Eight years into the journey- new chapter

My longest streak was 87 days, with many over 30 days. I have never fully rebooted I guess. I have not seen any hard core porn for close to two years, and only twice in the last three or four years. My hang up now is psubs mainly and masturbation.

Today I went to the gym again and am really seeing gains. I can see that fitness is going to continue to be an integral part of my new, cut back lifestyle. It has only been a few days since my last fap, but I have already had a victory or two over the negative self talk, and I am already feeling more positive and better about where I am going mentally and emotionally. Essentially, when something goes awry or someone lets me down, how am I going to react? How do I view my circumstances? How do I view my future? If it's always "glass half empty", then I am on track to a reset.

Also, I am able to rationally think about how crappy I am going to feel if I do fap. I am anxious and nervous and cannot sleep. It's a recipe for several days of feeling like garbage. On the other hand, the longer I go without masturbating, the better I feel. At this point, that had been enough to keep me from doing it at times. I am going to continue to cultivate this reasoning point so that when I am triggered and have that moment of pause that many of us have just before going into "autopilot" I am able to stop and immediately do something else.

It's my future on the line here, after all. So much potential and so many advantages I have. I want to make the most of them.

 

It has been 5 years since my last post in this thread. Here's an update on my life.
I sold a flourishing business for a good chunk of change and moved overseas. Then the pandemic hit and I returned to my home country. I had another major operation in the middle of the pandemic. Being isolated and feeling sorry for myself took its toll and I had many relapses. I did not fall back into heavy porn use and avoided hardcore porn for the most part. But I felt awful again. I eventually reached another crossroads and started therapy again with a doctor that I already respect for. It was a revelation to have someone to listen to me and be a friend. I had a lot of unresolved issues (family trauma, low self esteem, fear of intimacy) that we were able to work through together. I hardly ever used porn and felt at peace for the most part. After about a year, we both decided that it was time for me to go alone again. That was a month ago. Two weeks later I had a relapse. I know exactly why it happened and am using it as a lesson learned. (self sabotage is the next issue I am unraveling). I still feel like I need to work on this alone. Therapy can almost become a crutch once one has made a lot of progress. I believe that I am up for the challenge and have the "bandwidth" to sort through it and apply working principles to myself.

I am writing this to let you all know that the process is ongoing. There will likely always be more to learn about ourselves and why we feel certain feelings and do certain things. The key is being mindful and honest with ourselves. I now see an amazing opportunity to work on self sabotage and grow more. It's as if I took 100 steps forward during my therapy and a couple steps back when I relapsed. All is not lost. I am still making progress. Remember that. Keep moving forward. Reflect, learn, adjust, repeat.

I have started visiting this site again and journaling. Instead of looking only at the goals I have set for myself a year from now, I work on doing the small things today that will lead me to reaching those goals. (S.M.A.R.T. goals) Daily focus is what it takes, not daydreaming and hoping about next year. I am in a headspace now that does not overreact to ups and downs and can process things better, including resets. In the past weeks since my reset I had a few difficult days, but I have decided to move forward and be positive. Fall forward, as they say.

Here is where I am at-
I am 43, single, and very successful. I started another business a couple years ago, and it is doing even better than the first one I already sold. I am good looking, and in good shape (working out daily again, so should only be more fit as time goes by). I like people and volunteer a lot. I care and am empathetic and generous. I have many good friends. A few that I really trust know about my struggle with porn, which is liberating. I have eliminated social media and limit my screen time. Women find me attractive and flirt with me regularly, and gay men also hit on me, so I have evidence that I am desirable. I am able to travel and have some really cool hobbies. I speak multiple languages and am learning another one right now. I am a great dancer and have a great singing voice. I play multiple musical instruments. I am planning on going back to school in January and adding another degree for a possible career change that will allow me to work remotely and potentially move to an area with more social activity, perhaps overseas again. I live in a smaller city in a generally rural part of the country, which makes meeting quality available women in my age group difficult, so that is a motivator for me to travel and perhaps move again. I mention all of these things not to brag, but to help me to remember that I have a ton to offer, in spite of my imperfections. And a lot to look forward to. A pep talk, if you will.

