Is PMO a symptom or a Cause?

[DeltaFosAware]

Others on here have experienced the destruction of marriages and human relationships.
What I wondered, looking back at my failed first marriage and looking at my on going incredibly healthy second relationship, is was it the porn that cause  that 18 year relationship to fail or had the porn just become a response to a failing relationship?

I ask the question NOW because, since the first marriage ended, I've chosen to be pretty much Porn Free. The odd thing is that since the first marriage ended it has been possible to make that choice to simply not bother with porn. It's not like it has been a conscious avoidance of the stuff, it's more that it has mainly just fallen out of my life. I'm not saying I have not PMOed at all but the binging, the recycling and the reward have been dormant for over five years now.

I can not help but make the connection that PMO was my self-medication for emotional pain. My first marriage was to a woman who was frankly an emotional and mental bully. Now that seems really hard to say now but it wasn't until I realised the freedom of not having that woman in my life, that the pain cloud stop and it was like I no longer required the pain killers! Now, I'm not suggesting I have totally stopped but the PMO is not an issue! If anything I am possibly now more addicted to debating sites on the net, religious forums, political pages, social reform networks and a whole new but VIBRANT interaction! Maybe as well as no longer needing the PMO pain killer, I have just diversified into something else! (Oddly enough I know I have an addictive personality type. I'm amazingly glad I quit booze well before my marriage ended or I am totally CERTAIN I would have crawled inside a bottle and never come out...The addiction pathway, as we all know, is pretty much the same!)

So what do others feel about their own PMO? Have you used it to dull, self medicate and soothe your pains? It's easier to get to than booze and it's on tap 24/7... the shop never closes! Yet, do you remember the lonely, small hours, while the whole world was sleeping and it was just you, your keyboard and your right hand? Maybe it was not so much what we were enjoying that was our issue but more the thing we were running away from or the pain we were avoiding.

 

[maledictis]

      Hi yeah i?e wondered about that too. Not just with the porn but drugs and alcohol too. I think it starts as a solution to frustration, boredom etc and ends as the problem. As it becomes an addiction it becomes the coause of many and much worse problems than the original one. The same is true for relapses. I have relapse in a conscious attempt (and success) to escape some reality i cant stand, even self hate or self life hate. But the vast majority of my relapses were in a good mood, i was just horny and feeling all sexual and had no partner around so i thought oh well just one time. And then i couldnt stop and my life goes down the drain... And still i cant stop. So i think for me it begins as a symptom of sex feelings desire etc and weeks later with continued use it becomes the cause of lots of problems. Thanks for topic

 

[DeltaFosAware]

Thanks MD, very well put! I think you have the answer in a nut shell. It's very interesting to note that relapses were not associated with times of stress or even unhappiness. They happened when your mood was in fact quite lifted, more high than low.

You'd tend to think we'd relapse more when feeling  p****d off with life in General but I agree that's not always the case. In fact, sexual desire should naturally arise FROM feeling good. It's part of a sense of confidence and over all well being. Thinking that through those signals must also make us more attractive to sexual partners. We've obliviously evolved in that way to help us spread our DNA and procreate. So a good tip is to watch out for relapses when feeling good as well!

You also make a very valid point that the PMO can leave us with even worse problems than the ones we were trying to escape. I read of others who, like me, got into some of the fetish porn! No need for any of us to share details on this stuff but it relates totally to that cycle of diminishing reward for increased input! With me that aspect could easily be used to feed a self hate I had in fact manufactured through shame and a sense of failure. Porn had it covered so that even beating yourself up can be fun! Still, looking at it another way that's just another route to market somebody out there wants to monetise and if your frontal cortex pays the price, that's your problem, their stock climbs on the FTSE!

 

[OldHornyGuy]

Hey DFA,

I think it can be both a symptom and a problem and I think in most cases, like in mine, it moves from one to the other.  In my case, I always had a high sex drive, throughout high school and college I was having at least one O a day and often many more than that.  In those times I usually had a GF for whom sex was also a pretty high priority, so things were pretty OK.

Somehow I managed to marry a woman for whom sex was a very low priority.  Amazingly low, in fact.  I quickly (and stupidly) moved to PMO to satisfy my needs, which made the relationship worse, increasing the PMO, eventually leading to divorce.  There was a lot more, of course, but that was a major factor.

Then being hooked on PMO made my relationships with women pretty screwed up, killed my confidence and so on, which was perhaps a contributing factor in my second divorce (although she was pretty crazy, but that's a long story).

As a single guy, PMO has really killed me in the social/dating arena.  Bad ED, lack of confidence, social anxiety and so on have been real problems.  And of course any time I was not with a woman, I was PMO which I now fully understand just makes things worse.

So, I guess the ironic way to put it that PMO swings both ways. 

OHG

 

[DeltaFosAware]

Thanks OHG! With my first Wife it was somehow quite strange. She always knew about my PMO from when we'd first met, a good few years before we married. Early days, we were at it like Rabbits! You might say the old 'honourable member' was up and down like the Assyrian Empire! Two wonderful and now grown up boys out of all of that, best thing that EVER happened to me...

PMO pretty much continued through out the marriage but I honestly formed an impression that she became avoiding of physical affection. Whereas we'd both tried a lot of sexual stuff, post child one she lost a massive degree of interest. So with what was then Internet porn, me, the screen and the keyboard became great friends!

When we finally divorce, she tells me she in fact had a high sex drive and I was not paying her any attention but just banging them out to PMO. Seemed to me like her lover had pretty much hit the sexual Jackpot and was 'manly' in a way she could not consider myself.

 

[OldHornyGuy]

DFA,

Sorry to hear it went that way, I too was "replaced" when my second wife left.  But word around town is that she has already replaced the replacement, after just a year, so I don't feel too bad.

And, yes, I do think women feel abandoned when severe PMO is in the picture.  I don't intend to ever let that happen again.

Peace and Stay Strong!

 

[DeltaFosAware]

Ah OHG, good to meet a fellow 'replacement guy!' So far she's been fine with the current guy over the last five plus years. All seems well and, for my part, why waste energy being bitter? In all honesty I get on well enough with her now but contact is mainly just through emails. I often say to people on here I hope she has a happy life. Makes it so much easier for my grown up sons knowing their Father retains no hatred for their Mother. Not the kind of thing one wants to meet their maker with on the old human conscience! More healthy to forgive and move on. Takes less effort as well! Anger gets very tiring over time.

I honestly reckon I have learned my lesson regards PMO. There was no doubt we were not suite  as a couple and I think we both knew that was not just because of PMO. I'm mainly a laid back, practically horizontal kind of guy. You know, live and let live. Bit too young to really make the hippy scene in the sixties but that would have been me totally. Kaftan, joint and 'be cool man.' She was a pusher, a go getter, a never sit back and smell the coffee person.Always on with the next thing to be done! In the end,also emotionally very, very cold. Inside she was like a freezer emotionally. Never sensed empathy in her at all.