Relapse as a revenge

The NHS (the National Health Service in the UK) gives a brief guide how to tell if you are a victim of abuse. If you don't live in the UK, the numbers won't be of any use to you, but the guide is still useful.

Go to this NHS page and read under the heading "Emotional abuse".

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/health...iolence/#signs-of-domestic-violence-and-abuse

 

Respectfully, I would like to challenge your assertions about sex drive/interest gender differences. Admittedly, I am not familiar with the research on this, but I have always thought the idea that men desire sex more intensely and frequently than do women as conventional wisdom promoted by pop culture more than "fact". It is easy to get that impression since men are certainly socialized to display or profess their interest in sex while women are taught to downplay theirs.

I assure you that sexual frustration with a reluctant, uninterested or unable husband is a frequent topic of conversation among my female friends and acquaintances, regardless of age group, as are enthusiastic expressions of sexual appetite. I, myself, have always had a strong sex drive and have maintained that into my 50s.

So I think we should be careful about broad generalizations, especially when they could easily be turned into justification or rationalizations for unhealthy behaviors.

 

Thanks for this reply. I don't mean to erase or downplay women's sexuality. But I do think it has a different nature to it than for males. Speaking generally of course. Differences in porn use between men and women show that there are clearly differences. Both men and women have access to P, and both men and women are able to engage in its use secretively. So even if society places different expectations on how men and women should express their sexuality, or what a 'normal' sexuality for a man or woman is, women could easily be spending as much of their time using it. They overwhelmingly don't. Perhaps a better way of wording these apparent differences, and of interpreting the objective statistical evidence (p use) that suggests them, is the say that men have fewer barriers to, or pre-requisites for, enjoying sex as erotic stimulation, and sex-related materials and erotic imagery.

I'm not really sure what I'm wanting to achieve here. There are clearly differences between female and male sexuality, which is why most of the users here giving up P are men and most of the hurt SOs seeking support here are women.

And I would guess that most of your friends with male partners who are wanting more sex have a partner who is using P. They might prefer the sex, but P becomes a sex replacement because of its ease, intensity and availability.

Obviously though, porn and sex are not the same thing, just different ways of achieving pleasure that have sexual motivations for engaging in them. Maybe a better way of thinking is that women are less likely to have their sex drive distracted by pornography.

 

Do you wonder if maybe more men are on here because women deal with inner turmoil better, preventing a vast majority from sexual addictions?
I don't know statistics or anything, but I would hypothesize that there are more men porn addicts not because of sexuality, but because men have trouble facing hard shit head on. Women are just as scared in tough times, but seem to want to deal with the problems rather than running from our demons.. Idk. I could be way off. Random thoughts...

 

I never disputed that men’s sexuality differs from women’s. I only disputed your claims that men’s drives “make them more enthusiastic about sex than women (at least more easily excited about the prospect of sex/sexual activity, and a desire to have sex at higher frequencies) with an excess of desire that most partners are unwilling or unable to match.” Nothing in your reply has convinced me to change my mind.

And yes, while there may be differences in frequency of porn use between men and women, this in no way proves differences between genders when it comes to intensity or frequency of desire for sex. In fact, I’m not even sure that I want to concede that there are vast differences between men and women when it comes to pervasiveness of porn use. It depends how you define it. I'm not the first to observe that sexually explicit, soft-core covered romance novels with overwhelmingly female readership are a multi-billion dollar industry. Add to that R-rated “chick-flicks”, etc and I’m not so sure we women “overwhelmingly don't.”

My main concern here has not been to deny that there are differences between the genders, but to push back against the use of popular but flawed notions to promote any idea that sounds remotely like “Men resort to porn because women won’t put out.”

 

I disagree. I think the hard shit is that despite being madly in love with my wife, a part of me that refuses to die wants to fuck other women. I would never do that, but I have indulged that part of myself that has those desires by masturbating to other women. That is where the turmoil comes from. Within me (and most men, it seems) are conflicting drives that compromise my ability to be happy. Despite having so much in my relationship, I still lust after other women. Therein lies the problem. Acknowledging that requires strength. I see the same problem in all of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances and all the PAs here on nofap. Quitting porn means rejecting the side of myself that will never lead to happiness. It means choosing my truest, more noble desire, which is to love and to be loved. But my biology and psychology are always going to conspire against me. That is a brutal truth and I'm not running away from anything.

