Oh, no partly relapsed, due to increased sex drive

Hello Mdz. Thank you for posting. Reading posts and posting myself is part of my recovery, so thank you for the opportunity to respond. It is a dilemma isn't it? We want to quit the cycle, but the cycle is here in the first place due to a perfectly human desire, the sex drive. Before I understood I had an addiction, before I admitted that one could be addicted to the cycle, I had tried to stop the cycle. I always failed, but I remember clearly having the thought "I wish there was a button to push that would turn off my sex drive altogether." If I had had that button back then I would have pushed it, even if it meant totally losing my sex drive forever; that was how frustrated I was, I was willing to never feel a sexual urge again, never be horny again, to give up sex forever, if I could have just quit the cycle. Of course, there is no button. I will say that in my experience you have taken a number of positive steps and have gotten a number of positive results. The first step is of course recognizing you have a problem. You are not alone. One of the big steps I think you ought to take credit for is that you did not MO and you did not binge. I know a lot of people try to break the PMO cycle all at once, and that makes sense, but it did not work for me. I separated the P from the MO, meaning I continued to watch porn compulsively at the beginning of my recovery, but I managed eventually not to MO to it, and ultimately that lead to a significant decrease of MO, which in turn ultimately has resulted in a significant decrease of P. I don't know anything about sex chat rooms. That was never my problem, never my trigger, and in fact I deliberately chose not to interact with any real person during the years I was using. Addicts have weird ways of rationalizing their use, and mine was that it was not cheating on my wife so long as it did not involve real people. But, intellectually and emotionally, it was cheating and it caused my wife to brand me "emotionally unavailable". I really did not need my wife for sex anymore--though we still had what I thought was a good sex life--but almost exclusively I would O with P, not with her. That took a hit on her self esteem, which is the reason I decided to quit. But, back to the point I was making, if hitting the chat room was a relapse, it was not a full relapse, and you seem to have gone far to have broken the cycle. Again, for me, breaking the cycle was first about breaking the P from the MO, and it looks like you have done that. I think that just wanting to quit, aspiring to quit, is not sufficient. Noble, but you need tools, and this site and YBOP are good ones. Educate yourself, understand it is not just about willpower, it is about literally rewiring your brain chemistry. Your brain does not want to be rewired; somewhere down in that primal chemical brain center associated with food, sex, and reward, it likes the chemicals your trigger is pumping out at about 10 times the rate associated with actual sex. Your trigger, our trigger, my trigger has fooled the brain into thinking its endless appetite can be endlessly fed, over and over and over. Some guys live with that and are just fine, meaning if there are adverse consequences in their lives, they don't care. I had reasons to quit; so do you or you would not be here. I think your idea about a real woman is appropriate. I am not a God freak, but God did not build the human male with a sex drive and expect him to live without scratching that itch. Normal sex is good, it is the abnormal reliance on internet sex that a lot of us have trouble with. I am lucky, I am married, I have a sex partner. It helps, because when I feel the sex urge, I have a means other than MOing to fix it. So, think about finding a real human being for that outlet. Also, for me using porn blockers has helped a lot. They do not stop me from getting to P if I want to, but they give me a moment to pause before allowing me, which allows me to remember why they are there, why I don't want to use porn at all. And, never forget it is an addiction. I know there is scientific debate about whether it is an addiction, and for a long time I rationalized I could not be addicted because there is no such thing as porn addiction. But for me, to recover, I had to admit to myself, to categorize myself, as "addict". Understand your trigger is your fix. It is an illness, but not one to beat yourself up over. A lot of guys have it, some of us are trying to get the cure, and many do completely get clean, and start to think about sex the way people thought about sex before the internet. Also, this forum is a tool. When you are here reading about the problem, writing about the problem, thinking about the problem, you are at least for that time, not engaging in the problem. If I feel like viewing porn I often come here first, read, and write, and it helps. Also, I read someplace that trying not to even think about sex, especially pornographic sex, helps. I have found that it does. The reality, part of my problem and perhaps yours, is that, due to being addicted to the visuals of porn, I can think about porn and my brain releases some of those chemicals, even if I am not watching it. Same (for me) with just about any type of hypersexualized imagery, which owing to the fact that sex sells, is everywhere, meaning it takes an effort not to think about sex when even things such as workout magazines show some very sexual imagery. Good luck, keep trying, don't despair, find a real, living, human being, and thank you for allowing me this opportunity to talk about the problem, which has helped me a bit with working on my own.

 

Great thoughts/advice, William and Mdz!