From Darkness to Light - My Journal

[Elvis on Velvet]

Today I am PMO-free for 48 days.  I have peeked at porn several times in the last two weeks, but I have not PMO'd. 

I've noticed a progression in my recovery.  I believe my brain is healing from the terrible damage I've done to it, and my body is responding to that.  I'm getting regular night time erections, sometimes so hard it wakes me up when I turn over, but no morning ones to speak of.  I'm hoping that returns soon, too.

I saw somewhere, possibly on this site, that older guys like me who had a sex life before they started using porn in an unhealthy way sometimes recover quicker than younger guys who binged on porn even before they were having real sex.  Anyone experiencing anything like that?

I've also noticed that with a drastic reduction in the number of ejaculations I'm having (from 1-2 per day to 1 a week at most, and those are almost all from sex with my wife) my balls have gotten bigger.  It's weird, but even my wife was like "damn your balls are big!"  Anyone else have this happen?

Yesterday evening, I got in the shower and after a minute or two my wife joined me with that look in her eyes.  I panicked at first, but ultimately surprised myself by getting a rock hard stiffy and we did the deed.  It's the first natural erection (no viagra) that was a real, 100% hard on (not semi) I've had with her in more than a year.  I felt like the fucking king of the world after that!  I'm really hoping this is a good sign and will continue.

I appreciate everyone in this community, please feel free to comment.  Thanks for reading.

 

[herbert87]

dopamine yes yes

dopamine plays important roles in executive functions,arousal, reinforcement, and reward, as well as lower-level functions including lactation, sexual gratification, and nausea.

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

I'm 53 days PMO free today. Still peeking at porn occasionally, and I have MO'd a few times, but not to porn. The cravings to look at porn are very strong, stronger than I expected. I see how badly I've damaged my brain. One peek is like a little taste of something I want much more of. It's dangerous. I'm expecting these cravings to last forever, I'm not fooling myself into thinking they're going to go away.

In the meantime, I'm going to stay strong and remain PMO-free.

On the good news front, the wife and I have had sex twice in the past week and I performed both times without viagra. I know I could not have done that in the grip of my addiction.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Haven't posted for a while, holidays and all.  I'm 62 days PMO-free today.  As I've said before, I have slipped numerous times and looked at porn.  I've also MO'd several times (about 1x per week) but not to porn.  I have not masturbated to orgasm using porn in 62 days.  Never thought I'd be able to say that.

My night and morning wood is becoming regular, and I've had a couple one-off sex sessions with my wife where I did not use viagra, and was able to perform, but they were handjobs and not penetrative sex.  I did orgasm pretty quickly during those times, but I actually think my wife is relived when that happens because in the past, when we were younger, she almost always had to tell me to finish because it was going on too long for her.  Also had one session where I couldn't get fully hard.  It's been up and down, I guess.  I think my normal sexual functioning is slowly returning, but I'm still relying on viagra as a psychological crutch.  I really don't want to have an incidence of ED, because I think it would really crush my confidence now.  But, at the same time, I cannot rely on viagra long-term, I just don't think it's wise.  Any advice on this is appreciated, I'm struggling with wanting to have sex without meds, but I'm afraid to try and worried I'm going to stress myself into performance anxiety.  The times I was able to perform without meds have all been "surprise" sex where my wife just gets it in her head to give me a handjob or whatever.  No time to worry about it.

I'm struggling with wanting to look at porn a lot, and I've given in several times and looked at it, sometimes for a while, like 15-20 minutes.  I used to spend probably 2-4 hours of my day looking at porn on my phone, and downloading it, so this is a huge improvement, but I really want to just get this out of my life permanently!  It's so damn difficult!

I hope everyone is staying as strong as they can over the holidays. 

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

I'm going to try to post here every day if possible.  I think it helps me with my accountability.

I'm 63 days PMO free today.  I MO'd yesterday, no porn involved.  It takes me a little while to get hard, but once I'm there I can maintain it as long as I want.  That's an improvement from just a month ago when I could not get hard at all to masturbate without porn.  This feels like a step towards recovery.

Is anyone else of the opinion that MO'ing once in a while (maybe 1x every week or two) is helping them stay away from porn?  It seems to help me, but I'm not sure if I'm stalling my recovery by doing it.  It just feels like sometimes I need to MO to avoid PMO.

Thanks everyone for the support.

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Well, I thought I would be able to post more often over the holidays, but it was too busy and I had too many family and work functions going on.  First of all, a very happy 2020 to all my fellow rebooters!  I hope everyone is looking forward to this being the year we vanquish our addictions and continue on the road to recovery.  I'm looking to make 2020 100% PMO-free!

