Quitting P to become a better husband

Hi everyone, here’s the short version: I’m a late 30s guy who’s been addicted to PMO for a long time, and want to quit my PA so that I can become a good partner, and hopefully a good father soon as well. The reason I’m posting my intro here instead of in ‘Newbies’ is because this whole thing is about my relationship. If I were deciding to be single then I wouldn’t really care so much, but I want to be the best husband I can be, in all the ways I can be. I don’t have to say in this forum how PA, MA, and SA ruin relationships. Next post will be a really long version of the same story for those interested.

Thanks.

 

Following is the long version, which is good to get down on screen, mostly for my own sake, but also to share. I’ll keep it dot-pointy, and keep away from emotions. It’s been a rollercoaster.
I also want to be a little careful with personal info. In my town, my partner and I are quite well known and it would not do well for our careers for people to know this is me, so sorry for the gaps.

Getting addicted:
I started MO at 10 years old, before I really knew what it was and was quite soon addicted.
I found P at about 12 and PMO became my daily ritual, and soon like 6x per day.
At 12 I also found cigarettes and cannabis, and became addicted.
Around this age I also started having suicidal thoughts, which led on to attempts.
As you can see from this list, I have an addictive personality.
It looks simple in dot form, but life isn’t, and other chronic health issues from early teens that I still suffer today. That was just enough of a distraction for me to think “poor me” and so never really face myself in the mirror. Added to this, I was highly intelligent, good looking, and an athletic (when healthy) and i think those things made me selfish.

Finding meditation:
At 15 I found meditation. I consider myself so incredibly lucky that I had this thing that saved my life. If there is one thing that I recommend, it’s meditation. Not only did it save my life, but it showed me how to love. Over about a ten year period it turned that asshole into a loving human being and that’s worth more to me now than ever. It also gave me a career. I identify as a yogi and I’m a meditation teacher. More on this later.

Quitting addictions:
The first thing I quit was my eating disorder. (oops I forgot that one on the list above). I was collapsing daily at home, and when the doc tested my blood, all was laid bare. It was really the only addiction that saw the cold hard light. It’s something I still wrestle with. The self-inflicted pain of privation is so numbing and comforting all at once that it will be a life-long battle.
Then I quit cigarettes. I think 1998. It was hard. I’d have the occasional cigarette for years after, but I knew I’d won after a couple years. I still get cravings, but haven’t had a puff since 2012. When I get cravings, they kind of almost feel nice now. Like a memory of battles won.
Then I quit cannabis. It was the end of 2000, I had a contract for a good job starting the following year and the contract said random drug testing. Quitting cannabis was easy, but that made sleep even harder so I needed to PMO even more times each night before bed.
I quit social media a few years ago, and a couple of months ago quit youtube. I have nothing against youtube, but it was wasting big blocks of time so I guess I’m taking a ‘break’.
There are two addictions I haven’t managed to quit. One is P and the other is sugar. Both I’ve tried in the past and failed repeatedly. But I know I can quit things, because I’ve done it before. It’s just that these two things go so deep into my childhood that they are, in a way, a part of my daily experience, the make-up of my brain, and essentially who I am today.

Even if I beat all my addictions, I know I’ll get addicted to something else in the future, and have to quit it later on. But my recent addictions like social media and youtube haven’t owned me for so long, so were easy to quit. I think I know how to quit something now. I have to wind it down, and then finally go clean. But I’m not sure - maybe P is different for me.

S:
I came to sex late in life because I did so much PMO. I didn’t like S so much when I first tried it. The O part was amazing but the rest was a dull version of P. But then I found some long term partners who were really into S. Looking back now, I think they were all SA. I don’t want to speak badly about them, but that’s how I see it now. And so I became SA. This ten year period is hard to explain, but to simplify, when so much of a relationship is based on S, then the other parts of the relationship are comparatively smaller, no matter how close, intimate and tight the relationship is. This is a really important point for anyone who’s reading this thinking “a relationship between two SAs must be amazing!”

My partner now:
When I met my current partner we were friends first - for two years. She saw the effect I had on women, how i was with women and I never hid anything from her. In fact have always been brutally honest with her - I thought she was gay and just a good friend. She also told me early on how she wasn’t really into S. It just wasn’t big in her life and she didn’t really like it.

