Wrestling with a fetish all my life

Somehow MO'd twice in bed this morning (always my most vulnerable time), but no incidents or severe temptations since.

Stressful evening caring for parents, but overall productive with respect to tidying their home and making it more comfortable for them.

Thankfully, I'm really enjoying work at the moment.

 

Doing better overall, though PMO’d again yesterday morning. I have to admit that the relapse has put me back into the mindset of simply wanting to give in. I know I shouldn’t and that I mustn’t, but as I’ve insisted many times before believe that the true problem is the fact that deep down, whether or not we choose to admit it even to ourselves, we actually want to PMO. This is why it is the heart that needs to change, and I fear this relapse caused my heart to stumble. Recovery isn’t just confessing failures. It’s confessing that we want to fail.

However I would say this too has improved since the relapse. Still worse than before, but despite these morning setbacks, it does feel as though my mind it returning to where it was before all this happened. As ever though, this is no reason to be complacent.

These thoughts are very much appreciated and I’ve been chewing on them over the past few days, thank you!

Perhaps some background to my sleep routine first:

I set my alarm for 6am, however I automatically wake up in the middle of the night, say 3 or 4 am, and so either wait to fall asleep again or until it reaches around 5am, when I eat breakfast and do my morning Bible reading while drinking a coffee. I actually do this from bed, as the comfort motivates me to read. Also, temptations aren’t often that strong if present at all during this time. I think I only realised this during this relapse.

I usually fall sleep again at this point after my reading, waking up again an hour or so later (I have a second alarm set if this goes on too long). But it’s at this point that I’m usually more tempted. I think before I’ve looked into whether caffeine could be affecting my libido, but the relapse has also got me thinking that perhaps not feeling so tempted during my first awake cycle tricks me into lowering my defences for the second awake cycle.

Sometimes there’s build-up, sometimes the impulse is instant. Either way, a diversion should work, as you say. There are various complications, but I realise that there are all sorts of changes I can make to my routine to get around these.

If I’m working from the office, I need to get up on that second alarm sharp and get going. Technically I don’t, but it benefits me to arrive early for all sorts of reasons. My mind is sharper, traffic isn’t so bad, etc. So, if my second awakening is from my second alarm on an office day, getting up and going without giving in is easy.

If I’m working from home, or it’s an office day but I’m wide awake before there second alarm, there’s usually time for me to stay in bed and chill before I start work. This is the scenario I need to work on. This is when I relapsed and when I MO’d over the past few days. Even during the near-500 day streak, this is when my thoughts were in a more dangerous place.

Sometimes I use this morning time to do some life admin on the laptop, or post on NoFap, or something. But these usually require some motivation, and there are times I can’t motivate myself to do them.

However before lent, and especially on a work-from home day, the compulsion to play on the Playstation actually helped here. I didn’t need to motivate myself to do it because I could lose myself to it quite comfortably, and although it’s not constructive it’s certainly more wholesome than PMO!

So perhaps I don’t need to feel bad about gaming in the mornings. If I need to improve discipline regarding my play time when I resume it, it’s the afternoons and evenings I need to work on. In any case, I realise I need to be less dependent on lying in bed before getting up and starting my day.

A lot of the MO material in the morning is in my head, really. My mind is weak first thing in the morning, and easily wanders into its “happy place”. This was true during my streaks, but even before that, I would often MO without using any material. Again

Yes, this is all so true! The point about comfort is the most relevant to the rest of the post I’m writing now, I think. I wake up worried about the stresses that lie ahead in the day, and I have immediate comfort in my nice comfy bed. I justify staying in bed as a form of self-comfort, but before I know it my mind is wandering into a different form of comfort. I was especially tense on the day of my relapse, and therefore especially vulnerable when I woke up.

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So in summary, it’s this need for comfort in any form first thing in the morning that I need to address. I need the discipline to get up earlier once I’m already awake.

I know I can do this. I have made other changes to my lifestyle recently that I thought would be too hard.

I’ve lost weight and improved my running, which I largely owe to a better diet. I had a habit of treating myself to burgers on one night every week and pizza on another. They were forms of self-reward (perhaps also comfort) that I couldn’t imagine doing without. But I’ve found a way to swap these for other, healthier meals in which I still find satisfaction, and my overall health has improved significantly. There are other smaller changes, such as smaller portions for my meals, drinking beer less, etc., but those more calorific meals were the ones I feared would be the most painful to make. How wrong I was!

So why should getting up and getting going sooner after waking up be any different?