That being said, I am 70 days PMO-free today.  I have continued to peek at porn, however, and stopping this is my resolution for the new year. 

Trigger warning:

Earlier this week, I had sex with my wife without using viagra.  Again, it was "unplanned" sex, so I didn't have time to stress out about it, and I was able to stay hard while switching from her giving me oral to penetration, and back again.  This is an achievement for me, as over the previous weeks, I would lose my erection if we stopped penetration and did something else.  This time I was hard all the way through, and we finished satisfactorily.  My ejaculations are much larger now than they used to be during my daily PMO days, and it actually feels good, instead being immediately followed by guilt and anger as in the past.

Now the bad news.  After this happened, my sick fucking addicted brain wanted to celebrate by PMOing!  My first thought was "I'm cured! I can go back to jerking off to porn!"  WTF???  I didn't give in, but the temptation was very strong.  It scared me because I'm afraid I will have to fight this thing for the rest of my life.  It really hammered home how tight in it's grip this thing had me.

Anyway, wifey and I are going to Mexico the week after next, and I'll be bringing viagra but really hoping I won't have to rely on it 100%.

Again, happy new year to everyone and may our 2020 be the year we recover!

Cheers!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

I've been away from here too long!  I'm at 88 days PMO-free, but my porn peeking has increased and I'm really worried I'm losing control over that part of my life again.  Pretty much the only thing keeping me from PMOing right now is my desire not to ruin my streak.  It's totally the wrong reason, but at least it's A reason.

As a follow up to my previous post, my wife and I went to Mexico last week and had a great time.  We had a lot of sex, and I used viagra one time but was OK without it the rest of the time.  Being on vacation, I had pretty much no desire to look at porn and didn't have my phone with me the majority of the time anyway.  It was pretty awesome, actually!  She got a new job where she will be working at home full time and I'm really happy about that for many reasons, but one of them is that she'll be there during my work from home days, which in the past were big PMO triggers for me.  Selfish, I know, but it's gonna help me!

I have MO'd once or twice, mostly to prove to myself that I can get it up without any porn.  It's hard to explain, but my erections during these times have felt different than the ones I got with porn.  They're not softer or harder, I just get a different sensation.  It's weird, but has anyone else experienced this?

I haven't been really focused on counting days, but I've got 90 coming up in 2 days, and for me that's a big achievement.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

So I passed 90 days PMO free a few days ago.  It's for sure the longest time I have not had an orgasm while watching porn for at least the past 20 years.  As I mentioned before, I'm still watching porn sometimes, but I am not masturbating to it.  It seems like it should be easy to just stop watching, but it's proved very difficult for me, even though I'm not masturbating to it and not having orgasms watching it.  It's showing me how powerful this psychological addiction is.  I really want to stop watching, but I think my rat-brain is telling me it's ok because I'm not jerking off.  Any suggestions?

Thanks for reading!

 

[Brad1971]

Hi Elvis, I'm relatively new to the whole reboot community (I'm just under 2 weeks in), but I can offer my perspective.  My porn use was similar to what you are reporting.  I would sneak peeks throughout the day,  but not masturbate to the imagery. I was using porn to keep myself in a state of continual arousal,  and then would masturbate to the images I had seen during the day,  or create fantasies inspired by them.  This still activated all the pathways in my brain and has resulted in sexual dysfunction,  most likely due to dysfunctions in the dopamine pathways in the reward circuit.

On the Your Brain on Porn website,  Gary mentions that quitting porn is often much harder than quitting masturbation.  I would say that watching porn may be slowing the pace of your recovery,  but since you have broken the connection between masturbation and watching porn (i.e. directly attaching masturbation to emdless novelty), you have been able to make some progress.

Completely eliminating the porn watching and peeking will probably allow you to complete your healing process and will help you regain a sense of control ( once you get through withdrawal symptoms).

Wishing you the best of luck!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Hi Elvis, I'm relatively new to the whole reboot community (I'm just under 2 weeks in), but I can offer my perspective.  My porn use was similar to what you are reporting.  I would sneak peeks throughout the day,  but not masturbate to the imagery. I was using porn to keep myself in a state of continual arousal,  and then would masturbate to the images I had seen during the day,  or create fantasies inspired by them.  This still activated all the pathways in my brain and has resulted in sexual dysfunction,  most likely due to dysfunctions in the dopamine pathways in the reward circuit.

On the Your Brain on Porn website,  Gary mentions that quitting porn is often much harder than quitting masturbation.  I would say that watching porn may be slowing the pace of your recovery,  but since you have broken the connection between masturbation and watching porn (i.e. directly attaching masturbation to emdless novelty), you have been able to make some progress.

