PA do you ever really forget?

I'm very late to this thread, sorry if I'm messing with its flow.

From my experiences I have good news and bad news. @SpouseofPA, which do you want first? I'll go for the good news first. I'm 52 and I started using porn at, say, 17 having encountered it a few years before passed around the school playground. That's 35 years. In that time I must have viewed tens of thousands of pornographic images and videos, if not more. 99.999% of those I cannot remember at all.

I guess that makes the bad news obvious. There are a handful of images, twenty or thirty that I can recall. I am a very visual guy so this may not be true of everyone, but some of the women or situations resonated so much with …, with what? I'm not sure. But they struck me forcefully and I can remember them now.

I so so wish that were true of me. Then this would be easy. Porn would hold no more appeal, I wouldn't have to fret, I wouldn't have to struggle. I fear that is not at all true of me. I feel like an addict. I think if I looked at those images I loved I would, as @vxlccm put it in a post on my journal (here), "spiral down to hell".

@SpouseofPA I am sorry to say all this. I sense from this thread that you need to know that there is a moment when this is all over, when there are no images left over from his porn use in his mind and he no longer struggles.

@vxlccm is much further down the line than me, so there is hope. Or perhaps your SO is more like @vxlccm than like me (to be honest we are all so different). There is hope, but you also need to find ways to build your self-esteem and the love between you if your SO has the same experience as me: no whitewash, no end to the struggle. Sorry.

 

Greater is this:
The One I believe in has done all the work actually.

 

I'm single. The more I abstain, the more thoughts I get about real women I actually see in my life.

P is just a stupid drug.

 

This thread has been a really interesting read, and the question it poses is an important one too.
I would like to make a brief contribution to it, because it is connected to the idea of 'forgetting'.
Earlier today I was reading an online magazine and saw this article [no discernible triggers, but a picture of a woman's face].
The article was about a woman whose son discovered she had been a P performer twenty years ago because his classmates had found her films on-line and were teasing/bullying him about it. When I read it I responded in two ways:
[1] I thought she was familiar but had no idea who she was. It was only when I looked at the original Italian article [from an Italian daily, no discernible triggers, but some 'model photos' - be advised] that I remembered. But that was only because the Italian article name-checked her 'screen name'. Suddenly I knew I had seen her before, but that I had more-or-less totally forgotten about her. Even being reminded did not return any strong feelings of 'desire'. In fact I felt uneasy in being confronted with the real person behind the screen name.
[2] Now that I had been confronted by her as a real person, who had a son, who had 'forgiven' her, I suddenly felt a great deal of remorse over ever having seen her in the first place. The article related this family episode made me feel as though I had intruded into the life of another human being by ever having watched her films.
Here is the article [from a Christian magazine]:
https://aleteia.org/2017/05/11/a-son-to-his-mother-a-former-pornstar-i-love-you-as-you-are/

I'm adding this comment to this thread because I HAD forgotten her. It IS possible to forget. I understand what many other posters have said here that some things 'cannot be unseen', but what little remains in my head is in no way attractive to me. They are very vague, and powerless [as someone else mentioned]. They exert no control over me.

I hope SOs here [and PAs] realize that - with time - the power of images will fade even if the images themselves do not do so entirely.

 

Perhaps I have mislead you. The images in my mind do not have a strong hold on me still, but if I saw their ilk again it would. Browsing porn again is tempting, very tempting, but browsing porn in my memories is not, especially now that I have given up masturbating.

I don't think I need this, I am utterly convinced that porn is evil and wrong. I think I always knew that.

Oh dear, this will make me seem recalcitrant, like I may have in the ogling thread. No, I do not want to get rid of them. Not because I revisit them frequently as treasures (I do not) but because policing my memory seems unwise.

Me too.

Though I wonder if we are talking at cross purposes. Do you mean easier to avoid being drawn back into using pornography (that's what I mean) or do you mean easier to avoid recalling pornographic images in our memory? If you mean the latter I do have some good news ...

At last I can give you unabashed good news. He will definitely stop thinking about them. I could recall the images if I wanted to, but why would I want to dwell on past porn finds? That would be self-inflicted torture. I don't go out of my way to avoid thinking about those images, the ones I could remember if I tried, but why try? Now I am struggling to stay away from porn, deliberately lingering on pornographic images in my mind would be bonkers, so I don't do that.

