Failing to stop for years, thread to keep me accountable

[malando]

Is it possible that your porn addiction changed your thinking about respect for women? I can see that you see logical reasons why it's a bad idea for you to be constantly cheating on your wife and using women for your momentary pleasure, but to be honest, I don't really see you feeling conflicted about it beyond how it disrupts your sense of equilibrium. You don't seem to wrestle that much morally or ethically with what you're doing. And for that reason I think you'll keep doing it unless there is a major epiphany regarding your marriage and what you value. Do you think you need a moral/ethical recalibration so that you can make better choices and show some respect for you wife and child? It might be the changes to your personality that are the real consequence of your porn addiction days, more than the addiction or PIED etc. Do you think values and ethics will form a major part of your therapy?

 

[ruuddejong]

Is it possible that your porn addiction changed your thinking about respect for women? I can see that you see logical reasons why it's a bad idea for you to be constantly cheating on your wife and using women for your momentary pleasure, but to be honest, I don't really see you feeling conflicted about it beyond how it disrupts your sense of equilibrium. You don't seem to wrestle that much morally or ethically with what you're doing. And for that reason I think you'll keep doing it unless there is a major epiphany regarding your marriage and what you value. Do you think you need a moral/ethical recalibration so that you can make better choices and show some respect for you wife and child? It might be the changes to your personality that are the real consequence of your porn addiction days, more than the addiction or PIED etc. Do you think values and ethics will form a major part of your therapy?

You are right, malando. This is exactly what I asked in my first session: Did the addiction change my emotions, values etc? Why do I not feel guilty? Why do I feel that as long as I do not get caught, everything I do is perfectly fine? I also told him that even though logically I see that it is wrong, it doesn't bother me. What the f is wrong with me?

After 2 sessions, his, probably premature but accurate, guess was that because of my childhood (i.e. I never saw married couples showing affection in public or next to me, including my parents due to the culture, and always thought sex should be with some "easy" girl, and relationship should be with a "good girl".) plus my porn addiction made me objectify women even further, so my brain is like divided into two and it does not engage the emotional right side much.

So obviously porn and cheating are just symptoms and we will work on a therapy to activate my emotional side and also resolve any misconceptions re relationships that come from my childhood. Stopping porn or cheating will not solve the problems automatically, if the underlying problems are still there, I will eventually relapse. However if I focus on the underlying problems and solve those, I will probably not need to soothe myself with other women or porn anyway and stop it much easily.

Does that make sense?

 

[ruuddejong]

Also as mentioned in a few articles on the internet by Dr Weiss and others - It is not true that everyone who has porn addiction has large underlying problems like I do (which is what almost all psychologist thought until recently).

So there are people with perfectly normal childhood and emotional intelligence who got addicted. So for those, just stopping porn will make a huge difference and we see many examples of that in this forum. I just don't want anyone reading my thread to think that stopping porn doesn't fix things. It will fix things for most people.

 

[malando]

I don't think all porn addicts can point to a troubled upbringing - I can definitely agree with that. But I do think all porn addicts suffer damage and changes to their personality. The skill is in determining the origin of the maladaptation, whether it's in childhood or post addiction, or a combination of both. For some, resolving the childhood issues might make it easy to quit porn. For others, the porn generated the issues. For anyone: quitting porn helps them to sort out their issues.

So obviously porn and cheating are just symptoms and we will work on a therapy to activate my emotional side and also resolve any misconceptions re relationships that come from my childhood. Stopping porn or cheating will not solve the problems automatically, if the underlying problems are still there, I will eventually relapse. However if I focus on the underlying problems and solve those, I will probably not need to soothe myself with other women or porn anyway and stop it much easily.

Does that make sense? -

It does make sense. It explains some of your tendencies. But I also think you have to stop doing it at all costs. It's not a situation in which you can keep doing that until you unlock the secret to your brain, and then you won't want/need to. Every time you do that, you strengthen those tendencies. It's reward. It's habit. It's conditioning. It makes it that much harder to give it up. Part of re-conditioning your brain is behavioural and you have to stop the bad behaviours. In principle you know that what you are doing is wrong because it's against the values you agreed upon with your wife. She would not tolerate or understand this behaviour - therefore it's a betrayal. I understand that you feel disconnected with this moral code, due to the reasons you explained, but I think you really must put a stop to it while you explore the issue in therapy. Otherwise, the examination becomes half-hearted. The resolve is lost to push it to a conclusion while it continues to be actively rewarding. You must live the life you aspire to. I used to overeat to to emotional problems from my childhood. But it wasn't healthy for me to continue to do that while going to therapy to resolve my issues so that I could have better self-control and stop overeating. That is an absurd cycle of reasoning. I knew I had to stop overeating, and I had to stop that while I was working on my issues. The fact that it was hard to stop eating made it all the more urgent that I resolve the issues so that I wouldn't be in eternal purgatory waiting for the solution. Does that make sense? For you it's one step more serious because you are not just transgressing against yourself, but against your wife (and indirectly against your child). So you have even more motivation to stop this. It should be painful to give anything up - that's what motivates people to give up. The pain confirms the hold it has on you and the damage it's causing you. The pain decreases as the hold is reduced.

 

[Georgos]

This brings me to approval addiction and incredibly low-self-esteem. In a way, I was and am proving to myself that I could sleep with a good looking girl, and a good looking girl wanted to sleep with me, which must mean that I am good enough (self-esteem boost).

I have a similar problem but it manifests in me in a different way. I feel unattractive. I seek attractiveness validation from outside, from other people, and interestingly from men more than women. Thus I am always competing with women to see who is the most attractive. This is why I am always restraining myself the moment I try and initiate anything with a girl, I want her to initiate something, I compete with her to see who will initiate something first. I think a lot of this stems from my relationship with my family, and also the fact that in my social engagements, I am always the one to initiate social contact, never the other way around. I don't know what to do about this other than to find the unchanging self within me and stick to it. I am only just beginning to do this. Thank you.