I keep relapsing over and over

Don't touch your pp.

Tell yourself no. When you're not feeling urges, pretend you're about to m, and yell at yourself in your head. "no!" you need to discipline yourself.

two approaches society has
-treat yourself harshly and enact change
-forgive yourself and enact change
both work, sometimes we do need to forgive ourselves, sometimes we need to keep our desires in check to our discipline goals thru brute force.
meet your own standard, and feel power exude from you. this confidence is the NF benefits. rule yourself, rule all. be king.

take a few days to get some strength back. but every hour matters. "just a day", "just two days", "just four hours free" but you cannot get to higher day counts without going thru the "insignificant" day counts (the very building blocks, in reality)

 

Hey Selfcontrol1

I feel your pain. I have not personally looked at Porn in the literal definition in over a month and only one time in the last three months. However, I lust after nearly everything I see. I have gotten to the point where my marriage is so damaged that realistically I am just waiting for the day she finally leaves me, unless I wake up and realize Porn and lusting after other women is not what I actually want.

I been married over 15 years to women who has nothing but shown me love and faithfulness through all my ups and downs. I had childhood trauma, I have a severely delayed Autistic Son, I spent 15 years in the Army before they forced me out. I was rejected by women most of my life. The is just a list of excuses to why I have told myself since I was 12 years old porn was OK. I am not 40 and still struggle. But as I said that is a list of excuses. Instead of using those excuses to go to porn, in the literal sense, or lusting after girls because realistically that is a variation of porn, it is time for me to make a conscious decision and find their reasons not to do porn or lust after other women. I promise there are plenty.

Without a reason to stop porn, just saying you want to be not enough, you won't be successful long term. Willpower alone will not be enough. I promise you; I have many years of experience of trying to hide my feelings and making excuses. For me, moving forward my reasons for not wanting porn or lusting after other women is because I don't want to let PORN control my decision anymore. I want to be in control of my own life.

For you, I don't know where you are at personally, but I suggest you find you WHY to not do PORN, including lustful behaviors. I would also suggest you learn about what PORN truly is and how it affects your brain. I personally started listening to multiple free podcasts on Spotify and they really hit home in many ways.

PBSE - Porn Betrayal Sex and the Experts is a good one to start with they are both recovering porn addicts, because you will never stop recovering. They are both therapists that will offer great insight to many topics relating to PORN, lusting and other various relationship subjects. They are easy to listen to because they can laugh about it in a way that isn't boring but also tell it to you in a way that kind of slaps you in the face and gives you a reality check.

 

You just need to realize that relapse and lapse are 2 different things.

Relapse mean pmo like you used to.
Lapse mean pmo just once or 2 times (less than you used to)

Unlike what people believe here lapse is part of the process. People who are addict to alchool, when they try to stop in a year time, 80% of them lapse, but not relapse.

The very BIG PROBLEM with the nofap community is they don't distinguish lapse from relapse.

Lapse is ok, cause you should have realize by now that, you do it less and less when you lapse. It will eventually disapear.

Do not believe all those success story when people who claims to overcome that addiction first try. They post their success after the 90days period but never post back if they lapse after that first success, so noone knows if they really got rid of pmo.

The bottom line is: lapse and relapse are different. Go read article about addiction, relapse and lapse.

You are on your way, lapse is part of the process. You are NOT failling.

 

https://www.turningpoint.org.au/treatment/about-addiction/treating-addiction/lapse-and-relapse

https://www.washburnhouse.com/addiction-recovery-blog/what-is-relapse-vs-a-lapse/

 

That is definitely not how it works. This addiction is unlike any other. The only way to get rid of it is to make zero compromises. You will see many people on here who tried to quit for decades until something clicked, or didn’t. It’s not a matter of time it’s a matter of will.