Two years later she asked me to be her bf out of the blue. It was a shock. I had this “I thought you were gay” thought, then “but you’re my friend” then “but I’m not attracted to you” then my brain got smart and said to me “maybe this is your chance to have a relationship that’s not based on S” thanks brain, best idea ever. She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever been in a long-term relationship with and I feel super-lucky to have broken the cycle I was in by finding someone who is so much more balanced in this way and I’m learning how to have a relationship based on shared values and activities and not just getting each other off.

So I said yes and moved to her country. Been together for 3 years now and I’ve always been honest about my MO and PMO but she doesn’t want to know. We’ve spoken about what it’s been like for me going from a lifestyle with a lot of S to one with not much S, and how that means I end up doing more MO to satisfy my cravings but she’s just not interested in the topic.

She’s commented before how she doesn’t look like the SAs or my other partners did, and I know that weighs on her body issues. It doesn’t matter what I say, because she knows me from before I was with her.
I know she grew up in a family where S is a taboo subject, so raising this stuff in conversation is really hard. Harder because now I’m her boyfriend, and so she’s implicitly involved in the conversation even if we’re just talking about me.
She can talk negatively about the SAs and I don’t know if that’s because she actually sees them as ‘freaks’ or if there’s some other reason behind it. But at the same time she loves it when I get hit on in public and I turn the other girls down. I’ve always been faithful and so I know she trusts me.

Nofap:
So anyway, here’s the reason I’m here. We’re getting married end of this year and after that, next year we’ll start trying for children. A PMO addiction is bad enough for a single guy, but I think a PMO addiction is worse for a husband or a father. I want to be there for her 100%, 100% of the time. I don’t want to be distracted by thinking of S when I could be being intimate in other ways with her.

Another thing is that my partner is an SJW and works with gender a lot. You might think “how does this relate?” but I personally have a real problem with the P industry and how it treats women and fosters unhealthy stereotypes and influences children. I have nothing against P if it’s people getting kicks out of uploading home videos but the industry as a whole I’m very much against. I want to quit P so that I don’t support that industry, but also that it doesn’t clash with so much of what my partner believes in and works with.

Development in meditation:
There are some personal benefits I want as well and one of them is to do with meditation like I said earlier. I’ve been meditating for nearly a quarter of a century, and have come a long way. I can achieve some remarkable things with my mind, and this path is my true calling.
Here’s the big thing. Meditation and P, MO are opposites. I can say from firsthand experience that the benefits that you get from meditation get mitigated by P and MO and social media etc.

Plan:
My first goal is to quit P entirely, and only MO max once per day.

I quit videos on 27 july and decided to quit pictures after a few weeks, but after reading this forum I got super motivated so quit all P the next day (28th). I also want to keep MO to only max once per day (no binges). Eventually I would like to only MO once per week or so. I don’t see MO as bad in itself, and I enjoy it, but I just think that there are better things to do with my time, and I want to have that time available to be the partner that I would want my girlfriend to have. I’ve planned a bunch of tools to help me including: cbd oil to help the insomnia, gym more, visiting this forum, indulging in better food, revising goals and tools where necessary.

I know I don’t have all the answers and I’m here on this forum to learn from others. Who knows what challenges I’ll face here. Maybe I’ll do a full reboot some time. Maybe I’ll fail hopelessly. Who knows. There’s a deep reason for my PMO addiction that I’ll cover in a journal when I finally start one. I know what that reason is, and it’s the thing I’ll eventually have to face down the road.

Hugs to you all.

Oh question, do I journal here or in the age range forum?