EDIT: Perhaps I need to do the same with caffeine. Time to gradually reduce my intake here too? Perhaps at least starting with the strength of the coffee I drink.

 

Thank you for reaching out, and I'm sorry to hear you are caught in this same trap! Please feel free to reach out through PM, though I do also recommend starting your own journal. I strongly recommend the work of Jay Stringer as a starting point for addressing your issues in a Biblically-focussed way. Check out his book "Unwanted", or the following article and video which essentially summarise the key points:

• https://www.covenanteyes.com/2017/09/28/what-sexual-fantasies-might-say-about-you/

Thank you for calling me out on my silence. Tuesday was indeed another heavy PMO fall... the trigger was caused by trying too hard to analyse my fantasies to understand them. While there is a place for it, clearly shortly after a relapse is not the time. This relapse has triggered a whole number of revelations, which I'm making note of, but a deeper analysis is not helping.

Yesterday was fine w.r.t. PMO but an incredibly stressful evening. I managed to get away from the stress relatively early so I could chill and sleep well, which I did. There's potential for stress again tomorrow, though.

If I pick the face-to-face recovery route, I want to tread carefully. I'm also dealing with intense social anxiety when it comes to being open. Talking over the phone or via a Zoom Call is actually much scarier to me than opening up to somebody face-to-face! I also find it easier to open up about this to people who aren't in my immediate social circles. I did attend face-to-face counselling about this a long time ago so maybe it's time I reconsidered that.

 

Another PMO-free day (at time of writing!), and not massively tempted either. Tomorrow has stress potential in the daytime, but I will get to see some good friends in the evening who I don't often find time to see. I'm hoping this will dampen the effects of any stress earlier in the day.

 

Thanks for the offer but I'm in 2 minds about whether to share my 'IRL' contact details on NoFap, and if I do I have one or two people in mind. You made a good point earlier though about needing more accountability. CPilot has kindly agreed to be an additional partner, and I plan to focus more on private conversations here than my journal. I think the journal is in fact a burden at the moment. We'll see.

PMO'd quite badly on Saturday and one or two other days have been partial failures without going all the way... but otherwise I feel as though I'm closer to the rhythm I had before the relapse. "Closer" is of course a relative term, and "feel as though" is of course far from definite. I know better than to simply assume I'm getting better. One day at a time.

I could write essays on reflections I've had during this relapse, but I will keep them to myself for now. Already they are making me want PMO less and less again (but "less" is also relative!).

I will however comment one, regarding my decision to give up gaming for lent. It's entirely possible this past time was helping me stay clean*. I don't feel guilty for playing games at all, just a bit concerned about how obsessively I could play them at times (but not always!). Before I was worried that I played games so much I didn't find time to draw in more wholesome ways or work on other more wholesome creative projects. But maybe this isn't a bad thing, really. One of my triggers post-relapse was an art tutorial which happened to use an image of a woman as the example. Even without this, every time I learn a new skill a part of me is thinking of how it might be useful in fetish art. It's scary to admit, but perhaps my creative ambitions regarding drawing, even the wholesome ones, might be too triggering. Even if this is not the case, making myself work on a project requires self discipline, which can cause stress and in turn be triggering that way. I use my brain creatively at work every day, which drains me of that kind of mental energy. Perhaps gaming is good for me as a hobby because it engages my brain in a different way that is (mostly) relaxing. Besides, one of the games I play regularly has a social element which I have sorely missed.

I would greatly value prayers for wisdom over this. Maybe my creative desires outside of work did to be abandoned for the sake of holiness, at least until I am much further into the journey of recovery. Even my healthier pastime has a risk of triggering obsessive behaviour, but if it does come to this again I hope that through accountability to others this can be more easily controlled than the greater risk of being led astray by sexual desire.

* Of course, I'd be foolish to assume that taking it up again will cure me. I'm just saying that this is one of many things that can be used to keep my mind away from unhelpful thoughts, and the helpfulness of anything that keeps me clean is by the will of God.

 

This is encouraging to read, thank you Tao!

Without going into detail, there's another appointment related to my parent's well-being tomorrow, and it's got me nervous again. Prayers for this (and my own self-control) would please be appreciated.

 

Thanks, and I do agree that there has been some self-delusion, but not necessarily what you've pointed out. You say I'm not getting to the heart of the matter, but this is what I've always sought to do (I'll come back to this). But you are right that I'm not doing this in my personal relationships as much as I could be and I accept that this is something I need to work on. For at least a year I have been discussing this a lot regularly with a good Christian friend who is a member of NoFap, but I accept that stepping beyond that conversation and my journal into people I can connect with in person would serve me even better.

