Sexual addictive behaviors

That sounds really tough dude, I’m sorry to hear your struggles. I found that various therapies really helped me start to untangle the mess I’d got myself into but posting and reaching out regularly is also important to my recovery.
What do you have in Place for self care and a recovery plan?

 

What do you get out of the encounters with men and porn? Are you Bisexual or is it more escalation, escape, self punishment and danger?

 

My heart breaks for you for everything you, your wife and your family have gone through lately. In terms of your sexual compulsion, I can relate to you issues as they are similar to mine. If it is ok, I will send you a private message and we can converse more there if you are interested. In the meantime, I just wrote a post to another guy who just joined here, and if you don't mind, I'll copy and paste it below. His issue isn't the same as yours but the underlying concepts are the same, in my opinion.

Welcome. I hope you find support and are able over time to overcome your issue. Understand your issue, at least somewhat since not achieving orgasm through regular sex has not been my problem, but do understand how PMO can screw up your life and your relationship, as it did for me. Working on rebuilding that and it is going pretty well, but it is hard work and takes a lot of committed time.

Sounds to me like everything works for you physiologically, i.e. you can get an erection and can achieve orgasm using your outside sexual stimulus. So it sounds like it is a psychological issue for you. A couple of suggestions if you don't mind. First, stop jerking off to porn or erotic stories. You've got to give your mind a break and build new pathways away from what you've been doing for 50 years. Read "Your Brain on Porn" in here if you have not already and begin your education and learning process on this whole issue. Stopping cold turkey will be incredibly difficult, but the more time you can spend PMO free, the more clarity you will achieve and your brain will start to heal. How do you do that? Put blockers on your devices so you can't go to those sites - telling yourself you won't go there only works short term. Set up a password that you give to a trusted friend or therapist so you won't be tempted to get back in. [If you're married, DO NOT put your wife in that position of being the gate-keeper.] Get some material to begin educating yourself. Some that I have liked are any Patrick Carnes books (Out of the Shadows, Gentle Paths) as he is an early guru in the field, Jay Stringer's Unwanted and tons of good helpful books out there. Listen to podcasts. A couple I like are Porn Free Radio (www.recoveredman.com) and Pure Desire (puredesire.org), the latter being a Christian-based but not a religion down your throat type. Both have good hosts and guests and a catalog of over 200 episodes to address topics of interest or concern. Engage in some diversionary, hopefully healthy habits to spend your time more productively. Those could include exercise, eating right (and learning to cook if like me you never did much of that before in your life), journalling, meditation, prayer, creative exploits like music or art or gardening or woodworking, etc. All of these things help in the moment and are tools you can access in the short-term to break away from PMO. Understand that you are likely to have slips. Don't use knowledge of that as an excuse, but when it happens, learn from it, show yourself some self-compassion and get back up and move forward. You do not want to stay in the shame mode, as shame just gets you mired into your PMO habit. Feeling guilty is ok, as long as it motivates you to keep trying and moving forward.

Long-term you need two things in my opinion to work towards permanent change and recapture the life you want. First is connection. You cannot do this alone. This habit was borne in secrecy and isolation and will only be overcome if it is exposed to the light - and that is connecting with others and developing some honesty and openness. If you do not already have a therapist, get one and one who specializes in sexual issues (e.g. CSAT) or at least one who has experience with helping people with sexual compulsion or addiction. I know there is a cost to that but the investment is worth it, and you are worth it. And if the first one you go to just does not click for you, it's ok to look for another who you connect better with. Chatting with people in here is helpful (mostly) and you get some encouragement and support, but none of us are professionals and can only speak from our limited experience and biases. I would also encourage you to find a support group. I cannot emphasize enough how powerful it is to voice your issue out loud to other human beings who are going through the same or similar thing. There is great healthy power in that. That can be a 12-Step group such as SAA, SA, SLAA, etc. I joined a SAA group near me and it has been very healing and supportive. You could also join a weekly NoFap group through this site. I also joined one of those and they have become a support community for me, and me for them. If you have a trusted friend who you can talk to, who will listen and support you, that's great. That one is often a harder barrier for us to break, as we often don't have that kind of person in our life or don't know that we can trust someone to be that for fear of losing them as a friend. You can reach out in here for an Accountability Partner. My experience with that has been mixed; starts out good and then fades away or it just doesn't click, but you might find the right person for you.

