From Darkness to Light - My Journal

[Elvis on Velvet]

Well, I'm 19 days porn-free today, and 122 days without PMO.  Wow, that's 4 months!  I feel like I'm really progressing in my recovery, too.  My ability to get hard (without ED meds) for sex is returning.  It's not 100%, still a little hit and miss, but I can definitely tell it's coming back, and much better than it was a year ago.

I'm really looking forward to my "new life" without porn!

Thanks for reading.

 

[Leonidas]

Congratulations for all the progress you've made.  You can keep this up!

There was a question earlier about MO.  I would tend to say that it doesn't matter much, as long as it is done through your own imagination.  A friend of mine who had heard of the noFap community decided that cutting the porn was enough (he did not want to stop the M though) and told me he had 'recovered' his sexual response when he was around women.

So this begs the question: what if you masturbate by mentally replaying the images and clips you peeked at the night before?  I would say this is no different than a typical relapse.  It may seem better than an outright 2-hour PMO binge, but it will slow the recovery process without a doubt.

I think you've mentioned it earlier, peeking at P can easily become a habit as it's based on reward: you get the hit of dopamine, no punishment for the infringement (not considered a full blown PMO), life is good and see you next time?  If this sounds like conditioning, it' because it is.  In the end, peeking is only reinforcing the primed pathways you are trying to change in favor of healthier alternatives.  Why not make tackling the peek habit your challenge for 2020!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

So there's good and bad news to report.  First the good news, I'm 135 days PMO free today.  Recovery is going decently well, I seem to be able to have sex with my wife without ED meds pretty reliably, which was the main concern I had going into recovery, and was one of the biggest reasons I decided to kick the PMO habit. 

The idea of spending hours masturbating to porn has come to seem a little ridiculous to me now, and I get a little grossed out thinking about the type of stuff I was watching before I started my recovery.  I'm looking forward to continuing to have normal sex with my wife and just enjoying being married and in love.  We've been together for 28 years, married for 23, and I'm only recently finding out she is game for just about anything sexually, so I feel lucky to have her as a partner.  We talked about it recently, and she said she's only started to feel totally comfortable opening up about sexual things with me in the last few years.  She grew up in a strict, ultra-conservative Christian family, so sex was always a bit of an issue for us in terms of what she felt comfortable doing.  In the past few years however, she has widened her horizons into all kinds of new things. 

Now, for the bad news, I have again peeked at porn several times over the past week.  Once again, it started with Reddit pictures and then progressed to tube sites.  No PMO, but several short sessions of watching porn.  I'm really disappointed in myself, and I'm again committing to being completely porn-free starting today.  This is again Day 1 porn-free.  Last night I had a lot of trouble sleeping, and got up, grabbed my phone, and looked at porn.  It didn't surprise me, as I had looked at porn a few days before, and I knew my old habit might return if I felt stressed or anxious, which I did both last night.

Leonidas, thank you for your comments.  I'm a little conflicted on the masturbation question.  I have masturbated several times during my recovery period, not to porn, but to fantasies/memories which I try to keep centered on my wife.  In the early days of my recovery, I tried to masturbate a few times, without porn, and was unable to get hard.  Now I can get hard and MO with no images in front of me, just my mind, which I try to keep blank or just focused on my wife.  It's progress, I think.  I don't do it often, only once in a while when I feel like it might stop me from PMO'ing.  Ideally, I'd like to get to the point where I've mastered my desires and don't need to masturbate at all, but I'm not there yet.

Thanks for reading everyone, and good luck!

 

[Elvis on Velvet]

Hi again.  I have not posted here for a while, life has been pretty crazy with this lock-down, working from home full time, and having both of our daughters with us in the house every day.  Previously, our older daughter was out of state at college, and the younger in high school.  Now, the nest is full and we're all here all the time!  I like having everyone here, but it's interesting to say the least, and my wife and I are missing our alone time.

I have looked at porn again many times, but still no PMO (156 days).  I am trying so hard to stay strong, but quitting porn is definitely much harder for me than quitting PMO.  All the down time at home due to the lock-down is presenting me with a lot of temptation, which is proving hard to resist.  I'm trying to stay off my phone except for essential work-related tasks like phone calls. 

I hope everyone else is dealing with lock-down and disruption as well as possible.  We're living in strange times for sure.

Thanks for reading!