Relapse

After 37 days... to reset the counter for the first time ...

The other counter, the 30 days without M, it's not that important to me. More like a challange + aid to make the more important counter hold.
But it didn't help today.



I'm frustrated and unhappy since the morning. It's not as if I have a specific event to blame. It was pure emotion. Devastating state of mind. The BIG question is: will I be strong enough to gather myself back together. As if nothing had happend? Will I sicceed in long run?
I guess that after a relapse, it's harder to sink deep.

I have everything people usually wish for - but I'm not content, and I cannot find the reason. What's wrong with me? I'm not aking any sense to myself.

 

I removed my counter tracking total avoidance of masturbation. It had put too much pressure on me. Instead I decided to share a tracking of my exercise. The minimum is doing pushups. I usually do much more, but once I skip... I found that I tend to keep skipping, and enter a period of couch-potato.

Regarding masturbation: It's not like I'm back to my old-self, M-ing a minimum of four times per day. I just stopped containing myself when the physical urge is strong. No porn.

 

10x.
I agree with you. It's just 1 battle.

I found a facebook group related to nofap in my mother tongue, so I'm kess here. And now I'm going on long vacation - so I'll try to spend less time in front of a screen.
The thing is that I have a few virtual relationships. These are on one hand light relationships, seemingly non personal, and time consumming because writing takes longer than speaking. On the other hand, the anonimity allows to open up and share very personal feelings and thoughts. So... I think the correct thing is to control the time spent.

My relapse was a 3-time thing. I just had to see how the story ends. It was on literature, not video. I did not went back to watch videos. I allow myself to go into swinger's sites, even though some of the pictures there are quite explicit. It's not pornigraphic to my mind. It's just people, real people, trying to communicate. I don't get addicted to this, and it's not masturbation-related. Of course that on some cases there's somebody that turns me on a bit, but it's much like in real life.

I don't see the 3-time thing with the porn story as an entirely bad thing. I released pressure from myself, and this made lovemaking with my wife afterwards easier. Being totally with her, mind and soul.
It's not a relapse in terms of being actively addicted again. (I'll always be an addict regarding tendency - I made peace with this fact). So since it was on day 37 - I can count now my 43rd day. A month and a half with (almost) no porn.

The thing I like about the facebook group I found: many many women in it. It's a small group with ratio of ~50% females. Many attendants are proopen relationships - which is my agenda. I always found it easier to communicate with girls, or within mixed-gender groups.

This morning I had a dream about my lover for the first time since they broke up with us. It was all strange and foggy as dreams tend to be. In the beginning she didn't look much like herself and I wasn't sure it was her. But in the end, especially in the part where me acting like "just friends" brough her to emotional turmoil she looked much like herself. I asked in the dream what's wrong and she, sitting in an intimate position with me, with trembling lips and trmbling hand pointed a finger at me, and said with an angry look: "you". Meaning me.
I woke up knowing it's all the other way around. She could become our friend. Maybe evn like that. For me it's too much pain being beside her without hugging. For her it's an insult that I'd rather nothing instead of friendship. So in the dream I gave up. I acted like friends, totally OK with it. I was about to show her pictures of my daughter in the cellular while my wife went to make some tea. She decided to put her boots (her in boots!?) on the sofa (WHAT!?) under my thigh. She took my hand. I was glad she's acting intimately again, not protecting myself from the pain she'll inflict on me the next time she's unsatisfied. Opened my fingers so she can put hers in between. That's when her emotions became more evident and the trembling and twitching in her face began.
It's a wishful dream. I wish for her to want me like I want her, putting all the things we don't match in as a secondary thing, and what works as primary. Like I do.
But reality is that she doesn't.
For four years she tried to change me, to mold me to her needs and ways. It won't work.
So when my wife and I have our nightly conversation about them, stating how much we miss them but how it can never work, reflecting on how unhappy we were with them - but how extremely happy we were on specific moments... I end up sheding tears. I feel so helpless. How can we love someone so much, knowing they love us back, and not being able to be together?

Rebooting from porn?! that's easy!
How do I reboot from love? (How do I turn to evn want to?)

 

So how long is your maximum? Do you keep breaking records?
And is a relapse a one-time thing, or do you fall into old habbits - then start a new?

 

Well, A.A. introduce themselves by stating that they are alchoholists even after 10 years of not sipping a single drop. Not even for tosting on a wedding. So... 18 months?! HA! It's nothing

Now really... It's starting to get easier. Although I'm turning more towards mourning our Xes departure. (mmm, 1st time I dare to call them so. It's AWFULL!). I think that the 1-time relapses I had are not a good thing, but as long as I didn't fall back to addiction, it's not something I count as restarting from zero. And I didn't use video, but a story. So... I guess I'm saying that each of you out there recovering from porn shall not go too hard on yourselves. There's a big difference for me now on day 7(+37) than it was on day 7.

Rewired, I solute you. Hang on there.

 

10x I'm not giving up
So shall you.

 

Hey, so you are almost breaking your record!