Ending Something I Never Should Have Started

I cannot believe I am here writing this but things got so bad I needed to seek out help.

I actually found this site over a year ago. Looked around with some interest but, surely, I wasn't one of those people. Well, I finally had to be honest with myself and admit I was.

I'm older. 62 to be precise and happily married for 33 years to a wonderful woman. Then why would I PMO? It's a long story. This is the short version.

I've always been fascinated with sex. My parents were rather strict about the subject which only heightened my interest even more. I started masturbating early in puberty mainly to prevent nocturnal emissions which I found embarrassing (God forbid my mother would have to clean it up). No porn at the time. This was before the Internet and before access to "dirty" magazines. My father had no "dirty" magazine stash. All I had were fantasies to go on.

I really did not get into porn and more frequent masturbation (2-3 times a week) until I was in grad school. There was a lot of stress and my porn at the time was limited to Playboy and Penthouse magazines. I was awkward with girls and did not have my first sexual experience until I was 23. It didn't go well. Maybe it had to do with my PMO but I had no idea at the time. I was just nervous as hell.

After I graduated I expanded my magazine stash to include Hustler, Oui and a few more of the more hardcore magazines. I thought nothing of it at the time. A couple of years later I went to see an X-rated movie for the first time (in a theater) and discreetly MO'd right at my seat. It was scary and exciting. I only did that one more time.

Fast forward to 1982 and I finally meet a woman that I can have a stable relationship with. I threw all of my porn in the trash, stopped masturbating and directed all of my sexual energy at her. We married in 1983 and had 3 children by 1989. I don't recall masturbating at all during that time.

After the kids were born, sex became less frequent but my desire for sex did not. After not masturbating for years (I didn't need to) I started masturbating once a month when she had her period. It gave me a release and let her control the timing of when we had sex. I thought nothing of it.

Then the Internet came along. That was the start of a downward spiral. In the early days bandwidth was insufficient for video, but just fine for pictures. I started looking at pictures of naked women first, then couples having sex, then more and more. I didn't always masturbate to the pictures, but I did get an erection.

Things seemed to be OK in bed until we got high speed Internet in 2003. That opened a whole new world or pornographic possibilities. I noticed soon after that I was having occasional problems keeping it up during sex. I never connected the two. My wife had NO idea I was viewing porn. We wrote it off to "stress" because it didn't happen that often.

I discovered the "tube" sites probably around 2008 or 2009. Now it was really easy to stream porn movies. A veritable buffet of anything sexual you would like to partake in! Our sex life was down to once or twice a week and I felt I wanted more but I didn't want to pressure her. What could it hurt, I thought, if I masturbated a couple of times a week to porn?

I want to say right here that I have never cheated on my wife in the traditional sense. Never had sex with another woman, never did a sex chat online, never went to a prostitute. However, I was beginning to feel that I was cheating on her in a sense. This created a lot of guilt but it didn't stop me. The draw of PMO was too strong. It began to feel like a mental compulsion.

2.5 years ago we moved to a completely different city 200 miles away because my wife's job got transferred. By this time we were down to having sex once a week at most, almost always on a Sunday morning. It had gotten routine and rather boring. I didn't know hardly anyone here and I'm not that outgoing. I escaped deeper into porn.

We'd have sex on Sunday then as soon as she went off to work I'd have what I jokingly called Masturbation Monday. I'd watch a lot of porn and MO 2-3 times. Why not? Who was I hurting? Soon that stretched into Monday and Tuesday. I always wanted to give myself enough time to recover before Sunday. However....

I began to have stretches where I'd have trouble keeping an erection. These would last for weeks then suddenly disappear. Things would be great for a month or two, then I'd have problems again. It kept getting worse and worse. Finally it got to the point where the flag was at half mast and I couldn't raise it any higher. I began to get deeply depressed. My wife asked if it was her. She still has/had NO idea of my "habit."

Over time, I also noticed that I wasn't my usual self. I was suffering from brain fog, having trouble concentrating, had no motivation to do much of anything and had more social anxiety than usual. Again, I did not connect that to anything other than aging. At least until I started researching the adverse effects of long-term use of Internet porn.

About a month ago I had my annual physical. I'm in reasonably good health for a man my age and I told my doctor I was having some ED issues so he gave me a prescription for generic V. I got a free sample and my wife and I were excited to give it a try. I was definitely in the mood. (Libido has never been an issue). I took 50 mg. Nothing. I took another 50 mg. Got it up just enough to have an orgasm but it was just like it had been without the V. The next day I PMO'd twice out of frustration and depression then came here. I finally started to understand what I have been doing to myself. I made the commitment to stop right then. That was 11 days ago.

The good news is that the urge to heal has been a LOT stronger than the urge to view porn. Most days I don't think about porn at all. I only had a strong urge once and that was easy to reject. The best news is that on Sunday my wife and I had the best sex we've had in a long time. After 9 days without (and admittedly a little help from Vitamin V), I was able to maintain my erection throughout our lovemaking. I had the most amazing orgasm I have had in years. I almost cried.

I am not telling her about why I was having problems. I don't want to hurt her. I am just going to stay on this path. Sex with my wife is about intimacy. I want that amazing intimacy we have when we make love. Porn killed that. The good news is that it is being resurrected.

Thanks for listening.

 

Day 12. I feel good. The last week or so I've felt happier than I have in years. Part of it is certainly giving up PMO, but another large part of it is the relief of finally figuring out the root cause of many of my physical and mental issues. I am definitely not as lethargic as I had been. I started exercising last Tuesday and today will be 9 straight days of exercise. I cannot remember the last time I felt motivated enough to exercise for 9 consecutive days.

Things are not perfect. The brain fog has not totally lifted and my motivation levels are still not what they were but both have improved. I'm finding that I am better able to stick with healthy eating, that I seem to care more about myself. I realize that I didn't get myself into this mess in just 12 days and I won't be completely "healed" in 12 days either. But I seem to have the motivation to persist. Will I relapse? I don't know. My intention is to never relapse, but we all have that intention, right?

So far, this is easier than I thought it would be. After having sex with my wife on Sunday I was afraid of experiencing the dreaded "chaser effect" but it did not happen. My next step is to begin meditating again. I'm taking a holistic approach to my recovery: I'm working on the physical, mental and spiritual parts of me. I believe that by doing that I have a much better chance at long-term success.

 

I don't feel you hijacked my post at all. One reason I joined and confessed publicly is that I need people to talk to about this and for this problem alone, talking to my wife was NOT an option. Maybe I should suck up the courage and confess to her, but as I said above I do NOT want to hurt her although by keeping this secret I have been hurting her in a way all along. I just feel I have to do this my way. No hard mode and no confessing to the woman I cherish more than anyone or anything. Having a PMO problem didn't make me cherish her less. I now realize that it hijacked my reward system and screwed me up in ways I never imagined. I take full responsibility for that but in one sense it was not my fault - I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Although even if 10 years ago I knew what I know now it might not have made a difference. The lure was that strong. Notice how I was always justifying my PMO habit to myself. I had convinced myself that it was harmless. Even after I had evidence to the contrary, I continued for quite a while. It took not being able to raise the flag above half staff and realizing how miserable I was overall to open my eyes and change my beliefs.

I'm already a better man for it. Hang in there.

 

DJ, See my journal for updates.