Completely eliminating the porn watching and peeking will probably allow you to complete your healing process and will help you regain a sense of control ( once you get through withdrawal symptoms).

Wishing you the best of luck!

Thanks Brad, I appreciate your feedback. I would definitely agree quitting porn is a lot harder than quitting masturbation. I'm following your story as well. Keep up the good work!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Haven't had a chance to post for a while.  Work is intense and I'm spending more hours in the office and working at home than usual.

I continue to struggle with looking at porn, but I have not used it to masturbate in 103 days.  I was slowly slipping back into old habits of looking at porn before bed, and I even downloaded some videos to my phone.  My rat brain has deep, deep pathways from my decades of porn use.  I just deleted the videos once again (we all know that cycle), and I'm recommitting to not looking at porn AT ALL, EVER.

I'm really going to try to post here everyday from now on, even if it's just a sentence or two.  I feel like this place is my lifeline to recovery.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Since deleting the few videos I had downloaded over the past few weeks, I am 100% porn free today.  I'm going to start two separate streak counters, so today is Day 1 porn-free and Day 104 without PMO.  I'm really, really hoping I can make porn no longer an option for me, even peeking!

I have not had an orgasm since my wife and I had sex a week ago, and I can definitely feel the tension building up.  In the past, this would always be a trigger to PMO, but today I'm going to try to initiate sex with my wife.  She started a new job last week and is pretty stressed out.  I stayed away from initiating sex with her because I knew she was not into it while dealing with the new job, but today we'll see how it goes.  ;D

 

[J01]

Good decision to work toward eliminating the porn.  Why not give it a try, right?  I also have a ton of work stress; we just have to deal with it properly-easier said than done, I know that.  Keep going friend!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

This is day 5 porn-free and day 108 PMO-free.

I got a little depressed yesterday realizing how much fucking time I wasted watching porn.  Many, many thousands of hours.  I could have mastered a skill in that time.  I could have spent it with my family.  Learned a musical instrument.  Another language.  It's really sad I spent all that time watching worthless porn.

For the younger guys who haven't yet wasted so much time, STOP NOW before you do. 

I've also been reading more about how porn tube sites contain content that includes women who have been trafficked, raped, filmed without consent, or otherwise abused.  And it makes me feel physically sick, as a father of two daughters.

I'm committing to never viewing another porn image. 

Thanks for reading.

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Day 7 porn-free and Day 110 PMO-free.

I think I'm flat-lining a little again.  Both wife and I worked from home yesterday, and daughter was at school, so we were alone all day.  In the morning I suggested we have a "shower beer" later in the afternoon, when work was over.  These inevitably lead to sex, but by mid-day I wasn't feeling it any more.  Around 4 we both knocked off work, and she said she felt drained and didn't want to do the shower thing, just wanted to watch TV.  I was relieved, because by then I was feeling flat, too.  Saved by the bell that time  ;D

I was going back through my early posts in this journal and I see the first week or two I started recovering, staying away from porn completely wasn't that difficult.  Now that it's round two, it still feels easy right now, but I know the hard part is coming, when the zeal wears off and I'll be massively tempted to start "peeking" again.  I'm girding up for it.  Shit, I know it's going to be hard.

On the positive side, I joined a new gym.  I quit my old one when we moved last April, and I've been working out at home or the small gym at work, which is not an easy habit for me to maintain.  Having a paid gym membership motivates me way more, so I'm hoping to throw myself into it and get in at least 3 workouts a week.  I've also started intermittent fasting (18/6) to try to jump-start some cellular repair and combat aging.  I'm in pretty good shape for my age (47).  I can still knock out 50 pushups in a session, and I'm at a healthy weight, but I need the workouts and the fasting to keep me in maintenance mode.  I'm hoping it will also keep my mind off porn.  The new gym appears to be about 75% men, which is good because my old gym had a lot of good-looking women working out, and sometimes I would come out of there totally aroused.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Today I am 11 days 100% porn free, and 114 days without PMO.

The temptation to begin peeking at porn again is pretty strong.  It started the same way it did when I initially kicked off this reboot last October.  I started fantasizing about a particular porn performer, and got the urge to check her out on Reddit. 

This is exactly what happened last time that led to me peeking at porn and going down the rabbit hole!  I believe now, however, I've gained the ability to recognize and cut it off before it starts.  Last time, it was so easy to progress from looking at non-NSFW reddit posts, to NSFW, then to the tube sites for videos.  This time, I will NOT take that first step.  No bargaining, where I say "I'll just look at a Reddit page without nudity, etc.  That didn't work last time.

I hope everyone is doing well with their recoveries.

Thanks for reading.

