the past few weeks, by the way), I might not have cravings for porn anymore, but I might still have those deviant sexual desires. That's a big concern of mine, that even after the NoFap challenge, I won't change. The damage has been done to my brain. My sexuality won't magically transform. That's what worries me. This here is a kid who has associated rape fantasies with sex since he was a child, after all. How likely is he going to change his sexuality?

But I think I've said enough. I'm not really sure why I decided to post this here. To confess? To leave some account of the damages porn can do to a kid? To inform you that violent porn can lead to rape? I don't know. I haven't hurt anyone... yet. But if I do, you'll know what happened.