But to be honest, I also don't think daily counters help get to the heart of the matter either. My choice to remove the counter really was driven by a realisation that it had become an idol and a distraction. When I slipped up and Googled that soap opera scene that triggered this relapse, my thought was not "I'm sorry God, I should have known better", it was "Oh no, my streak! What will my NoFap followers think?" followed by "well I might as well go all the way", which led to me then MO-ing shortly after. I can't say the counter was responsible, but it triggered something selfish in me that threw me completely off balance and into very poor judgement.

That said, I haven't been improving since (PMO'd again last night), so it can't hurt to try bringing the counter back as an initial motivational tool to get me into a streak, but once I get so far (let's say 90 days), I honestly think it will do me more harm than good to display it publicly, and I will hide it again.

To return to an earlier point, getting to the heart of the matter has always been my approach since some time after I joined NoFap, trying to understand what my sexual fantasies are telling me about the needs that I really need to ask God to fix. This is the subject of many of my posts and you'll see in my first post that I edit in a needs analysis as an easy-to-locate place for these reflections. Admittedly I haven't been updating that recently and should get back to it. Getting to the heart of it is exactly why I like to bring up the work of Jay Stringer and recommend him to others because this is exactly his take on it, and from a Christian perspective also. One of my private conversations on NoFap has been on this too, unpacking my fetish with another Christian in sometimes more detail than I already go to here.

The self-delusion that's been fueling this relapse is that I've been unwilling to admit that I'm scared of "missing out" on "making the most of it" before I get back into a streak. I'm scared that my future streaks will be haunted by unfulfilled ideas and that if I don't fulfill them now they'll come back to get me later and pull me into another relapse. I know this is dumb because there will always be new ideas, this relapse was wasn't even triggered by that, and most importantly, it's not even a Biblical argument! I'm not even that attracted to what I've been PMO-ing too.... it's more of an obsessive compulsion (not that it makes it any more justifiable) that if I don't look at this particular woman in bondage now the temptation will come back at a later date. I know it's ludicrous, but something in my brain is struggling to accept all that it is ludicrous, and when I wrestle with the "do I or don't I" the stress is tipping me over the edge.

Next steps

Reading the SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION method while taking a break from NoFap helped before and got me into that long streak. SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION made me not even want to PMO. It's not a Biblical guide, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't help. I want to repeat this somewhat, but only taking a break from journalling and not other uses of NoFap.

I also want to study an aspect of God's character that I feel I've been neglecting: the fact that God is the "God of all comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3).

Something quite significant I have realised during these recent weeks is how I really do seek comfort in the wrong places. I see an aspect of comfort in my fetish (i.e. constraint that's firm but not too tight). There is of course "comfort" in PMO. But some behavioral triggers are also cries for comfort - staying in bed when I'm anxious about the day ahead being a good example. I have other non-sexual, non-PMO-triggering habits which are cries for comfort also.

God is the God of all comfort. I know this, but clearly if I am turning to sin for my comfort I am not taking this truth to heart nearly as much as I should. I need to study this aspect of God more, truly internalise it and let God transform me through it.

What can be more comforting than forgiveness of sins and eternity with God? I have this assurance, so why am I not getting comfort from knowing this? Because there is still that part of me that is scared to believe it... the remnant of doubt that the enemy tries to use to tempt me into despair.

So, I need to address this more also. I may make an exception for the journal break to post about this in detail

The plan

My plan is to partly repeat what got me into my previous 500-day streak, but with more accountability and a deeper, more Godly perspective than before.

• NoFap: Take a break from journaling while I re-read SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION and study Godly comfort.
• Unlike before maintain NoFap private conversations (especially accountability partnerships) - I will respond to new conversations too (especially if you have reflections on the comforting aspect of God and His salvation!).
• Continue to follow some other journals that have been helpful to me.
• Look into additional accountability options
• I'll bring back the counter, but hide it again after 90 days.

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EDIT: Thanks for prayers RE: my parents' appointment. It went better than I had even hoped, and certainly better than I deserved given my recent failings.

 

To summarise it would actually defeat the point of it... reading it in detail is a significant element of the method itself. I suppose it can be described as a very convincing explanation of why PMO is unrewarding and a complete waste of time... so convincing that it makes you not want to PMO.

I would link to it but NoFap has a weird bug where it parses the link as a link to an original book from which it was originally derived. Google "SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION PMO" and it should be the first result.

Admittedly I did not agree with everything in the book, but what I do agree with made a big difference to me before.

