How do you handle IRL porn?

I’m with you, even people I might vehemently disagree with I can still learn from. Plus, I’m too curious, gotta watch the train wrecks lol….

 

There are a lot of people can exercise curiosity without a problem. But for many of us addicts, it's a very dangerous thing. We cannot afford to be curious.
Curiosity leads us to check out that porn site. And it leads us to check out that female walking down the street while deluding ourselves into thinking that we're missing out if we don't.
Not everyone here is going to be supportive of our recoveries. Listening to such people can cause more harm than good. The mute button is our friend. Use it.

 

Ahh, for my husband curiosity is his friend. He has never been curious, so in recovery he had to learn to be curious about why he does what he does, why he feels what he feels, why he believes what he believes. He’s the complete opposite of me, I’m curious times 1000!

 

The girls who show off in public generally have low self esteem and miserable themselves. If they had self respect they wouldn’t be showing lot of skin. They are just looking for validation from men. What a sad life to live.

 

Sadly…this is very common. Has to do with “daddy issues” in a lot of these young girls as well. It happened to me. I was a 24 year old counselor at a Christian summer camp and these 2 16 year old girls kept making advances on me and a fellow brother (who was 22). We had to make it very clear to them, in a stern tone, on the 3rd day of camp, that they’re not allowed to just follow us around and drop into our cabins whenever they wanted to. They were very attractive females and I can very easily imagine how one thing could’ve led to another. So thank God for the wisdom to diffuse that kind of escalation.

 

I don't think men addicts, neither women addicts are inherently depraved. What makes these physical changes in your brain is pornography. I'm not saying that there aren't people who genuinely like things like child abuse, rape or torture, but that's severe psychopathology and definitely what people are dealing with here.

As you are desensitised to vanilla content, you look for more obscure type of pornography seeking novelty and getting that dopamine high. That is what happens when you are addicted to porn, you said you didn't use it, good for you, so here I'm trying to picture you the problem from the other side.

 

And the most correct statement on this thread is right there. When someone else triggers you simply by living their own life that trigger is not their problem it is yours. They don't need to change to meet your standards, you need to raise your standards and be a better man.

I admit it, I have a PMO addiction.
Did someone else make me watch porn? No that was my decision.
Did someone else make me watch it so much that it became a problem for me? Nope that is 100% me.
Did I work hard to figure out what my internal triggers were and figure out how to deal with them? Yes and that was all me again working to improve myself.
Am I still working to be 100% porn free and live my best life? Yes I do that daily, no one else does it for me.
At some point did I blame someone else for my problems? Nope, I created them all myself.

I'll give you an example of what I had to deal with in the past and when my eyes started to open to my problem. I started working with a female trainer at the gym, let's call her Mary. Yes she was very attractive and still to this day is probably the most attractive woman I've ever had a friendship with. Of course as a trainer at the gym Mary was wearing clothing that would be classified by this thread as "IRL Porn." I would workout with her on Saturday mornings and after my sessions with her I would come home and masterbate to porn. I remember thinking one time, "I might have to stop working with Mary because I'm spending too much time watching porn and jerking off on Saturdays." My next thought was "but I enjoy her workouts, and I'm seeing results and this problem is not her fault." Could I have blamed her for my problem? Sure after all she was an attractive woman wearing leggings so that must be "IRL Porn." But instead I took responsibilities for my actions and in a way it was a good thing because it started the process to realize I have a problem.

My point to all of this is guys you need to man up and realize you have a problem. Don't blame anyone else but yourself. You created this problem now you need to fix it.

I live my life by asking myself 3 questions on any situation:
1. Is it illegal? No
2. Does it make them happy? Yes
3. Is anyone getting hurt by it? No

If that is how those questions are answered, then I am good with whatever it is. There are grey areas to these answers. You could argue that someone is getting hurt by women and their IRL porn. So when that occurs you dig deeper into the questions. Who is getting hurt? that would be the guy struggling with a porn addiction. Is that her fault? Nope that is his.

 

You're missing that a lot of people here have approached the issue at different levels, not just what you as an individual can do. Even then, you present a horrible life philosophy in my view.

