Yo!

Hi Kelp,

I stopped PMO a few days before my 18th birthday. It made me believe that I had to start to take a bit more control over my life.
Congratulations for your marriage ! It must be the reason that really made you think that you have to stop PMO. You want to take control over your life, so it's a good thing. Reminding yourself that, will be helpful.

Moreover something that helped me a lot was, a few days after my birthday : living in a dorm, and being immersed in a community in my school, litteraly. Switching lifestyle like this made the nofap challenge much easier, if not effortless. I wouldn't be able to explain why exactly though.

But from my perspective, what I have understood from this experience is that suppressing PMO, and keeping everything else like the exact same routines, way of living, and patterns of behaviors, and environment don't help at all. Which means that even changing your habits or physical environment can help.

It's like having procrastinated homework for your entire life because your room was full of distractions. Even if you decide one day to force yourself to work, in this same room, it will be much more difficult than if you go to a library for instance. Are there things that trigger your urge to PMO ? You are in better to position to judge what habits make you want to PMO, even if it's in a subtle way.

--> '' 1. When you're tempted to look at p, what do you do instead? Have you guys developed a new hobby ''

You are right, trying to find new hobbies, or getting more involved in things that already interest or passionate you, does help indeed. It's not always easy to discover new hobbies that really can annihilate your temptation to look at P, but you can experiment. In fact I think that killing boredom is a key.
I am litteraly forced to study harder sometimes, and these moments are the moments when I find it effortless to not PMO. I also love training my memory...

''or something to take its place?''

The worst case scenario is to find another 'bad addiction' to try to replace P as you say it, rationnaly speaking it's a good idea because we think that being addicted to something else can hardly be worse than porn. But I think that bad addictions synergize together in reality, and that playing video games for instance won't really annihilate your desire to stop P, but make you feel worse and trigger another PMO.

" 2. Something that scares me is that sometimes I feel like I'll miss looking a p. The rational part of me knows that I'm better off without it, but the addict in me is scared of change. Any suggestions? "

The first few days, it will be hell. When you have an urge to PMO, you'll litterally have to remind yourself of that rational part of you, and force yourself not to do it. It's by far the hardest stage, and to my knowledge there is no way not to miss porn during these few days.

Once the first few days pass by, if you have resisted, it will get gradually easier. Resisting the urge the first 15 days is far more difficult than resisting the following 30 days. Eventually you will forget to count the days...

Of course there will be moments when you will feel extremely lusty and have sexual arousal. It can be a problem if you are sigle. But you, you are lucky to have a wife ! (Sorry if I sounded gross here)

You mention fear of change. Fear of success is understandable, but think about the great benefits that you will have, the negative guilt, anxiety, lack of self confidence and maybe self-esteem that will vanish, the great sex you will have with your wife, how this problem will be only a forgotten part of the past, how happy you will be !

If you procrastinate on stopping PMO, the 1st january of 2015 you will look back at 2014 and think of this year as a failure. By taking action now, you won't have any regrets. Don't fool yourself and start now. You can do it !


I wish you the best of the best of luck and a happy marriage !