 

So I think I’m back to journalling!

I’ve just been putting off the return post because there’s a lot I want to say but I’m not finding the time to write it all. But it’s just going to pile up, so I’ll throw in a few key points for now

• Aside from one MO without P, it’s been pretty smooth to the extent that I’ve barely payed any attention to my day counter. It's not about making it to X days, I'm just not PMO-ing anymore. The counter there so there’s a record, though. I'll unpack the "own goals" more in a later post.
  
• I still don’t wish to journal that often any more, for now at least. I am genuinely finding that DM conversations are a lot more helpful to me at present.
  
• Following others’ stories and occasionally commenting is something else I’m finding particularly wholesome.
• A select few of you know more details about my parents’ health and I thank you for praying. As it got more stressful, I didn’t give in to PMO.
• I'm still very busy because of their care. I may not find time to address every reply to my journal so apologise if I don't follow up on some responses you post to my journal entries.
  
• I see also how irrational my mind still was following the relapse. Similar to the chaser effect, but more devious. It’s hard to describe. I feel it’s gone now, but I remain ever vigilant.

There’s more to unpack about the post-relapse (and even before the relapse), but I do want to share an analysis I wrote shortly after it happened and one of the lessons I learned from it. I didn’t share it at the time because I wanted time to reflect more, slowly and carefully. Too much analysis at once could have been triggering.

Proto-hunting and seeking (written shortly after the relapse)

Recall my relapse was triggered by a bondage scene from a soap opera.

TV was a source of fetish material for as long as I could remember, and like most families we’d have TV magazines that told us what was on TV during the upcoming week. These still exist of course though personally as I don’t watch so much live TV these days (that said, I need to return to this point later). Anyway, as a young boy curious about this common trope, and later as a teenager who intentionally got off on such scenes, the weekly TV magazine was often a useful tool in helping me know when I could expect scenes that piqued my interest. This could be as simple as already knowing the title of a film or TV episode with a scene I had watched before, but more significant was the fact that sometimes the blurb for a listing or a feature article would reveal a character would be tied up that episode, sometimes even with a screenshot featuring said character in said predicament. I remember one such incident as early as somewhere between ages maybe 4 and 7, so this really does go back a long way.

This was and still is especially true of the soap operas. The magazines would devote at least one page to each soap’s major storyline of the week, so kidnap storylines would usually make the feature with big headlines “Kidnapped!” or “All Tied Up!” etc. to grab my attention.

Not only this but soap opera bondage scenes always had special appeal as they would usually be long, with the story possibly spread over multiple episodes, and often intercut with other storylines. There was always some thrill in watching other storylines knowing a damsel in distress was waiting to be rescued off-screen while life went on without her, and the anticipation of the director cutting back to her predicament to continue her arc or just remind the audience she’s still there.

I can’t remember if I trawled through the daily listings every week like I would search results during a hunting and seeking session, but I certainly remember checking the soap pages every week just in case there was a new storyline waiting for me. If I found one, I’d make mental note of when the episodes were (which usually did require closer examination of the more detailed listings) and make sure I was watching that week. If it was one my parents watched, I’d secretly be watching in a different room with a different TV, especially when I was old enough to MO. I remember one storyline during my early teens where the listings got the placement of episodes slightly wrong, and my frustration in not being able to watch it.

This checking of the soap pages persisted longer than I could admit to myself, even during long clean streaks in my adult years. I might lie to myself about why I was looking, in the same way some of us might look up an actress on imdb “just out of interest”!

As I said before I don’t personally buy these magazines, but there’s always one at my parents’ house. I realise now that even during the last almost-500-day period without PMO, seeing the magazine out on the table triggered something in me. I’m pretty sure I resisted it during that streak, but may have failed.

It occurred to me sometimes I would just watch series known for repeated use of the trope, just in case there was a scene that episode. Sometimes I’d even watch one which didn’t use the trope regularly but had done in the past in an episode of which I couldn’t remember the name. In that case I’d be watching just in case it happened to be a repeat of that episode. This was all also a form of hunting and seeking, in essence.

Anyway, the recent relapse started with a soap opera scene catching my eye, and although I didn’t learn of it through a TV listing, my reflections over the days that followed my relapse revealed the above to me, in particular what habits were implanted very early on and how they have manifested into the problems I have today. Only now do I realise that my inner child started hunting and seeking all this time ago, just in a very different way. This probably explains why it’s so hard to avoid. I thought if I relapsed I would at least try and channel it into my drawing so I’m not lusting over a real woman, but how wrong I was. Old habits die hard, as they say.