1. Whether something is legal or not obviously impacts the possible reaction of the state but not anything beyond that. Ethics built on laws which can and do change in time and space are weakly founded.
2. What does happy mean? If you relapse you probably feel happy. At the moment, that is. Not much the next day.
3. This point is the worst. First off, if someone makes your life worse, even if inadvertently, there IS obviously someone getting hurt - you. And even in cases when it's not apparent, someone else is going to be almost certainly affected because we live in a society as the saying goes. Does it mean everything ought to be banned? Of course not, but don't ever use the argument "it doesn't hurt anyone" because that's practically never true.

 

Nice, now we know your

I think everyone needs to understand that even though we all know the differences between men and women in the way see the opposite sex, and we also all know very well that lust is, yes indeed our issue to deal with and pretty much all of us are. Women have absolutely free reign in this area. t
The need to feel cute, sexy, confident trumps everything.
If you have any opinion that is even slightly different, you are mentally ill, a predator etc.
I understand a certain percentage of women are going to do whatever they want and don't care, but I'm a little surprised that at least some women on here are of the same mindset.

 

I’m confused? You tagged me but I’m not sure why with the second quote? It’s early, maybe I’m just slow, lol.

 

You're certainly entitled to your opinion about my life philosophy and that's fine. But keep in mind these are principles that work for me based on my life, experience, learnings, and values. And as I stated there are grey areas to the questions and that is when you need to dig deeper into them. And answers are not set in stone, they can change as I learn more, have new experiences, and the world changes around us.

Clearly we'll disagree at some of the points that started this thread. And that is okay. In the end as strangers, my opinion will have no impact on your life and your opinion will have no impact on my life.

 

I think I meant to tag someone else, it was early here also, and I am slow too!
I really need to learn to keep my opinions to myself though.

 

Lol. No problem. Just thought maybe I missed something

 

When I first saw this thread I thought it was about people out in public watching porn lol! I was thinking the OP must live in an insanely liberal part of the world. Where I live it's quite liberal but it's against the law to watch porn in public. But women wearing revealing clothes or women talking about sex isn't porn.

But didn't curiosity kill the cat? Personally, I use the mute button for a number of people here. At the end of the day, I'm here to heal not have silly fights with people. I have boundaries and if someone crosses those boundaries they will be muted. Let's face it everyone here has issues and I hope people sort out their issues but I'm not here to fix anyone. People need to take responsibility for their own issues and work on their own healing.

 

Yeah, that could have been really bad. I can't help but think that's how some church scandals start. You did well to recognise the responsibility you had in the position you were in.

 

Sometimes there are things that are too stupid not to push back against. So, you can at least understand why people have silly fights.

 

On the issue of the thread, it can be hard. Staying in isn't an option for me due to my health issues. I have hayfever and where I live has a lot of pollen. The hayfever can cause me to have shortness of breath and being by the sea helps. Fortunately, a nearby village that is by the sea has a marina and park but no beach. Some girls go around the village in revealing clothes but it isn't as bad as the city or the beach.

What I try to do is apply the noting technique when I see women and try to live out my values but it's not easy. Also being short-sighted helps me not check out girls.

I would also add I would rather live in a country where women can wear what they like rather than in those conservative Islamic countries. I mean in Iran the police can interrogate women if they don't like the way they're wearing the hijab. So wearing the hijab isn't good enough, they need to wear it the way the police want them to.

 

It was my response to those suggesting that puritanism may be a good solution to the shaky self-control of some deeply disturbed, sex-obssessed men. As someone who lives in a country where women dress more modestly, I can say this is BS, if anything it emboldens men even more and gives them the opportunity to justify their depraved behaviour based on what women wear. It only breeds hate and resentement between the two sexes, it makes things worse not better.

 

I just want to say that in my opinion irl and porn are too separate things. If someone views people irl as porn, then it's a good chance the problem is watching too much porn, not what people are wearing. Porn prompts objectification of people who are going about their own lives and probably don't live a pornified existence.

 

I will actually agree with Beachguy. Porn does wire our brains to see woman as pleasure objects, so I can understand why summer it's specially difficult. We are walking around and our brains are processing all this information... We instantly start fantasizing whether we like it or not, objectifying woman is a fantasy.

We could argue for days if the people showing too much have issues or not, if society is sick or not, but this is the reality that we live and in this reality, we as porn addicts (in recovery o recovered) need to learn to see through a normal scope...