Greetings, everyone. I'm 20 years old, and this is my first post to this forum. I'm bringing a rather peculiar question that has puzzled me for quite a long time now. I don't know if this is a common situation, but I've sort of struggled with actually determining whether or not I have an addiction to porn or not. I want to do a reboot, but I'm not sure how to go about it because a) I'm not sure if I'm really suffering from an addiction and b) I don't have any sexual dysfunctions as far as I can tell. I can get it up just fine on my own, with/without porn, or with a partner. I would like to share the story of where I got started with porn and where it progressed through the years. It's going to be a rather long story, so skip to the bottom for the summary. If anyone can provide any kind of analysis, I would greatly appreciate it.
The first time I watched porn, I was 7 years old. I don't know when exactly it occurred to me but at some point I realized the power of Google and the Internet and that I could search for pictures of naked women just by typing it into Google. So that's what I did. I got up early every morning before my family (I was home schooled so aside from my dad who went to work before the rest of us saw daylight, my family slept in on a regular basis) and I would search for nude pics of women posted on the Internet. I don't remember if I really masturbated it was so long ago--I may not have understood what that was, but I enjoyed it enough to come back every morning and keep doing it for about a week. Then the guilt caught up with me and I decided that it was wrong and that I shouldn't continue. And just like that, as if it had never even been a part of my life at all, I stopped--for about 6 years. (To be fair, there may have been a phase or two similar to my first experience that occurred in the middle of these 6 years, but my memories of alot of events in my childhood are rather fuzzy).
So these 6 years go by, I'm 13, puberty has set in, I'm much more hormonal at this point, so I decided that I really missed the porn and so I went back to it. However, what followed wasn't a consistent habit. I would start up and look at porn a few times in a few days, but then I would get to feeling really guilty about it and quit. And when I quit, I would stay away from it for 8 months to a year and a half. And this in-and-out cycle went on until I was 16, and then I got caught. Only, when I got caught, it wasn't just by my parents, it was in front of virtually my entire extended family, because I happened to search it while we were vacationing at my aunt's house. I went through a major quilt trip. My parents had a number of serious talks with me over the next few weeks, and I beat myself up about it too. At any rate, I was determined to quit this time, for good.... Until about 10 months later when I talked myself into looking at porn again.
Then, things actually did change. Roughly 8 months later, in the spring of 2011, I got a girlfriend who would turn out to be a very serious girlfriend, one that I'm still dating today, more than 3 and a half years later, and that time I watched porn became the last time for 3 straight years. The strange thing is that, when before I "relapsed," during the 3 years of our relationship up to that point, it had never even been a real temptation for me. What drove me back, I can't say for sure. A big part of it was the direction I felt our relationship was heading. I began to feel very strongly that we were heading towards a breakup. And at that point, it was like this drive inside my brain that had lain dormant for all those years just overwhelmed me, and I started looking at porn again, only this time it was much more regular that I watched it. I did it behind her back, and I never confessed to her about what I've done. The thing is, we didn't actually break up. Eventually, we had a very long conversation about our relationship and our lives and goals and such things, and I realized that if I were to have broken up with her, it would've been the biggest mistake I would have ever made, and it's not one that I could likely have ever undone.
So, this of course created a problem. I've gotten myself in the habit of looking at porn and masturbating to it, but this girl I've been dating for well over 3 years is still my girlfriend. Now, I haven't mentioned that during this time we were actually apart from each other. The third year of our relationship, we were attending the same college together, away from home, living on campus. But in the summer, I stayed behind to work and she went back home, and it was during this time apart from each other when we had our conversation and I decided not to break up with her. And I realized since we weren't breaking up after I all, the porn had to go, so when I came back home from the college, I was going to quit. And I did....for about 3 months.
So that leads me to now. My girlfriend still doesn't know that I was watching porn on a more or less regular basis, and I'm going back and forth between telling myself "it's ok, 93% of women don't even consider porn cheating," and "I need to quit, if she ever found out, she would never forgive me." Recently, we've stopped having sex. She confessed to me on our most recent date night how she felt about our sex life. She told me that when we have sex she feels like we're not being intimate, there's no romance in it, and she wants to connect on a deeper level with it, but right now all it is is just sex, and she hates that. At that point, I realized I needed to change. Whether or not I suffer from an addiction to porn, I think it's undeniable that its affected my libido and desensitized me to a lot of things, and undoubtedly plays some role in why my girlfriend feels like we aren't connecting intimately with sex. I had heard about rebooting from a friend of mine, so I started doing some research on the internet and found YBOP which led me to here. I want to give myself a healthier libido, and re sensitize myself to what I've lost.
