This is not a journey, it's a never-ending challenge for the best version of ourselves.

Hi Community,

I am a 31 years old guy who is not new to this space, like many of us. And just as many of us, I underestimated how deeply an addiction can take root in your body and your mind.

In fact, I had already joined this priceless forum a few years ago, when the feeling of having hit rock bottom in my personal life motivated me so much that I started pushing for a change like never before.

And it worked. I started sharing my experience here, reading about other people experiences, learning about porn addiction, how dopamine works, and I started challenging myself in so many ways until I reached over 100 days of absolute abstinence.

I was feeling great, confident, focused, full of energy, motivated, attracting, and absolutely not interested in porn or masturbation anymore. I could clearly feel I had a purpose, which was becoming the best version of myself, improving every day, slowly but constantly.

Things were going so well that soon I started hanging out with a few girls I met on Tinder: kisses, petting, foreplay, sometimes even full sex, even though I was still not fully in control of myself down there. Sometimes things were going well, sometimes I didn't have strong erections or I was finishing too fast. I was on a good path, but I wasn't fully recovered yet.

I kept hanging out with random girls until I finally met someone who was clearly "girlfirend material" and, I must say, a kind of girl I would never get close to before. We fell in love, started a relationship, I stopped meeting other girls and - I guess here lies my mistake - my focus shifted from "pursuing the best version of me" to "make the relationship work and last as long as possible".

Needless to say that my priorities changed, and so did the time and the focus I was dedicating to my personal growth. I don't blame her, we're still together, she's an amazing person and loves me too, but she didn't know was I was going through when I met her, and she still doesn't.

I mean, talking about porn addiction and sexual dysfunctions is the last thing you want to do when you have a chance with someone who used to be "out of your league".

Clearly, everything was working perfectly in our relationship, but sex. As with the other random partners I had before, sometimes things were going well, sometimes they were not, but with other girls it was not a big deal for me because I knew I was still "making practice" and I didn't really care about impressing or meeting that person again.

With Her it was different, I wanted her in my life, so when we started having bad experiences I was so worried that it could happen again, that eventually the vicious cycle started quite soon. She didn't really complain until it started happening more often than not.

She started saying that she couldn't feel it fully, that this had never happen to her before, and a long list of things she didn't realize were making me fall into an abyss.

I must say - in my defense - that we are maybe not that compatible sex-wise. I have always loved oral sex and foreplay in general, it excites me a lot, but she doesn't really like it, so most of the times she just gets naked and expects me to get rigid with no further effort.

Often, the problem is that I don't have strong erections and, of course, at some point she lost interest and we ended up having sex once a week, or worse. This triggered another problem: without regular sex, I started coming earlier, almost as soon as the penetration started. A problem which I thought I could fix (how naive!) by masturbating again and "emptying" myself from time to time.

We love each other for so many other reasons that, eventually, we're still together regardless of how bad is sex between us. We still do it, not often, and clearly none of us really enjoys it anymore. On top of this, I started using porn again to have more pleasant and frequent orgasms. I manage to have good erections and to control my orgasm when watching it,which makes me feel better at first, and deeply miserable later.

All this has inevitably created a breach in our relationship, which I believe is frustrating both of us till the point that we started questioning our future together. Can love last without passion? Can I live a fulfilling life without fixing my problems once for all? Did I just give up on my personal growth as soon as I got something good in my life, while I should have given myself more time and space?

I am not sure of what life will bring me in the future, if I'll be alone again or if my relationship will make it through all these difficulties, but I need to start working on myself again. I owe this to myself, because I became once again a person I don't want to be: a lazy and unhappy one, with no purpose, bad memory, not focused, with low energy, low sex-drive, and even lower interest in everything in life.

I know life is beautiful and I am missing a lot of all I could get from it. I just hope to stay inspired and - as my new nickname - stay focused, because this is not a journey that ends at some point. It's an ongoing fight, and also our only chance to be truly happy in this life.