 

I agree that the conclusion at the end of your post, that you are arguing against, is a damaging view to hold. I think that men resort to porn because it puts out all the time with literally zero effort on the man's part. It puts out without any need for the man to be attractive, charming, respectful, gentle, courteous etc. It is just lazy. I think men use porn because their desire for (okay, not sex) orgasm is perhaps more intense and they desire more frequent orgasms. Or maybe the desire in men and women for orgasns is the same, but the very fact that it is so easy for men to O to porn is the only real difference. Either way, there is a pattern.

Women should not be to blame for men's P use and I don't mean to imply that they are.

 

This was certainly true for me.
And…
I think that there is something else going on underneath it,
otherwise it wouldn't have started in the first place.
That something is an inability (for whatever reason) to deal with uncomfortable feelings,
whether those feelings are lack of connection, feelings of rejection, or whatever.
That something needs to be dealt with for a truly effective solution to the addiction.

That's not to claim that learning to deal with your feelings is necessary for an addiction cure;
maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it helps greatly.
In this respect (but not always in other respects),
PMO addiction is similar to any other type of addiction.

I might be able to answer this. I hope.

First, connection.
That would be a connection with yourself,
or maybe an imagined connection with the person on the screen.
Of course, these connections pale into insignificance
compared to connection with real people,
especially as an imagined connection is completely fake.
This type of connection is unhealthy.

Second, emotion.
As far as I can tell (I might be wrong!), the top emotion is that of numbing.
It was, for me.
Again, unhealthy.
Just like getting drunk.

Yes.
What I learned is that addiction stunts your personal growth.
We have all come across addicts (whether it's porn, alcohol, etc.) who say,
"What? I'm not addicted. I can stop any time."
They also say, "Why are you worried? It's my problem, not yours,"
even as they continue to wreck lives around them.

Adulting is indeed hard for an addict;
maybe even impossible unless they are in recovery.

 

I made it part way through your post and couldn't keep reading without needing to address a few things.

Just because you are thorough and respond to a lot of specific and separate posts at once, it doesn't make you right about them. If I am to agree with your assersions that I managed to read so far, I would have to accept that:

All men who use porn are addicts.
Men are by default addicts due to most men using P.
Any man who engages in p use is incapable of love (and you also seem to think that all men who find other women attractive are incapable of love?)

I think it is dishonest and irresponsible to suggest that recovery from porn use (or addiction) will erase all erotic impulses that are not directed at one's spouse. Marriage and monogomy are learnt behaviours that society teaches in the same way that porn is. Porn is the right thing to reject, sure, but I think that the conclusion that all men are pathetic immoral addicts incapable of giving or receiving love is not the way to improve one's life.

And I'd like to add that we have given equivalent roles in our conceptions of P use to two different causes: where I have attributed men's tendency to pmo to biology and psychology, you attribute it to addiction. Whether it is one, the other or all three of these influences, I know the reason lies within us. It lies within me.

If you could avoid the temptation to post another encyclopedia of criticism, I would appreciate if you could answer this next question:

What is the benefit of attributing my p use, and my struggle to quit it, to an addiction, and not to quirks of my male biological and psychological makeup?

Last thing: I know you have good intentions, and I do intend to read the rest of your post, but it did irritate me.

 

Of course you don't care if I'm irritated. I could argue wih the nitty gritty and specifics about what you said, there are things you definitely got wrong about me and my situation, but maybe it would help for me to think of myself as an addict. I want you to tell me why that will make my life better.

 

Well…
I wouldn't go that far!
I'm learning.
I get things wrong,
way too often.
But I'm trying.

 

It seems odd to make so many assertions about me, what I think and what my life and relationships look like, and then to ask me not to project or assume what you think, but okay. Reading your words and trying to understand and interpret them necessitates that I attribute some sort of opinions to the person writing them. I'll still have to so that, but I can refrain from sharing my conclusions if you like.

