Hello Gentlemen. Now we begin.

Jlied

Active Member
So much good info there. Having gone almost a year with no PMo I can say for me the hardest part was battling my own brain. It’s hard to fight the mental images the brain will come up with when it’s not visually stimulated by porn. Learning how to bump those thoughts and not dwell on them and see where they will go was the hardest part for me
 
So much good info there. Having gone almost a year with no PMo I can say for me the hardest part was battling my own brain. It’s hard to fight the mental images the brain will come up with when it’s not visually stimulated by porn. Learning how to bump those thoughts and not dwell on them and see where they will go was the hardest part for me
Becoming aware of and even controlling one’s thoughts on a moment to moment basis must surely be one of the most difficult aspects of this process.

Personally, I’m approaching day 90 and only recently has it suddenly become challenging for me. I think this is because of the fact that I lost a big part of my “why”, or feel like I have. For the past several years I’ve been struggling with fatigue, unrefreshing sleep, and lack of energy, and I had hoped that porn might be responsible.

However, I also have been diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea and as time without PMO has gone on and I haven’t seen much change to my sleep or energy levels, I’ve become increasingly discouraged and skeptical that porn has much of anything to do with these symptoms (especially in light of the fact that I have essentially untreated obstructive sleep apnea).

I’m approaching 90 days and things don’t feel like they’ve changed all that much in terms of my symptoms. But I have noticed that I have an increased ability to delay gratification, better perceptions of women (not that they were terrible before), increased desire to socialize and possibly seek a relationship, and an increased drive to face other issues in my life and start trying to address them (including my sleep apnea).

So even if porn isn’t responsible for my sleep apnea, abstaining from it I feel more compelled to try and tackle my sleep apnea, which for the past couple years has felt like a very overwhelming obstacle for me. So perhaps porn has been responsible for my symptoms, even if it’s in a more indirect way (by keeping me from feeling motivated to address my sleep apnea otherwise).

I found it really interesting and unexpected how I struggled so much with this game of rationalization my brain was playing last night so far into my reboot (when I hadn’t felt much resistance at all up to this point). I was seriously considering resuming my previous usage pattern (1-2x/week on the weekends) after achieving 90 days of no PMO. But I think that I need to keep going, and to simply decide that I’m not a person who engages in this habit. The list of cons is just too heavy compared to the very singular pro - intense (and extremely momentary) pleasure. I know for a fact that I would not feel that using porn was worth it after the fact.
 
Top