The clean journey

[Percival]

My wife is leaving for a couple of days to help her mom, who just had shoulder surgery. That means no weekend sex. I had hoped she would suggest some before she leaves but she didn't: I didn't ask, of course, because that would be too easy, and also because asking for it always makes me feel pathetic, like I'm one of those husbands. So I'm disappointed and also ashamed of being disappointed, under the circumstances.

So, a good opportunity for porn. I'm getting ahead of the temptation by facing it now and deciding that won't help.

 

[Percival]

Saturday and Sunday went well. The kids stayed home with me, so not really much opportunity for temptation, which is good. But I sometimes encounter a scantily-clad girl on my normal tour of the Internet and I find my eyes lingering longer. That's not wrong, but it's a warning that I need to be careful: wouldn't take much to start searching for them. Which would help as much as looking at a picture of a steak when I'm hungry.

 

[joepanic]

Saturday and Sunday went well. The kids stayed home with me, so not really much opportunity for temptation, which is good. But I sometimes encounter a scantily-clad girl on my normal tour of the Internet and I find my eyes lingering longer. That's not wrong, but it's a warning that I need to be careful: wouldn't take much to start searching for them. Which would help as much as looking at a picture of a steak when I'm hungry.

No it is not wrong to admire something or someone you find attractive... admiring usually takes a few moments it's human nature But the fact that you didn't go down a road you should stay off of shows discipline. It shows your more of a man than you were yesterday

 

[Percival]

Thanks, @joepanic. This journey is a very up-and-down journey, and I find I'm much more sympathetic to the struggles of other addicts now. From the outside, it looks easy: just stop smoking or drinking or doing drugs! But they could say the same to me. Self-discipline is hard.

 

[Percival]

So far, so good. Helps that there just hasn't been much opportunity lately, and I'm still reminding myself to focus on the small temptations that don't seem like they ought to matter much.

 

[Percival]

Got on Twitter today and saw that it has an image creator. Looked at it...and decided not to even try it out. Past experience has shown that I will check any AI image creator to see if it will make NSFW pictures and even if it doesn't, I'll thoroughly test where the limits are.

Beat the small temptations and the big ones will take care of themselves.

 

[GBS]

Beat the small temptations and the big ones will take care of themselves.

Loving this. Nice one.

 

[Percival]

Good weekend. Erotic fantasies still take up headspace sometimes but I'm getting better at shutting them down. I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize that it's not healthy even in the privacy of my own imagination (probably because I didn't want to).

 

[GBS]

Hi @Percival - I promise you I understand. Getting rid of all sexual fantasies has to be futile, but getting rid of the habit of deliberately thinking about sexual things is probably achievable except we don’t want to. I haves the two sides of my brain argue about this for nigh on three years! I promise you I understand how the dilemma hurts.

 

[Percival]

Thanks, @GBS. We are never as logical as we think we are.

Yesterday I accidentally happened across one of my own erotic story outlines that I had deleted, but OneNote holds deleted items for 60 days or something. After a while, I put it into an AI generator again. It wasn't that exciting after all, probably because it was nothing new. But I didn't do or look at anything else the rest of the day, or even feel tempted.

It's been about a month since my last lapse and I don't want this to start another slide. I'm tired of fighting and sliding and failing and doing well and then doing it all over again through my own self-sabotage. Focusing on stopping the small temptations does seem to help me. At least it's easier, so I hope I can go back to staying vigilant and focused on not giving in to the small ones.

 

[Percival]

And then I went the rest of the day without thinking about porn. It's nice to just be out of the habit.

My mind started wandering this morning during the drive in, which isn't unusual, but I kept refocusing it (and eventually pulled over and took a 10-minute doze) and now, 30 minutes later, I don't really care about what I was (trying to) fantasize about. Don't give in and the temptation really does go away.

 

[Percival]

Saturday I had a couple of hours to myself, because I was doing taxes and my wife took the kids (how's that for an exciting weekend?). I remember feeling weak and that I searched for something forbidden, but I can't even remember what it was and know I didn't actually fall into it. Of course not looking at all would've been best but I'll take a messy win.

Focus on winning the small battles.

 

[Percival]

On today's drive in I didn't start thinking about erotica, except to realize that I wasn't. My general mindset towards porn is getting to be more positive, even though I've sometimes lost some of those small battles. But it seems it's much easier to recover from one of those (i.e. it doesn't start a slide into a long binge that makes me feel disgusted at myself) than those big overwhelming temptations.

 

[Percival]

I don't count the days BUT: December 27 was the last time I crashed and burned and spent hours bingeing on porn, and Jan 3 was the last time I had even a small slip up, and the day I decided to try a new tactic: fighting and defeating the small temptations that seem like they don't really matter.

So today is 6 weeks. Once before I made it to 18 months, but that was a long time ago, and a long time since I was just completely off-porn for 6 weeks.

It (sadly) doesn't give me a big dopamine hit, but I'm proud of me. Keep avoiding those small temptations.

 

[Blondie]

Nice job @Percival.

 

[Percival]

Good weekend: spent the time setting up phones for my kids, watching my oldest son play soccer (lost, but he scored all of their 4 goals), going to church, and watching the SB. Nothing very exciting, but these are the good days that I'll remember when they're grown and gone. And I wasn't wasting time on porn.

 

[Percival]

Going well. I looked up some sex-related questions on Reddit yesterday, for "research" but that's mostly an excuse. Another of those small battles.

I don't post every day because there's not always something to say, but I try to at least post on someone's journal if there's nothing to say in mine.