I can see that putting one explanation onto everything will help create a logically consistent explanation of porn use. It might also help avoid the inner turmoil and contradictory thoughts within me too. Is the addiction model preferable only for this reason? Do you use it because to instead assume all men are this way is so cynical and pessimistic? And will accepting that I have an addiction do anything to rid me of sexual desire and impulses towards other attractive people? I find the latter prospect completely unbelievable. My wife is not a porn user, and so is certainly not a porn addict, but she still experiences attraction to other men. That is surely rooted in her biology and psychology, not in addiction. I feel like addiction is a corruption and amplification of these natural attractions, rather than the only reason for their existence. And I feel like the betrayal in porn use is down to taking those initial thoughts of attraction too far and acting on them, rather than abandoning that line of thought out of conscious respect for one's partner, not in having the thoughts in the first place. Your thought experiment illustrating female sexual fantasy seems to imply that you think women, too, have such impulses. Do you think that all loving couples have eyes only for each other? Do you think that any of this matters, in deciding for oneself whether an addiction is present?

If the behaviour in my responses makes me an addict, then I am an addict. If using porn and then struggling to give up using porn makes me an addict then I am an addict. If a reluctance to accept that I have an addiction makes me an addict then I am one. But is there any other benefit to thinking of myself that way other than avoiding some confusion or conflicting thoughts and feelings?

I don't know at what point you think discussion becomes argument, so I'm not sure whether to expect a response. I didn't find your flippant dismissal particularly convincing.

 

I think overall women do deal with hardship and challenges better than men where I believe they are more likely to communicate their emotions rather than close off.

That doesn't mean it's any easier for either but the more you internalize something the more it festers into an infection that will be very difficult to beat.

This is simply my opinion.

 

Holy... mic drop. Thank you. Also, as a woman who has dealt with porn addiction problems herself, I'll let you in on a secret. It is MUCH easier to orgasm from porn, and multiple times over might I add. So yeah, there's literally no difference between men and women's sex drives.

Also, having sexual thoughts about someone else isn't necessarily a bad thing, I think even very committed loving relationships have these thoughts. But, it's not normal to allow these thoughts to linger or to obsess over them. If I have a thought, it never lasts very long. We were sexual humans before we met our partners and just because we have committed ourselves to them doesn't mean we'll never have sexual thoughts outside of the relationship ever again. BUT, there's no need to really engage with those thoughts if you are fully satisfied with your partner!

It sounds like this guy is either not at all happy with himself so he is attracted to having sex with other women as if they will bring something out in him that he cannot receive within himself or his relationship. I heard in a podcast from Esther Perel a really interesting idea.. infidelity (including porn) is really someone seeking a part of themselves that they miss or feel disconnected from which they seek outside of the relationship. So, really, it's quite sad to think about.

There's really a lot of underlying sadness to all of this.

 

Kudos for acknowledging the conspiratorial and abiding nature of your lust and accepting the brutal truth that you will always want to fuck other women. Have you considered doing the generous and compassionate thing and withdrawing from the marriage? Your wife may still be able to heal and find a partner who wants to fuck her only.

 

I don't want to fuck other women. I don't want to start a sexual relationship or engage in sex or sex acts with another woman. But it would be dishonest of me not to acknowledge that there is nothing sexual in the appeal of porn.

In what way would withdrawing from the marriage be generous and compassionate? If the idea of being with someone else is so horrific for me to be entertaining (as fantasy, not as a prospect that I want to live out in reality), since I should be thinking of and wanting only my SO, then why would taking myself away from her and expecting her to be with someone else instead be a generous act? Why would that be something that she would want? Only if there is also a part of her that would enjoy having sex and a romantic relationship with someone else and see that idea as appealing. Which is kind of how I think most couples think: The idea of being with someone else can have appeal, but its appeal is less than the appeal of being with the partner that they have chosen to be with, and continue to choose to be with. To withdraw from my marriage is to remove her ability to choose to be with me, which is, so far, the choice that she is making. It is to remove the possibility of her having what she wants. And it is also not what I want. I want to be with her, her only, and to behave in a way that demonstrates my love for her. Ideally I would see an erasure of my attraction towards other women, but for now that feels like an unrealistic expectation. I would be enthused and positive if there were fapstronaughts here who have achieved such a banishment of those impulses, but honestly, it seems to me to be part of male biology and psychology. A vestigial aspect of our evolution that causes pain and suffering due to its incompatibility with a loving monogamous relationship, which is the greatest source of happiness for many men, myself included. If this aspect of myself could be removed as simply as an appendix, then that is what I would choose. I am happiest when I am with my wife, and when my actions align with the feelings that I have for her.