Sorry, I shouldn't have added that bit. I meant it as a positive call to action but it just came out patronising.

 

This would be ideal, wouldn't it @SpouseofPA?

Thanks for your input, @kropo82!

 

Understand stranger things, my SO really loved the "closed doors immediately after kissing" he said... It's not like you (the audience) Does not Know

 

I'd just like to add one final thing to this:
During the course of the past 500+ days I have had a few ideas on life without PMO. One such idea is that I think the difference between 'life with PMO' and 'life without PMO' is the same as that between a Lust for Life, and a Love of Life.

A Lust for Life is an inability to be satisfied with what is there. It's a type of greed, always wanting more and never satisfied with what is here. I think PMO operates on this principle.
A Love of Life is when there IS an appreciation for what is here and now. It is a form of gratitude. This is life after PMO.

I think that when I read the article [which I spoke about above], this sense of appreciating people as human beings with lives of their own really came to the fore. The person in the article was not a novelty, but had been born and grew up, and had become a mother. In the past, pre-NoFap, I do not think I would have thought this way [I do not think I would have been reading that magazine either, though]. Whatever change has come about, this appreciation for people as people and not as things has been a feature of it.

I know my use of the terms Love/Lust might seem trite to some of you, but I just use them to help describe that P does fade in the mind, in its power, in its control, but does so in tandem with a growing appreciation for what is real rather than a desire for what isn't [i.e.fantasy].

 

Not at all. Thank you for your insight. That makes sense!

 

This, omg yes. I had tried so many times in the past to explain this very thing with life, love and relationship. You stated it clearly & beautifully! I believe my hubby is finally feeling this difference.
Thank you!

 

This thread has been humbling. You can tell from my counter that i don't have a lot of time. Also, this is not my first time; withing a few days of my coming back I found evidence that I had started to make an effort in 2012.

Wife's mood has been unpredictable. That's hard for me, of course. I need to try to remember how hard it is for her.

PMO is not my only addiction. I have 35 years abstinent from another one. I need to remember how addiction affects the whole system, the whole family. I'm not very good at putting another person first in my PMO addiction. This thread has helped me for today. I'm going to link to it in my journal.

 

I think I should own, not seek to erase, my past. Sure there are millions of things I have forgotten, and many of them will be painful or paint me in a bad light (e.g. moments where I have made an utter dick of myself) but the ones that have stayed with me are me, for good and bad. Trying to rewrite my own history seems spooky, Orwellian. I can imagine a future where there are some things we are not allowed to think, but I do not want to impose that dystopia on myself now.

I have grown up believing that the free association of ideas is the sign of a healthy mind (dad was a teacher and psychologist, and later a therapist). So I try to believe that wherever my mind wanders teaches me about myself. Obviously the mind is not really free in this sense, there are all sorts of beliefs, taboos, and experiences that keep thoughts in-check. But I do not want to add to those constraints.

Most of the pornographic images I can remember are lodged in my psyche because they resonated with me, they tell me something about my sexual fantasies, and thus my inner life. If I was to deliberately try to associate nasty things with them in an attempt to remove them from my memory I would be telling my psyche that my sexual fantasies are wrong and should be punished. That seems unhealthy to me. Here's a great quote from the book @Sadgirl and @Kenzi recommended to me

There are lots of people on these forums who conflate 'fantasy' with 'hope' or worse 'planning', i.e. they think that what we fantasize about is what we want to happen in the real world. It isn't.

Without porn and masturbation my fantasy life is changing: now I do not dedicate any time to sexual fantasy; but policing my sexual fantasy world to remove fantasies whose imagery is borrowed from pornography seems, for the reasons above, misguided.

Does that make sense? What do you think?

Not really. I think porn itself would be a trigger to more porn, but seeing someone sexy in real life or in a film does not send me craving after porn nor does it make me recall things like wild fire. I am aware of a tension in the air, but that serves as a reminder that I am committed to remaining free of porn. The 'trigger' moments for me are more situational, when I'm tired and stressed and alone. Even then it is not images or memories that crowd in, it is a sense that I am already lost, that I have already given in. That is hard to fight.

 

You are a interesting person.
Though I don't always agree with you, I do enjoy your perspective and am grateful you share it... It makes me think.
Not always good thoughts... But it doesn't keep me trapped in a circle either which is humbling.
I enjoy being able to work through the internal processes of our conversations... Whichever way they go.