 

journaling in my phone each day, uploading now:

day 1 29/7: horny, motivated, read stories on nofap to understand prob. Wrote intro/bio for nofap. Didn’t MO.
day 2 30/7: Brain foggy. Maybe too much cbd last night. But feel good. Think i will journal weekly. Managed to not MO. Super horny, super hard all the time. Can’t help accidentally touching myself all the time. Jog with friend to distract self. Tried to sleep with no cbd and no MO, didn’t manage to sleep until waaay late.
day 3 31/7: Woke with soul-crushing nightmares. Early swim to distract myself. This is hard. Managed to MO with no P. Long time to O, maybe an hour? Much harder without P. Am much more sensitive with 2 days off though. Afternoon to the gym, sauna too. Glad I did MO during the day so I didn’t get a random boner in the sauna with naked people around!! :O Took lots of cbd again to sleep but don’t want to become dependent. Good sleep after both MO during the day and cbd.
day 4 1/8: SO off on a trip for couple days. MO. Don’t know why. maybe chaser from yesterday, urges too strong. will try to not MO tomorrow. Read a bunch of NoFap posts. They keep making me cry. Especially the SO stories are just so heartbreaking. I spent half the day crying then had to try to cheer up with chocolate to go to work. being an empath can be tricky at times. Swim after work was nice. Super tough to fall asleep but no cbd.
day 5 2/8: woke at 2am with bone chilling nightmares and a banging headache. Lay as still as I could until alarm went off at 4:30 for meditation and all I could do was take aspirin and water and lie perfectly still. First time i’ve missed my meditation in a while. At 7am I gave in and MO which always fixes the headache. Well it got better but still slight headache during the day. Wonder if it’s related to cutting down MO so much.

Thoughts: 5 days no P has been easy. But going from MO 3-6x per day down to 0-1x per day is super hard! Maybe I’m not addicted to P. Maybe I’m just a Sex addict and PMO has just been the best substitute for sex. Especially when my SO doesn’t want to and I can’t get to sleep. Maybe I need to quit MO instead? Will see how things go over the next few weeks.

 

Day 6 3/8: long work day, managed to not MO though urges strong. Work was a great distraction. Bought flowers and cleaned house for SO return. SO came back very late so late night.
Day 7 4/8: Still managed to get up 4:30 to meditate even though the late night so happy about that. Work then cycle with SO, swim and picking wild berries to freeze for winter. Wonderful day together. Sex with SO but neither of us managed to O. Still nice affection and closeness. Our togetherness is amazing at the moment.
Day 8 5/8: Swim after morning shift. So horny it’s almost overwhelming. Can’t focus on anything else. Feel like I’m gonna explode. Want to MO so badly, but also want to be able to not MO. Round and round my head in circles “you should just MO, you’re only quitting P”, then “but prove to yourself that MO doesn’t own you!” Ended up wasting whole day before heading out to evening shift. I’m really struggling with this.
Day 9 6/8: Swim after work - chilly today. Hung out with SO almost all day except for a couple of hours I was at the archives writing in the afternoon. S in the afternoon, both O’d. SO really enjoyed it. She’s super affectionate at the moment.
Day 10, 7/8: Tenth day no P! No P craving, but extra MO craving. Swim after morning shift then lay in the sun tanning. No evening shift but I didn’t manage to write. My procrastinating is getting super bad. I seem to be able to do anything except the work I need to do on my computer. I used to MO and then get down to at least some work. Now I’m almost completely useless and I don’t want to miss my deadlines. Even this journal is a procrastination.
Day 11 8/8: Morning shift, swim, then writing beside SO before afternoon shift. I managed to get to the gym and sauna before work which was really nice. After afternoon shift we cooked and ate together and watched some Harry Potter. That was really sweet together.

 

Day 12 9/8: Fell and hit my head this morning. I mean seriously, why do that so often? So clumsy. SO was super bossy and passive-aggressive, and I find that really repulsive. We’d organised to spend the evening together and go out so I had to keep my cool. Now I raised her bad behaviour with her nicely and she actually calmed down about it which was pretty good of her. But she was horny and I was still upset so it was really difficult to get hard and give her sex at night. She still managed to O but I think she noticed that I wasn’t into it. Crazy nightmares so not much sleep.

Day 13 10/8: Saturday.
Swim after morning shift, then had a nap bcos of the nightmares last night. SO woke me up with a bj for the first time after so many years together! I think partly bcos of last night but also she was feeling bad about last night. We had sex and she O’d again. Then worked afternoon shift and rushed off to a friend’s party. Party was nice but SO got drunk and there was a pretty girl there who was trying to come home with us. Fortunately SO was too drunk to realise what was going on (she figured it out in the morning though) and I managed to drag SO home without the extra girl. S again with drunk and horny SO. She O, I didn’t again.