We can't have everything in life, and I am choosing the love of my wife, and the sort of relationship that makes us both happy, rather than choosing to indulge in porn. I think that this is the right choice. Before resolving to remove porn from my life, I saw it as a harmless way of dealing with excess desire and excess lust, and this was wrong of me. The honesty that my wife has requested/encouraged/demanded of me means that I have to be honest about what appealed to me in porn. Once I admitted to myself that it was not just the ease and the pleasure, but also the visual, physical appeal of other women that attracted me to porn, I was able to see why it was so hurtful. I was indulging in fantasies that had no place in our relationship and crossed boundaries.

The optimistic view is that away from porn and its dopamine conditioning, with true recovery, I will not struggle at all with feelings towards other women that could be even remotely be interpreted as wanting to have sex with them. But I have committed to honesty and the current truth for me is that I do not want to, in practice, have sex with other women, but that I do notice their sex appeal, and I still associate such impulses/longings/wants or however I refer to them, with masturbating to their image for my own pleasure. I can be aroused by women other than my wife. I feel guilt and regret about this, and it can feel, at times, like shame. But shame is something I am trying to avoid. Some say that shame hinders recovery, it certainly doesn't help with being optimistic about it.

When I was using porn (the past tense is a bit of a stretch right now, I recognise, as I had a reset within the last week, and about thirty days before that) I was withdrawing from my marriage. I was engaging in behaviour that would lead to the relationship's demise, and that was incredibly hurtful. To walk away from the relationship does not strike me as something that will allow for healing or happiness, or give my wife any of the things that she tell me that she wants.

I do want to do what is right for my wife, but I don't think that leaving her, or withdrawing from the marriage (if that holds a subtly different meaning for you) is the right way to achieve that.

 

Cant help but to find this a sarcasm. Why is this so black and white? Maybe his wife knows about this kind of struggle or maybe his wife loves him way more than you can allow. Not everything like kicking the guy out of thr picture is a solution. I know some of you are really offended when a man have a thought of other women and that is a hard to swallow pill. I believe it has to do with men are more aroused by visual stimulation than women and that is just fact. I threw in a scientific paper on that topic to make a proof but everybody shut up after I posted that.

Anyway, this man like myself and many others is just seeking help earnestly. He wants compassion and empathy but saying you do this wrong and if you are not discipline like a monk you are wrong and an addict, that does not help. To convince someone you have to help them realize themselves and not force yours ideas into them. Many of the posts in this relationship sections are many like minded gathered up and saying men this men that. I fail to see many that actually help the addict step by step and at the same time convincing to the individual progressively.
In short, I always see the so suffered so much and we must heal the so. I understand that and i agree. How about the men? Where is our healing? Most reponses are just suck it up or grow up or leave ur so or become a monk? Thaz how i see it in short imo.
I also in some way agree with samnf1990

 

Ok again, just for the record lol, both men and women are visual creatures. Women can and do become addicted to porn and sex just like men do. I’ve talked with my fiancé about this stuff ALOT since I found out about his problem with porn.. and it’s interesting. We learned that boys tend to talk about sex and masturbation at a pretty young age whereas most girls don’t talk about sex and certainly not masturbation not are they usually taught about it and not much of porn is targeted towards girls in the first place... I started having sex at the age of 18 but didn’t have an orgasm until I was 21! There’s some women out there that haven’t had an orgasm until very late in there life!

So, I think this is why men tend to become more addicted to porn at a young age. Boys find and use porn so young and it becomes a habit that they learn to hide and build shame around.

Being attracted to other people even within a relationship is nothing to feel shame about. SO’s on this board I believe understand that. You can only come to an understanding with someone once you feel understood yourself and I think that’s what is happening on this board, not necessarily just man bashing.

 

Well in my own case, my so knew that i watch porn already way ahead of time. U r right about what is wrong and i agree with you especially since i was coming from a religious family myself.

I just think there is a missing link somewhere for myself personally and i probably should start another thread for this. It is just the visual aspect and having only 1 sexual partner makes me struggle so much. The curiosity is just so strong.

Anyway for the post u asked for the source. Its on page 6, https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/is-this-what-men-think.188818/page-6

I just disagree when some so's here associate their visual stimulation exactly same as men when it isn't. Men had it harder when it comes to visual.

 

You can continue to hold onto that belief if you need to, like a dirty old blanket. It’s only doing you more harm than good.