But the biggest long-term issue in my opinion to address is to dig deeper and get to the reason below the surface as to why you went to PMO and stayed there for so many years. We all have those reasons; feeling inadequate, feeling not good enough, needing affirmation that was missing in childhood, childhood physical-emotion-sexual abuse, insecure, bullied when younger, not accepted for who you are, not living up to someone else's expectation, not feeling successful enough at work/career, etc. etc. There are a million of them and we all have some that make up our story and since we couldn't deal well with the difficult emotions, we turned to PMO to self-soothe, to escape, to feel some short-term relief, to live in our isolated bubble world where we felt better and got a dopamine hit with edging and orgasm. But you need to get to and understand what your underlying reasons are, and a therapist and others can help you get there. But once you understand what those are, then you can begin to work on healing from them and achieve some long-term success at leaving PMO once and for all and becoming the better version of you that you envision, and a better husband, partner, family member, friend. You will be able to enjoy a healthy sex life, one that is filled with emotional intimacy, and not just a selfish act to meet your needs and not one tied to pixels on a screen or pages of erotic literature, both of which are not real or tangible.

I wish you only the best in your journey. Know that it can be done and many have done it before us and lead the way. Best wishes.

 

What addiction you were having bro??? Can you give me some advice too if don’t mind and have some time here??

 

Buddy - I feel your pain!! Sadly a number of us here have had similar problems, but your family situation on top make that super tough! Sending thoughts and virtual hugs your way!

As some others have said above - we understand first hand some of the problems you've had. Always happy for you to reach out and ask for help if you need it buddy. This recovery is tough - at times very tough. But 53 days into it I can't start to find words to tell you how great it feels to be on the bright side of those clouds. Its awesome and you're gonna love yourself again when you get here!

Stay strong buddy - and together we can do this!

 

I can’t recommend highly enough “unwanted” by Jay Stringer

He takes the whole sexual addiction thing and flips it on its head.

Our sexual fantasies and acting out hold the keys to our wounding. And the answers to the way out. He’s doing amazing work.

 

Agree, an excellent book and accompanying workbook which I would recommend you work through with a fellow addict or accountability partner.

 

I share your struggle. I just cut off the last hookup contact this morning. I feel a little adrift.

 

Thankfully I never got “found out”

I confessed to the one hookup I had about 7 years ago and I was good until about 18 months ago.

I went on a pretty wild run that I ended today.

 

I'm totally with you and super proud of what your doing buddy - I can't imagine the pain you've gone through. I've been clean not for 53 days and feels amazing. Luckily for me I stopped before anyone I cared about found out - but for the grace of god I could have been where you were. It was that realisation that finally stopped me!

I feel awesome and empowered to be me again now. I'm learning to love myself. I was telling @NewJohnQ only earlier today some of the weird ways in which my brain is noticeably reacting differently as I spot the "rewiring" start to happen as I see it return to "factory settings"

My big challenge is how to make sure I stay clean. Right now its "one day at a time" but conscious this is and has to be a forever decision. I've not had sex with my wife for around 5 years - I now realise thats all my fault and not hers as I thought till only a few weeks ago. I really fear returning to sex too early!! I need to be fixed as much as possible before I risk an "O" again and where that might lead me. I hope somehow I can gently introduce a Karezza lifestyle to us once things start to return to normal! I think I could be safe with that!

Always here if you want to talk buddy. But youre doing amazingly well!

 

I’ve been waiting almost 5 years unfortunately. It’s all very complicated, but childhood abuse has left her pretty damaged.