Telling family and friends

I'm interested to hear anything you all have to share about telling close friends and family about your PMO addiction.

For years I kept it a secret, and it really was killing me to bear it alone. But I did share my problem. I have to date told my wife, my sister, and a couple of good friends. Each time I could hardly believe the words coming out of my mouth, it didn't even sound like I was talking about myself.

I found that being able to tell the story has helped me become able to rationalize "why" PMO addiction happened to me. It helped me feel less like a perpetrator and more like a victim, as well as an agent of change in myself.

That is because in order to tell the story, I had to go back to how it started. Basically I was put in a situation where I had access to P as a teenager (internet in bedroom), but no role model and no one who I could talk to about it. When I think about what a poor decision that was on the part of the adults looking after me, I feel just a bit less guilty about the whole thing. After all in the mid-90s no one had a clue this was going to happen to a generation of boys.

Anyway, telling the story, telling it all, and starting at the beginning -- really helped me feel more human, more me. It wasn't easy, I think I basically wept on every single occasion. Also I'm super lucky that the people I told were massively supportive of me, and I wouldn't suggest anyone copy me unless they were completely sure that the listener would also support them. (n.b. I haven't told parents, etc...)

Telling people did NOT solve my PMO addiction. But, it did improve things quite a bit. Firstly, I stopped feeling a paralysing wave of guilt and panic on the occasions where I feared I had been found out. (like each time I was browsing P and suddenly have no internet -- first thought used to be massive panic!) Secondly it unlocked a feeling of forgiveness in me when I saw other people's compassion for my problem.

And here's a bonus. Since I owned up to my problem, I have been way more compassionate to other people too. When I was a kid, I would laugh or look down on people with problems like eating disorders or addictions, etc... I just didn't "get" what that meant. But these days I feel like I can totally relate to people who go through rough patches in their lives. When a family member told me about his dope habit, the conversation went really well and I could be very constructive. It turns out that understanding my own problem and forgiving myself just made me a slightly nicer person.

Anyway enough from me, what about you guys?

 

Thanks for the question. I'm not suggesting anyone follow my actions here. I'm just sharing something that helped me in my journey.

It didn't solve it, but for me, it was a piece in the emotional puzzle. I believe in each case for me, the person I told was genuinely receptive and not burdened. In some cases it helped them open up to me on a different matter that they were worried about, so there was some reciprocity too.