I've been married for 3 years now, have a kid (4 months), study an engineering, go to church and I have a full-time job. My question is if I have NO time at all, why I'm still relapsing? Maybe is because me and my wife don't have sex since our baby was born? I don't think so, because before we were sexually active and I was still doing PMO. The sad thing is that I'm searching for cheating material... usually it was too over acted and I knew it was fake, but today I found some real material and it felt very novel. I feel very sad now, of course, after you relapse you always feel bad (at least if you are trying to stop doing PMO). I'm writing this because I need YOUR help. My wife knows of my struggle. Even more, in january my wife caught me (i left some tabs open in my PC) and she was very supportive, I told her that I needed her help and then I never told her again about my resets/relapses because I felt too ashamed to do so. I have a porn blocker in my pc that works awesomely but I found that there's always a way to bypass it. Maybe using steam's browser, or looking for gifs without label, etc... Last weeks I learned that is not helpful to count days to measure progress, your progress is how much you are changing, and until yesterday I was feeling that I was making progress after a lot of time stagnant (like 1 year or more), but today... with the material I saw I feel I have gone backwards. I fell horrible like if I watched something illegal. How can I improve??? Today I felt the urge very early in the morning and immediately after waking up I turned on the pc (because at this hour I study), readed scriptures too quickly and boom I was searching for porn material in reddit and I found some mega links with real material. Man, right now my vision is shaking... Please anyone, what should I do. I feel i'm going to faint right now no lie
Sounds like, from what you shared, no sex has become a new trigger for pmo, Reddit might be a trigger. why are you looking for cheating material? these trigger move us from preoccupation/thinking about a wrong belief, into the acting out cycle. Some basic beliefs we all might hold onto: I’ll never be enough I’ll never do enough I’ll never have enough No one would love me if they truly knew me I’m a bad person I’d recommend taking some time to pause and breathe for like 5 minutes and just rest, maybe reflect, on a short truth from God you read. If you are busy, maybe you are using this pmo time to just zone out of life.
I think you've put yourself into a good position with respect to using porn blockers and keeping busy. Being honest about it I think is also commendable. I would try two things. First, you're going to need to be tough on yourself and refuse to give in to the urge to look at porn. There's no other way, you need to draw upon your willpower to avoid looking at P. MO is another matter but at the very least, stop looking at P, especially the risky content you're describing. Second, I would agree with the above poster that after 4 months, it's time to resume sexual relations with your wife. Focus your sexual energies in that direction. Is there a particular reason why you've not been having sex other than recovery from childbirth?
Thanks you two. I feel less ashamed after reading you. Tbh I think the lack of sex is because my wife got a tear around her anus and I don't want to pressure her (she is scared of the pain), mostly because she already had pain whenever we had sex before the birth, and she even cried when I told her that I felt bad because we had no intimicy (this was like 1 or 2 months ago). She fels a lot of pressure for taking care of the baby. So idk. I just gave up on try to have intimicy. I told myself that I will wait the time she needs, meanwhile ill try to stop pmoing, in hardmode. Try semen retention and stuff like that. If you two say that I should have sex again, I would love to try it again, but I don't know how, I just feel that it is not my decision. Any ideas? I just don't want to make my wife feel overwhelmed
Talk to your wife. Are you taking care of the baby so she has time to take care of the basics for herself?
Of course, I think she feels that she needs to be perfect mother because once she dropped the baby (nothing happened to him, and it wasn't on purpose, i just don't find the right word to say that the baby fell, but she tortures herself with it). Maybe I need to help her to feel the best mother (I'm already trying but i need to try harder and do more). Maybe the porn use is just the surface layer of a more profound problem.
For myself, my porn use was absolutely a symptom of deeper rooted problems within me. Such problems were subconsciously working against me undermining and sabotaging my conscious efforts to stop. One such problem was the one of connection; having no other men in my life encouraging my personal and spiritual growth. So I've got to ask. Do you have such connection in your life? A 12 step group or some other support group? I know you mentioned that you're busy, but the addiction doesn't care. Keep ignoring or being unaware of those deeper rooted problems and they'll come back to bite you in the butt.
Yeah, I don't have that. I would love to. The most close group of people to that was the random group that BrainBuddy chooses for you. The thing is that I don't have money to join those groups (generally they are paid). Also, I would have a second job to pay it, but the university drains the last free second I have. If you know of any group that is free and asynchronous it would help me so much. Thank you very much for your answer,
Does your church, or a nearby church, have a support group? Some church type ones I can think of are Celebrate Recovery, Life Recovery, Regeneration, Samson Society.
If I were you, I would just initiate sex and see if she goes for it. If you get the brush off, then I'd consider - at a later time - tactfully expressing your desire to resume intimacy. At the end of the day, you're a married couple and four months is a long time. If there's an issue with tearing, that's understandable, but there's more than one way to skin a cat. You'll both be in a better place if you can get back to sharing intimacy to at least some extent. As for pornography masking a deeper issue, that could be the case, but I wouldn't necessarily jump to that conclusion. Pornography has a more or less universal appeal for men of a libidinous persuasion. Whilst I'd like to blame my predilection on some deep psychological need, I'm pretty sure that - for me, at least - it's a base desire of the most superficial and crass kind. Even if it was resultant from a deeper issue, knowledge of that won't necessarily make it go away. The solution is likely the same in either case. Stop watching it, get it out your system, direct your carnal energy elsewhere.
Replies like yours give me strength to continue in this path. Thank you. I just wrote in my journal that last night we had intimicy, maybe not sex but it was close.