Over the past year I have regularly MO'd, usually to porn substitutes, with occasional porn use. I almost always edged. Over the last 9 months I have seen porn maybe 4 or 5 times, which is not horrible, but enough to mess with my mind and hold me back from complete victory and getting what I really want. The one thing missing from my life is close companionship. I want a girlfriend and to hopefully get married. I want to be a stable, mindful, strong, caring, capable man. Honestly I feel like I am those things, but the porn history really messes with me sometimes. the guilt and shame are crippling to hopes and dreams. Shame and self sabotage have kept from cultivating an intimate relationship and letting myself stand out and going for the life I truly want. I know that now. So I am working on it.

I am letting go of perfection and letting myself be "me", which strangley has alleviated so much of the pressure I was feeling before and that was driving my desire to MO/PMO. Once I recognized this I lost the desire to act out. A few days ago I even started to search for some nonnude imagery to look at and perhaps masturbate to (habit), but once the images came up I had no desire to look at them and closed the browser. (I have a filter that makes accessing porn more diffcult, but non-porn subs can be accessed easily.)I really don't want anything to do with any of it at this point. I am expecting a testosterone spike in a few days that might make me feel horny, but that is energy I want to channel, not quickly waste. I'll probably then flat line for a few weeks and at around a month get extremely horny. I've been through those phases before. I am prepared and feel excited to go through them because it means I am healing again.

I think down the road I will look back at this last reset and recognize it as another key turning point in my journey. I already sense a deep change or epiphany has taken place in me. I notice that I have been looking deeply into peoples' eyes when I talk to them and the interactions I am having with them are remarkable and meaningful. Part of me is afraid to say it beacuse we all know how relapses go- as soon as you feel great then we mess up- but this time genuinely feels very different. It is as if my perspective is from afar looking at a timeline of my life and I can see all of the lows and relapses and how things happened and played out, and I am not going to repeat the past.

Watch me, and see how this all plays out. I am not afraid to be amazing and to be noticed.

 

I just finished reading the book "Dopamine Nation". What struck me about the book was that at one point I was thinking to myself, "I should quit all PMO, MO, etc for three months as an experiment to see what happens." The curiousity would be my motivation. Funny thing is, the next chapter I read was about this exact concept. How does one know exactly how much they are being affected by excessive dopamine unless they stop that activity and see? Powerful reasoning. So I am abstaining from all high dopamine activities in an effort to return to my world experience as a youth on a rural farm. No social media at all. No ebay, no news sites except for the basics to know what is going on. Basically anything that involves scrolling and clicking repeatedly is out. No alcohol or caffeine. No candy, no processed foods (already doing that). TV is ok but only a few shows I like and no binge watching. I am limiting myself to network TV and older TV shows that are basically G or PG rated.

I also found it reassuring and realistic to know that my brain has been wired to MO/PMO, and that those connections after decades are strong. If I see anything at all that could be sexually arousing in any way I immediately look away. These are choices that I can make. At this point I have to recognize my tendencies and NOT USE THOSE NEURAL CONNECTIONS. In time my brain will "bypass" those unused synapses and create new connections as I enjoy my healthier life in which I am not preoccupied with sex. But that takes time.

I am also embracing the pain of rebooting. Cold showers, hitting the gym every day if at all possible, going outside. I have moments of fatigue, irritability, and anxiety, but little things reassure me this is the right path. Just today I recognized that I am more aware of my surroundings and less inside my own head. I look forward to going out. Speaking of, time to hit the gym.

 

Nine days since I last masturbated. I am having some sexual tension today after basically no problems at all the past week or so. I don't have the desire to fap or look at porn because I know how bad I will feel afterward, and I don't want to lose this edge and feeling I have right now. I have a confidence that everything is under control. I am not anxious, and have the feeling that I can handle whatever comes my way. I swear, I feel like the coolest dude in the room wherever I go.
Been to the gym 5 times a week, sleeping great, and eating clean. Morning wood is strong, and my dreams are not negative in their content like they have been at times in the past. I even woke up laughing to one the other night. I have stopped procrastinating, and have been starting to think seriously about what is next in my life, but now with excitement and hope.
Dopamine detox is what it is all about. Loving this!