I learned a very valuable lesson last week. I relapsed! Though I do understand that relapsing is not necessary to learn anything that furthers one on their journey to freedom from FAP. YOU ARE ONLY AND EVER ONLY ONE RESET AWAY FROM RELAPSE. How? I thought resetting was just when you missed a goal. If I didn't look at P, I'm still good right? Yeah I thought that too. You see I kept resetting either using the wife as an excuse to reset or the fact that I couldn't keep my hands off of my tally as an excuse as well. I was working my way back into that rut of percieved bad deed, confused reactions post MO, asking for forgiveness, making new hollow promises and then breaking them. The idea of a safe reset had begun to trap me in the same cycle of PMO. But I still haven't broken my vow against P! How can it be doing harm? You are digging holes in the wall of the promise to not PMO that you made. That promise /streak/goal/oath/whatever, is a wall that is protecting you from this addiction and habit of NOFAP. By me just constantly relying on that safety net of as long as I dont relapse I'm good, I was chipping at my wall. And eventually it led to my relapse. So how does constant reset equal relapse? If you constantly reset for the same reason, its just as bad as if you never decided to do a reboot.
THE LESSONS I LEARNED FROM MY RELAPSE 1) YOU ARE A HUMAN, WE ARE NOT GONNA BE PERFECT. Now, what is the purpose of this? I've heard it all before. It is so clichè. Just realize that 99.999% of us jackasses aren't doing it perfect either! In all that I've seen of veteran NoFappers, I've only heard one say he had never relapsed and even that cannot be verified. You are not the minority, you are the norm. But are you gonna meet the standard? 2) EJACULATION, ORGASMS AND SEX ARE A VERY GOOD THING! As a Christian, I believe God gave man and woman sex to enjoy. He gave us orgasms to enjoy. He gave us the RIGHT to pick and love and stay with a partner that we choose. So, if sex is good and holy, then why do I feel so bad after I PMO? Well, I believe a lot of it comes from ignorance and a misdiagnosis of the problem. We weren't properly educated as we entered puberty. We were bored. There may have even been some family problems that caused the exploration of our bodies. Not too mention the countless tales of schoolmates talking about how or what they did. And when we were caught looking at it, most of the time one of two things happened: either the bad habit was encouraged, or you were punished ( which kick starts this cycle of self-flagelation and self-punishment that drives so many of us into THE STRESS CYCLE). The thing to do is after you relapse, to revert back to number one. Look at yourself and realize, IM HUMAN. I WILL LEARN. I WILL STOP AT ONE. I WILL GO FORWARD AGAIN. 3) DO YOUR LEVEL BEST TO STOP AT ONE AVOID THE BINGE. This may seem very hard to do, but it is self explanatory. The more you give the addict what it wants, the harder it is to run him off. 4) GIVE YOURSELF SOME CREDIT. Yeah, you heard that right. First off, you are undertaking a journey that most males and females never will. And then look at how many days you made before your relapse, yeah your streak may be gone, but the distance does still add up. Give yourself credit for the work you did. Get up try to stretch it out longer. 5) NOFAP IS IMPOSSIBLE. So I watched a video from Seth Alexander on this and let me tell you the dude is spot on. Stop being so damn scared of the NOFAP monster. Instead of looking at how much you given up, look at how much you've gained in the way of sobriety!