 

[fastfreddy]

Elvis -

Reading your posts makes me see the commonalities between so many of us here. I'm 45 days in and have been able to perform better, the way I used to, with my wife too.

Good work - keep it up!  (and yes, that's meant as an awful pun)

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Today is 13 days 100% porn-free and 116 days without PMO.

As I posted last week, I'm feeling somewhat flat-lined again, though I did perform with my wife on Saturday morning.  It's often the only private time we have all week, since we get up at 5 am during the week and pretty early on Sunday for church.  Again, I'm not feeling a lot of desire, although last night my wife and I talked about sex a little and I got turned on, but alas there was no time to see what might happen.

I'm still strongly tempted to peek at porn, but I have not given in yet.

Stay strong, gentlemen!  Thanks for reading.

 

[tfc_42]

Enjoyed reading your post Elvis, hang in there.

Question for you if you do not mind me asking,  your trip to Mexico sounded like a great time.    Every time i think about planning a trip with my wife to a tropical, hot place I immediately get concerned that there will be too many triggers for me and it will lead to "negative" feelings like depression, temptation, envy, PMO, ect, feelings that do not belong with you while you are on vacation.    I have had outings in the past to public beaches and parks in the summer and it is not good for me.  I do not want to live my life afraid to go out or plan tropical vacations. 

I guess my question is how you handled this?  Did you have concerns?  Any suggestions? 

Thanks

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Enjoyed reading your post Elvis, hang in there.

Question for you if you do not mind me asking,  your trip to Mexico sounded like a great time.    Every time i think about planning a trip with my wife to a tropical, hot place I immediately get concerned that there will be too many triggers for me and it will lead to "negative" feelings like depression, temptation, envy, PMO, ect, feelings that do not belong with you while you are on vacation.    I have had outings in the past to public beaches and parks in the summer and it is not good for me.  I do not want to live my life afraid to go out or plan tropical vacations. 

I guess my question is how you handled this?  Did you have concerns?  Any suggestions? 

Thanks

Hi, I'm happy to try to answer your questions, but there may be some mild triggers here, so please proceed with caution.  As you've seen in my earlier journal entry posts, my wife and I have an active sex life, and while she is aware that I've used porn in the past, and we have talked about it, she really doesn't know the full extent of my addiction or the problems it caused. 

The last time we discussed porn was early last year (2019), and her take was that she was ok with me using it to have an occasional release when she isn't around.  As we all know, of course, that's not really something we addicts can do, so I made the decision to stop entirely (with varying success, as you've seen). 

We're both what is probably considered high libido, and she also pleasures herself when I'm not around, which I'm totally fine with.  So, the point of this is that our vacations alone (without the kids) are usually mostly about having time for uninterrupted sex and exploring new sexual things.  For that reason, I don't feel triggered on these trips because it's really all I can do to keep up with her.  We really enjoy tropical vacations, and while Mexico is generally pretty conservative in public, we have been to some places where nudity and semi-public sexual behavior is rampant.  To be honest, I don't feel out of control in those situations, but I understand you might, so my advice to you would be to just try to focus on your wife, and also encourage her to let loose a little bit. 

One of the great things about being on vacation is that you probably won't ever see any of these people again, so if she wants to wear something a little "different" than the usual, or if you two want to try something you've been thinking about, a tropical vacation is the place to go for it!  Just make sure you discuss it in advance.  My wife gets me so worked up about what we're going to do on vacation, I honestly tend not to think about porn much while we're away.  I also don't carry my phone in Mexico most times, so I've eliminated a ton of temptation right there. 

I don't know what your relationship is like and I won't presume to ask, but if you can, I suggest making these vacations about the two of you, and just being open and honest about what you'd like to do or try.  If you feel triggered by seeing other women in swimsuits or whatever, I would say it's ok to look but not stare.  My wife and I have made a game out of it, and she's totally cool with me checking out a girl in a bikini because I talk to her about it.  When we were in Rio de Janeiro, she got a massage on the beach from a really good-looking Brazilian guy, and I wasn't jealous or triggered, because we laughed and joked about it, and I told her I was going to get him to come back to our room.  We made it fun and non-threatening for both of us, and it helped a lot.  Did she fantasize about him at some point?  Probably, but I'm ok with that.

I think some of this has come with age.  We're both in our mid-40s now and we're far more open and comfortable with each other than we were in the past.  We're married 24 years now, and it definitely wasn't like this in our earlier years.  My porn use made me emotionally unavailable much of the time, and we had a lot of resentment and communication issues.

Sorry for the long post, and I don't know if it's helped you, but I really think the key is letting go of porn as an emotional crutch, and I found that my relationship with her became so much better.

Good luck to you!  Take that vacation!