DonkeyKong (down but not out) relapse after 120 days.

Good Morning and Happy Sunday.

I apologise massively to all my friends on here and readers of my blog, (donkeykong life after 90 days). On Friday night I relapsed after 120 days of abstinence from porn and masturbation. But I really don't want it to give any of you a negative attitude towards giving up pmo. Many bloggers on here feel that all there efforts are completely wasted after relapse. Admittedly I have taken big 10 steps back opening myself up to triggers i'd recovered from,but I really feel over the last 4 months I have taken 50 steps forwards. Now is the swinging point. I have two options. Dwell on my relapse and persuade myself to pmo again as I have nothing to lose now and fall back into reliance on masturbation and porn, or celebrate my 120 day run, spend some more time researching porn addiction and get back on the no porn train. I'm going to chose the later. But first I want to tell you exactly what I did wrong;

I will describe my relapse in this order and also why stopping masturbation is so important to quitting porn.

• the run up to my relapse
• a post that hung on my mind about relapse
• the perfect setting of my relapse
• my feelings after my relapse

The run up to my relapse.[/B]
My relapse was built over a few days. On the 8th of December I posted on my blog how I saw a girl I used to go to school with, and to spare the details this was a big trigger for me. I was home alone that night and the urges were massive. And there was my first tripping point. I persuaded myself I needed to do some Christmas shopping for my wife, so I started to haul through the underwear stores online.
Through my 120 days I was very strict on myself, I wouldn't purposely look at any (soft images) of any nature. So this was definitely my first big step back.

Combined with my wife being on her period, I was very horny this week.
The next day I made a monumental mistake. I have been very careful not to bug my wife for more sex as a replacement to porn. On the 9th I was starting to look at pictures of girls in underwear as a trigger of the previous day, so I guess you could class I had relapsed at that stage. And that evening I thought to myself, "i have to turn this around". And I made my second massive mistake. I chose to masturbate in the shower. This was a masturbation relapse, but my sole reason for being here was my porn addiction. So I persuaded myself that I would get rid of my sexual frustration by masturbation without the reliance on porn.
The relighted my desire to masturbate, so on the 9th 10th and 11th I started to masturbate daily. Every time in the shower and I didn't purposely have a shower to masturbate but all the same I did.

This situation reminded me of a prominent post I read of a guy I used to follow. He relapsed after a long period. And also like me, step by step you could see it coming. He started to fall apart over a few days.

So the full blown relapse was on Friday night. I took my wife to her work party, then I went to see a friend. And all the time I was there the urges were back heavy. All the time I was thinking I don't want to be here I want to be on porn, knowing my wife was away. But i delayed it as long as i could until i had to go home. Normally i would of gone to bed. But i had to pick my wife up at 1am so the combination of being tired and the urges tripped me up. I also tried to get on NoFap but i have this stupid hp password and i couldn't get on. So i blew it. It was passing through my mind that i had already fallen and it was going to happen. But i should of been stronger.
I watched a porn movie and masturbated.

I was really annoyed with my self. And instead on bingeing on porn that night i drove to the town where my wife was and slept in the car for an hour.
When you relapse after such along period, it is easy to dwell in self pitty. But i brought it on my self. I know in reality in 4 months i have lost 1 hour to porn. So i now need to do the very hard thing of drawing a line under it now by continuing my progress.

I want to suggest a new word for the nofap dictionary. The word is stabilizing. 3 days before i relapsed i was starting to take slippery steps backwards. And this creates a mindset that you expect to fail. Stabilising should be a term where you feel like you are starting to become complacent, you regroup your self and bring it under control instead of relapsing like i did.

I feel strong enough to go again. I feel less addicted than i did when i quit. But it wouldn't take many relapses to fall back into the viscous circle.