Day 0

hello, all. (Disclaimer-this is my first post and excuse it if it is a bit fragmented-I need to get a lot out....here we go....)

Just signed up for NoFap from a Terry Crews YouTube workouts video (of all places! lol).

Anyway, I’m 25, from Michigan, and am addicted to PMO. First bewbs I saw growing up was when I was 12, I believe....were on a tv series I watched. Soon discovered masturbation and porn and everything has just gone downhill from there. Maybe once per week in middle school and high school, I would look up softcore porn, or look in the underwear sections of newspaper store sale ads-whatever I could find. I had a pretty normal upbringing. I am not close with any of my 6-person immediate family....parents still together...not sexually abused when I wa younger....anyway, I kissed/dated my first girl when I was 17 in HS and then my life really went downhill. I started acting out sexually with any girl that i would want and would have me. I’ve never been into drugs or drinking (socially and rarely do I drink). Sex seems to be my go-to for dealing and coping with life’s problems. From 18-25, I’ve had probably 30-35 sexual partners (I’m straight if it matters). If it matters, I don’t have any odd, wierd, or strange fetishes that I’m into....I just go to a site and browse a bit and PMO (currently, I PMO 2-6x/day)

I had a child with a gf right after HS (she’s 6 now, and lives far away out of state-our relationship is decent, given the situation. It’s tough many days to wrap my head around, so I cope). Several partners were professional (ya know what I mean) and many women-the great majority- I wish I had never even talked to. I thank God that I don’t have HIV or a disease ...it’s a miracle, really...anyway I am a sex addict. I need help. I went to a 6 month live-in program a couple years ago and it changed my life, until I dove right back into all the crap I was in before rehab.

I do NOT (emphasis on NOT) believe addiction is a “disease”. I will never have someone convince me that addiction is a disease. If you have a disease, people feel sorry for you and give you sympathy. I don’t need sympathy, I need hard love. I need hardcore accountability. I need to stop making excuses for why I’m still doing what I should have stopped doing LONG ago. BUT, I can’t do it by myself. I believe this addiction started with a choice and has become an addiction due to the fact that I consistently made poor and destructive choices in terms of my sexuality. I don’t have a problem with being brutally honest with people, and take full responsibility for where I’m at in life, but I need help, guys.

I need encouragement.............
**story time**
-I met this girl couple years ago in school. We dated for 1 year. (Breakup was just over a year ago. The effects of this relationship still echo today...we started dating about a year after I got back home from rehab. I had fallen back into dabbling in PMO (not nearly the amount before rehab) a couple months prior to dating her. She was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a LOT of porn). This girl was hilarious and we connected on many levels. The sex was great. The dates were great. Our time together was what I looked forward to every day. When I initially told her my story of sexuality and my journey-before, through, and after-rehab, (first time hanging out after first date) she seemed stoic. I could tell it was hard for her to hear. She told me she had dated someone that’s porn addiction was so prolific that he started to get into kiddie porn (I’ve never delved into that area, by God’s grace) and had a laptop full of porn and illegal material. Anyway she told me she would support me in my journey if I REALLY, TRULY wanted to stay clean. Honestly, I lied during our initial conversation, saying that it was “totally under control” and I only looked at it maybe once or twice/week. I was looking at it sparsely, and def not as much as previous life-periods......anyway I stopped looking at it after I met her because I knew it would ruin the relationship. I got Covenent Eyes and she was my accountability partner-I wanted to prove to her I could do this and prove that I was a “good guy” and a real man that didn’t need to look at fake, scripted filmed sex on a screen to get off....It was going well and I was not looking at porn. Since I stopped looking at it right when we started dating, a couple months in, I started to experience PIED maybe a couple times/week...(we had sex daily+). She got super upset every time it happened and she would get mad at me and say things like, “well if you wouldn’t have looked at it so much, you wouldn’t have these problems.” I was very discouraged by her words when the PIED would happen (to those who’ve never experience it-it sucks-REAL BAD, but DOES GO AWAY) because she was so cutting. I WAS encouraged by the fact that I was having PIED because that meant my brain was getting re-acclimated to a real woman and not my own Mr. Hand + phone screen. As time went on, I started finding back-ways of looking at porn because my gf was actually not very supportive of me. She would get very upset when talking to me about it....would jab at me with very mean comments about me for: sleeping with women I had payed for, how many partners I’d had, how much porn I’d looked at, and would even sometimes jab at me for being “tempted” to look at something. (Mind you-she was insecure, even having an amazing body-dare I say she could have starred in porn videos she was very good looking). I eventually started lying about how much I was struggling with PMO because she was so discouraging and cutting whenever it came up...Turns out that whenever the subject of porn, or me “struggling” cane up, she got to the point of just putting me down and down and down over it. The things she would say to me cut very deep because I wanted help, I needed help, and she said she would be there and support me 120%, but cut me down whenever I would PMO or come to her when I needed support. I broke up with her (simply wasn’t working out) eventually because I literally could not stand her berating me over struggling, wanting help, and failing with no support from her.

***She made me feel like all I was good for in life was struggling with porn and never really breaking free from it. ****

While I’m over the relationship, I can’t bring myself to get over the lie that all I’m ever going to be is a sex addict and I’m not going to break free from porn. I’ve never had anyone in my life bring me down for wanting and needing help. I’m over her, just not over what it did to my mindset about porn.

The effects of that on me to this day make me feel like shit daily for “needing” PMO daily to survive. I need people who encourage me, not make me feel like a pos for needing help. I need some encouragement and motivation, guys!

 

I’ll do that-thank you for the suggestion!