 

Yes relapsing and lapsing or what ever you want to call it are different there are many terms used to differentiate the two levels of severity. Relapse and laspe don't mean anything specifically. They are specific to your boundaries you set. The key here is the word boundaries. If you don't have boundaries set you identify what you boundaries are. Without boundaries you can't start to recover. You may think that doing 1 less pmo or even only one pmo is positive step compared to the past but I will honest from my experience that is just excuse to say no. I have been giving into porn in some sort of fashion for over 30 years but I made a decision to stop one day. I promise you it isn't easy by any means. I have many days where my brain can visualize it and sadly sometime fantasize about. To some that may be a lapse but for me those are relapses because my boundaries is to remove all thoughts of it and all lust based behaviors. The thought of it alone is not a relapse that will happen. What action you take based on it will determine whether it becomes a relapse or not.

Would you tell an alcoholic only have one beer today instead of 6. No you would tell them to throw it out and get rid of any association or anything that could make them think of it. It is the same concept.

My suggestion to you is read some porn addiction books, listen to podcasts and really try to understand what porn addiction is. There are a lot of tools to help. But probably most importantly if you are struggling with self control, take the control away and limit opportunities for exposure and temptation. Setup blockers/filters for your devices know your limitations and don't put yourself in situtation to fail. I LOVE video games, movies, sports TV shows and all those things but I gave them up because they were all triggers. I am not saying you have to go that far but don't let pride embarrassment stop you from setting yourself up for success and failure. I promise you from my experience and other people I have talked to and listened to if you think just reducing your usage but still use you are just adding fuel to the fire.

Make today the day. No matter what happened in the past, no matter. I will not give into PORN again. I will not let it control my life.

 

if you guys are ok living with the pressure of relapsing all the time and then feeling terrible each time, it is your right.

 

The pressure of NOT relapsing, is what propels people towards success. If you remove that pressure, then you’re easily tempted to give in. You should feel terrible after a relapse, because you did fail. It’s the feeling terrible that motivates you to stop. If no one felt terrible from pmoing, then this site wouldn’t exist.

 

Let me tell you a little story about myself. I don't by a means confess to be an expert because the truth is I have so many problems I wouldn't want anyone to be in my shoes.

Nearly two years ago my wife, whom I have been married to 15 years, found a picture of a girl on my phone. It was a picture of a coworker's Instagram photo. The girl didn't know I had it. But I made fake email and fake Facebook and Instagram account just to look at her outside of work. I threw myself into my marriage and stopped specifically, but I looked at every other girl I could find still. I eventually confessed my feelings towards this girl that "I like her." Yes, I have no game lol. That is beside the point. She had given me no signs that there was anything real, but I had made it up in my head because every now and then she had laughed at me. That is the key I said at me not with me. When I stop to think about the girl with logical brain and not my P brain, I would have noticed. She only talked to me when she needed something, she made fun of me to my face, and she thought she was better than not just me but everyone else. But none of that mattered she was hot. She was barely high school cheerleader. I was 39 at the time. That is the typical thing I searched when I went to P. So, my brain only thought lust and P when I was around and couldn't think rationally. I attached because that is what my brain rewired taught me to do for so many years. I worked with her for few more months, because I needed the money and kept telling myself it would be ok if just did less and stayed away. But the more I stayed away the more I wanted her and resented my wife. I grew distant from not only my wife and daughter who by the way was only 2 years older than this girl. I spent money on her buying her food, gifts and trying to bring her comfort while ignoring my wife and daughter. Still this girl didn't like me. When I finally quit, I said it was because I didn't need the job because my primary job offered OT, that was only partially true. The reality it was tearing me apart being around her, yes her not my wife, and not being able to be with her. Two weeks pass and OT ends. I have to get another job, but now I am better right she is gone I can move it was one time thing, but here is thing about it I have had been doing it on and off our entire marriage but refused to think it was bad. I want to say it was because I thought it was ok, but the truth is I knew all long it was completely wrong in every way, I even wrestled with that the entire time. I made excuses for my behaviors; it wasn't like I have an actual affair, right? Nope I have NEVER physically had an affair with anyone in my entire life I can say that for sure. But my entire or nearly my entire marriage I have been having one emotional date, fantasy or affair however you want to call it. None were with my wife's approval or knowledge for so long. To be honest none were with anyone's approval or knowledge even whatever girl or girlsssssssss I lusted after. I added so many S's because there are some days that my mind switched from one girl to another like when I can't decide which P I want to watch that day. So now back to the rest of the story, yes there is more. Two weeks have gone by, I now need a job again. My wife can't work, because we have severely delayed autistic son that she takes care of primarily. I start looking for a job and what is for a p addicted brain do but pick a job solely based on the looks of the people I could work with. Really what logically person who make that decision after everything I just put my wife and myself through less than 6 months to 2 weeks ago. None, but I wasn't thinking logically, because a brain on P won't allow you think logically. Within less than a month at my new job I attached to another girl, in fact within less than two weeks I have sized every woman that I see to see if they were worthy of my lust. I am not going to go into to much more detail, because I could probably write a book about all the wrong, I have done in my life related to P and my choices. But to make longer story a little short, this girl was the same as the last girl. She was same height, same hair color, same body type, even a cheeleader as well. Yes, you guessed recently out of high school. In fact, she went to school with the other girl from my other job and they were on the same team together and were friends. But I made the same dumb decision, because that was the way my P brain was trained.