Day 14 11/8: Sunday. Went for a swim after work with SO and a good friend. When friend got naked something weird happened. Now I’ve seen her naked a bunch of times and thought nothing of it, but without P and also without MO for a while either, my brain kind of freaked out, suddenly seeing her as a sexual object. In perfect timing, somone posted this article https://medium.com/@krisgage/emotio...d-to-people-besides-your-partner-104640587851 in the forums. seriously good timing!! So it seems that my brain is going crazy looking for fantasies. So someone who’s a friend who I’ve seen naked before and thought nothing of is suddenly an object of attraction because my brain is starved of it’s fantasies from missing porn, and someone who is very attractive by the cultural standards of our time is suddenly fixating in my brain as a sexual object.

Day 15 12/8: Monday. Swim after morning shift, then work meeting. Tired after all the weekend’s activities but enjoying the summer. Must figure out a way to sleep more. Managed to spend the whole day procrastinating and when I headed off to late shift at work I’d done precisely nothing!! This procrastinating thing is getting out of control.

Day 16 13/8: Day off work today and I needed it. I’m starting a new job in another town so took my bike on the train to leave it there and be able to ride it when I get off the train.
Back home and I went to the sauna. Wanted to go to the gym but my body is a bit beat-up just now so enjoyed the sauna instead. Went out with SO to a fantastic concert and really really enjoyed it.

Day 17 14/8: Morning shift then swim. Cold wind but water was ok. Tried to write today but my brain is so distracted. Deadlines are approaching but it’s really tough to concentrate. The urge to PMO is really strong so I’m working at the local archives instead of at home. Still, this whole nofap deal is exposing my procrastination problem - without the dopamine hit from PMO it’s hard to get down to things.
Headed off to the other town, and the train journey is a good place to write this journal. Back home and I had an application tonight that SO said she’d help me with. Instead she headed off to see my friend’s stand-up performance. I got a bit annoyed about that, and hope my application was still ok - find out in 2 weeks.

Day 18 15/8: Morning S with SO. For the first time ever with her I struggled to stay hard. I hope that’s not a side effect of nofap!!
Then after afternoon shift the strangest thing happened. I got hit-on by the girl at the register at my local supermarket. There are two pretty girls that work there and I had a problem at the counter and she helped me more than expected and so I thanked her and asked “do you recognise those who shop here often?” It was shift change-over and her and the other pretty girl were finishing and she looked over my shoulder to the other girl that was just behind me and said “yeah we talk about you (singular you in this language) often” and then gave me the fuck-eyes. I froze and tried to be calm because shit I’m getting married soon. I don’t want this temptation. Then she said “do you want to” and flicked her eyes up to the apartment blocks. So then I accidentally dropped my bag and everything came rolling out which went through the security thing so the alarm went off. Fucking chaos. The girl behind me started laughing and said “omg you’re hopeless” and I went bright red. So I was packing everything back into my bag furiously and then looked up and she was still looking at me for a response so I squeezed out “no but thank you” and she just shook her head at me kinda disappointed like.

Day 19 16/8: Morning shift had to teach a surprise class - only found out late last night but it was ok. Nice students. Heading home and tried to write but was really inefficient. I had to go out for a cycle because I was super horny and it was too risky to be with my computer. Came back in time to head out for this new job in another town. Repeated nightmares all night so no real sleep and I’m feeling a bit strung-out.

