The Lies I’ve Told Myself

Been there. Congrats on 496 days! Stay in touch. And stay safe.

 

LIES
(Continued)​

10. This is a cool way to make up for lost opportunities for sexual satisfaction. My journey in online porn started with seeking pics from Playboy and the other mags of my youth. Graduated to vintage video clips. Perhaps I felt I was reliving my adolescence in a bigger fashion.

I also felt I’d been left out. That other men had had much more “success” with the opposite sex than I had. Porn was an easy way for me to forget that and glut myself.

I have serious issues with Playboy magazine. It sold my generation a myth that success was having the best clothes, a sports car, a ridiculously expensive stereo system and penthouse apartment. Being a bachelor, free for recreational encounters was the lifestyle. Marriage, responsibility, commitment, family, the complexity of genuine human relationships, or the idea of contributing to the life of your community were nowhere to be found in those pages. And, of course, once you had a cool enough job to pay for all those aforementioned material goods, the women would be the most beautiful you had ever encountered!

But no one put a gun to my head and forced me to buy into that crap. I just did. My fault. Don’t blame Hugh Hefner. All he did was cash the check.

My generation survived (I guess.) the “Sexual Revolution” of the Sixties. What it gave me was the feeing I’ve described above. “Hey, if everyone’s all of a sudden f*cking like rabbits (Bunnies!), where’s mine?”

I think more current generations have even tougher challenges because of the easy availability of huge amounts of porn, and the effects of excessive use of it in your formative years. As I’ve said, my history leaves me unqualified to render advice. If I can share, at least, perspective with younger addicts in recovery here, I will try do so. Don’t know if I can help anyone, but even just trying to contribute helps me. Just as hearing your stories helps me.

Day 5 is Here
One Day at a Time

 

Lies
(Continued)​

11. “I can’t quit.” Interesting. Maybe hadn’t thought of this as a lie before. The others are excuses, denial, rationalization. This one is just flat out helplessness.

When I’m acting out I’m thinking “This is so much fun, I don’t want to quit.” When I avoid going sober I’m thinking “What’s the point? I won’t last.” Now in abstaining, I think “Okay, I made it a week. But going a year...?”

All because I believe I can’t quit. Which is a lie. The painful truth is “I won’t quit.”

“Can’t” is believing you don’t have any ability or choice. “Won’t” is that you make the choice not to.

I have the choice. That’s the truth.

Week 2 is here.
One week at a time
One day at a time

 

Thanks, LukeReboot. We can do this.

 

Thanks for posting, onlyhere41reason. “Everybody does it,” is the normalization of porn use. One set of statistics showed 40 million in the U.S. using porn “regularly.” Interestingly, the same set classified 200,000 of them as “addicted,” which is only .5%. I find that estimate very low, especially when considering amount of time spent, downloads, use at work and $$ spent that the study indicated.

We may find, in the end, that more people have a porn problem than a drinking problem.

Thanks again. Stay in touch. And stay safe.

 

Lies
(Continued)​

11. This isn’t internet porn, so a quick look won’t hurt. Actually addressed this in my #5 previously posted, but worth further examination. When off the internet, I lied to myself that I could watch nude scenes in a movie. What compounded the lie was I actually knew it was p-sub but watched anyway.

 

LIES
(Continued)​

12. I’m cured. Actually been thinking the past few days that, since I’m almost 2 months sober, it would be okay to take a quick look “just out of curiosity” at a couple of vids I fapped to just before quitting.

Sure, right. Tell yourself you “just wanted to see how you’d feel about seeing it,” “just thought I’d see if it wouldn’t have the same effect on me as before.”

Here’s a great one: Just wanted to prove to myself I could look at porn and walk away from it. (!!!)

 

LIES
(Continued)​

13. This time I can get away with it. Relates to previous lies about thinking you can just take a “quick look” or something is “really not porn.”

See, in my sobriety (Won’t call it a “streak.” I’ll get to that in a moment.), I’ve been thinking I can do some of that sh*t and it won’t lead to relapse. What’s the point? Wasting time and getting worked up. Lead to relapse? Hey, you can’t assume it will, right? Yeah, right. Maybe the right question is: How can you assume it won’t? Stick with one day at a time.

So don’t believe because you’ve been sober a while you’re invincible. Which leads me to my thoughts on “streak” as in a stretch of time you’re sober. Well, that’s not good enough. As I’ve stated previously, the amount of time I need has a different name. It’s called forever. Yes, thinking of a specific amount of time can give you a goal you can feel is attainable, if that’s what you need. But a big question is what you do the next day.

I try not to be superstitious, but since this is lie #13, maybe I can put a positive spin on that by telling myself it’s really important.

 

LIE #ONE GAZILLION AND A HALF:​

I can get away with this. Yeah, still there four months later! Feels like longer than that since I was last here and wrote that exact same thing. It's good to come back here, see it, and tell myself "Wow, you really thought you've been okay, dude, still looking at sh*t and thinking you can get away with it just because you're not jerking off."

Then I come here and say "Holy, shit. I myself wrote what a big lie that is and here I am telling it to myself." Did I decide it was okay to blow off my own convictions and f*ck around with a match around gasoline?

Go figure. In some ways maybe every day is day one. But I'm cutting myself a break (Is that a lie, too? Well, that's maybe another story.) because no jerking off, no orgasms, staying faithful to my wife, living a good life in spite of Covid and other bullsh*t.

I've been away, but should probably get back here more, if nothing else but to get off on reading my own past screeds and also to get my thoughts out again. So this gets into getting back to My Journal as opposed to reflecting on the lies I'm telling myself.

But this is definitely a big one and pernicious. If you really f*ck up, you know it and maybe that helps you call out the lies you told yourself as you did it. This other stuff, though, where you think you're "not really up to something all that bad" is the snake lying in the grass where you can't see it. Or, more likely, lie to yourself that it's not really a snake, or tell yourself whatever crock that let's you slide, slide, slide the wrong way just because you can't give it up, or you're so bored or whatever nonsense you let slither into your brain.

Well enough of letting myself off the hook just because "Hey, we're all human," or whatever. An interesting lie lying (ha!) in there somewhere, too.

Wake up call: Day 235 don't mean sh*t if you're still doing sh*t. Day 236 is there for you if you want it. So is Day 0. Your decision, no one else's. Think about it. Deal with it.

 

14. I’ve proven I can go 280 days. So what if I f*ck up now?

Yeah, that’s superb. I’ve actually spouted off about it a lot already. The biggest idiot brain illogic ever: I haven’t relapsed so it’s okay if I relapse.

Also dealing with one of the lies I posted previously about feeling I can’t quit, I’ve had enough, that I need to look at erotica.

The truth is that I can, it’s just that I want to make the choice to relapse.

 

15. This isn’t relapse. Edging while fantasizing, looking at sexy YouTube videos, looking at drawings, then supposedly “softcore” images, graduating to harder and harder stuff while telling myself it’s not actually PMO. Then doing PMO but not actually ejaculating while online.

Guess what? That’s relapse. And if you can convince yourself some of the first stuff isn’t, you’re only on the way to a full relapse anyway, so what’s the point?