Here is the key to all this I tried to cut P out after the first girl. I would go a month then give, go 3 weeks then give, and so on so. It has gotten so bad that now that I am P free from the literal definition of nudity and what not online or whatever source. But that was only because my wife kept catching me and put-up boundaries for me. I resented, the more I got caught the more I lost. I kept trying to get it in whatever fashion I could get. By it I don't mean P specifically but the lust of women. Looking at facebook, lost social media. Watching TV movies, lost watching TV. Broadcasters on sports, lost sports, ADs on google searches, can't search without my wife worrying. There are so many more that I can't even think of. This may be excessive, but it is because I kept saying a little is ok, and not thinking about my wife. Now if I have to give up all things, I used to truly enjoy in order to keep the most important thing in my life, my wife.

I am not saying you have to go to this extreme but if I could go back and realize that put pressure on myself back then could eliminate all this pressure and discomfort now. I would have welcomed it. I could go on and on to be honest. I write to you today, only realize all this. I have a long journey ahead myself. This is my story is not the only way nor is their only one way. I just strongly suggest you don't let discomfort delay you from become what you really want to be if you are here, P Free.

 

I sent a lot of positive energy to you and your family.

Thanks for sharing your story.

I went to the same extreme, I gave up social media, gave up P, gave up videos games, and I start reading a lot. I discovered that boring is good, it calms the brain.

 

I tried reading to which believe me for me was a stretch because I get bored to easy. I find myself fantasizing about the characters. Let's face it I was fantasizing about the girls and I didn't see it. My wife did. She keeps seeing and I don't. Why she has stayed with me to this point is honesty beyond my understanding but I am thankful. Now that I am actually trying and realistically me posting in hear is the first time I can legitimately saying I was trying without making excuses. She is a little bitter and can't blame her. All I can do is heal myself and stop adding fuel to fire. I have to stop getting depressed when she is upset her over everything because she has triggers too. I need to understand that norther how I am feeling. She is feeling so much worse. She never asked for any of this. She doesn't deserve. She deserves better we all deserve better. As they said in DARE just say no.

 

This is some real truth here. Guys take note and heed this advice. There might be 1 guy in a thousand that quits at the very first attempt. Everyone else slips up and as long as you do not go to using porn regularly like you used to before and complete abandon recovery, it is NOT A RELAPSE!!

 

Why not?

 

I am a guy. I get it. I have the same thing. I'm thankful I've made progress, but I keep doing the same dumb things over and over. I feel you.
Who do you want to be? What separates you from being that person? In order to like who you are, you'll need to change - maybe, or maybe you just don't like yourself? What don't you like about yourself?
There is no "behind" in life - anyone who realizes they have faults and is actively and genuinely working to fix them, is someone I will respect.