Day 20 17/8: Wow, 20 days! I made twenty days! So this morning was Chaos. SO was going on live TV and was super stressed. When she’s stressed she always takes it out on me and the mean stuff she said really hurt. I tried not to pick a fight because she was stressed and prepping for the TV appearance but when I asked her not to keep attacking me she just lost her shit at me. That made it tough and I went to morning shift really not in the right state to teach. Swim after work, it was freezing which i needed then I went to help a friend who’s busted his leg and can’t walk. Then afternoon shift, and I found out that one of my students who’s been suffering from episodic depression for two decades took her own life. It’s so sad. She was doing so well the last couple of years but a few months ago she moved away to another country for her boyfriend and without the support structure around her it seems it all got too much. This hit me really heavy. I mean it makes me look at my own problems like my SO’s bad behaviour and really get some perspective. She was someone who just went out of her way to be kind to all the people around her all the time. I guess people who have suffered a lot can see the suffering in others and will do anything they can to make someone’s day just a little bit brighter.
SO is going away for 10 days tomorrow so I’ll get a bit of a break from her shit and find some perspective.

Such a weird few days. Usually I’m craving after S because of my SA and that’s why I PMO’d so much. But now I’m trying to be as good as I can and only have really intimate, connecting S with my SO, and S is throwing itself at me all over the place. It feels like the universe is conspiring against me!! And yet I feel like an idiot because if I were in this situation back when I was 25, this would have been all I ever wanted! Life is strange sometimes.

 

Day 21, 18/8: S with SO. I wasn’t into it but she was flying overseas so I felt it too rude to say no. Morning shift, then practice a lot during the day.

Struggling a bit thinking of my friend who killed herself. Never again will I see her huge smile. Never again will she light up a room as she walks in.

P is the last thing on my mind right now.


Day 22 19/8: Early shift at work, then swim. Water was icy cold but air is warm. Weighed myself. Somehow I lost 2kg. Explains why I’m fainting a bit more lately. Day trip to other city - bit of train troubles so delays - not much done before trip back. Evening shift and then home to cook up a big batch of food for the week. Late night then killer nightmares.

Day 23 20/8: One of the nightmares last night was that my SO was pregnant then died in childbirth and I was stuck with my kid and completely overwhelmed. Then the migration agency called and said that my visa is no longer valid and I had to leave the country. So I truly had nowhere to go. It was so real, I can still taste the fear and hopelessness. Off to other city. Then here, i got a call. My friend had a seizure. Her boyfriend found her foaming at the mouth. So I’m off to see them at the hospital but my train back is cancelled so just waiting at the station while I write this. Tough day.

 

Well it's been a couple of weeks since my last update. It was good having SO away so that I could lock myself away and write. Now the coursebook is off to the printers which is great. It's been crazy being so focused 24/7 but i've needed to do it and now I can relax. My friend that had the seizure is out of hospital and getting her strength back, and I'm starting to get over the pain of my friend that killed herself.

I was needing to MO quite a lot while SO was away in order to sleep, but managed to keep off P. Since SO came back a few days ago we haven't been intimate, but that's often normal after her work trips. I can tell she's trying to deal with her anger issues at the moment (even though she's not saying anything) and i really applaud her for that.

 

I applaud her for working on her stuff. OMG we all have so much stuff and it's so easy to pretend to ourselves and others that we don't. She's trying really hard but it's been a bit tricky between us lately.

 

Reset day today. My first reset. I thought I had this thing figured out but as soon as life got a bit tough I caved. So back to 0 day today.
On one side I feel like I have all the excuses but really there's no excuse so no complaining. I'm going to try to do no M for 30 days from now because I think it was using M to get to sleep that led to P. Keeping focus.

 

Another Reset. But a good one. Well it's never good to reset, but I'm super happy with my progress. That first streak was longer at 69 days but it was really really tough. This last streak of 43 days was much much easier. Admittedly life was much easier with everything going well:

My course went really well and they've asked me back to do it again next year which makes me really happy. Things are much better with my SO because she's a lot less stressed at work, and we had a wonderful holiday away together for a week. Now I'm working a bit less for a couple of weeks and able to work out more. Also meditating more which is nice. Things are looking up.

This reset was because I am procrastinating and really horny from the chaser effect, and then one thing led to another and old habits came back. Funny that after finishing my first thought was. Oh silly me, i'd better go on nofap and reset my counter.

I think staying offline as much as possible has been a huge benefit to me in general. Screens and I just don't go well together.

 

One thing that has been helping is that i'm microdosing psilocybin at the moment, and it's giving me really good insights into what I need to be focussing on in my life. Has anyone here found that beneficial at all?