Anyway, to summarize and wrap this up--I've spent the last 13 years of my life in and out of porn flings. Each time is spaced out by a year, give or take a few months, until recently when I started getting back into it, but on a more regular basis. Naturally, my opinion of porn has changed a lot over the years, and I'm not entirely sure I think it's wrong for people to watch it, which, obviously, hasn't helped my situation. My question comes from the fact that in the past I've so easily been able to drop it for years at a time, and not experience any of the side affects of porn withdrawal, as described on YBOP, but in spite of that, whenever I do go back to porn, it happens because I've gotten these cravings, and I've just felt helpless to them when they've come on. That's the one trait of an addiction I can't shake. Relapse. It seems no matter how much time I spend away from it, I keep going back to it eventually. I don't like it, I want to wean myself off from it for good, and I think a reboot can help with that, but I'm not sure how I should approach a reboot because on YBOP, the common string is porn addiction and sexual dysfunction caused by porn addiction. I know I don't have dysfunction, but I can't tell if I have a porn addiction.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If anyone has any thoughts or analyses to share on my story, please, I'm all ears.
The first time I watched porn, I was 7 years old. I don't know when exactly it occurred to me but at some point I realized the power of Google and the Internet and that I could search for pictures of naked women just by typing it into Google. So that's what I did. I got up early every morning before my family (I was home schooled so aside from my dad who went to work before the rest of us saw daylight, my family slept in on a regular basis) and I would search for nude pics of women posted on the Internet. I don't remember if I really masturbated it was so long ago--I may not have understood what that was, but I enjoyed it enough to come back every morning and keep doing it for about a week. Then the guilt caught up with me and I decided that it was wrong and that I shouldn't continue. And just like that, as if it had never even been a part of my life at all, I stopped--for about 6 years. (To be fair, there may have been a phase or two similar to my first experience that occurred in the middle of these 6 years, but my memories of alot of events in my childhood are rather fuzzy).
So these 6 years go by, I'm 13, puberty has set in, I'm much more hormonal at this point, so I decided that I really missed the porn and so I went back to it. However, what followed wasn't a consistent habit. I would start up and look at porn a few times in a few days, but then I would get to feeling really guilty about it and quit. And when I quit, I would stay away from it for 8 months to a year and a half. And this in-and-out cycle went on until I was 16, and then I got caught. Only, when I got caught, it wasn't just by my parents, it was in front of virtually my entire extended family, because I happened to search it while we were vacationing at my aunt's house. I went through a major quilt trip. My parents had a number of serious talks with me over the next few weeks, and I beat myself up about it too. At any rate, I was determined to quit this time, for good.... Until about 10 months later when I talked myself into looking at porn again.
Then, things actually did change. Roughly 8 months later, in the spring of 2011, I got a girlfriend who would turn out to be a very serious girlfriend, one that I'm still dating today, more than 3 and a half years later, and that time I watched porn became the last time for 3 straight years. The strange thing is that, when before I "relapsed," during the 3 years of our relationship up to that point, it had never even been a real temptation for me. What drove me back, I can't say for sure. A big part of it was the direction I felt our relationship was heading. I began to feel very strongly that we were heading towards a breakup. And at that point, it was like this drive inside my brain that had lain dormant for all those years just overwhelmed me, and I started looking at porn again, only this time it was much more regular that I watched it. I did it behind her back, and I never confessed to her about what I've done. The thing is, we didn't actually break up. Eventually, we had a very long conversation about our relationship and our lives and goals and such things, and I realized that if I were to have broken up with her, it would've been the biggest mistake I would have ever made, and it's not one that I could likely have ever undone.
So, this of course created a problem. I've gotten myself in the habit of looking at porn and masturbating to it, but this girl I've been dating for well over 3 years is still my girlfriend. Now, I haven't mentioned that during this time we were actually apart from each other. The third year of our relationship, we were attending the same college together, away from home, living on campus. But in the summer, I stayed behind to work and she went back home, and it was during this time apart from each other when we had our conversation and I decided not to break up with her. And I realized since we weren't breaking up after I all, the porn had to go, so when I came back home from the college, I was going to quit. And I did....for about 3 months.
So that leads me to now. My girlfriend still doesn't know that I was watching porn on a more or less regular basis, and I'm going back and forth between telling myself "it's ok, 93% of women don't even consider porn cheating," and "I need to quit, if she ever found out, she would never forgive me." Recently, we've stopped having sex. She confessed to me on our most recent date night how she felt about our sex life. She told me that when we have sex she feels like we're not being intimate, there's no romance in it, and she wants to connect on a deeper level with it, but right now all it is is just sex, and she hates that. At that point, I realized I needed to change. Whether or not I suffer from an addiction to porn, I think it's undeniable that its affected my libido and desensitized me to a lot of things, and undoubtedly plays some role in why my girlfriend feels like we aren't connecting intimately with sex. I had heard about rebooting from a friend of mine, so I started doing some research on the internet and found YBOP which led me to here. I want to give myself a healthier libido, and re sensitize myself to what I've lost.
Anyway, to summarize and wrap this up--I've spent the last 13 years of my life in and out of porn flings. Each time is spaced out by a year, give or take a few months, until recently when I started getting back into it, but on a more regular basis. Naturally, my opinion of porn has changed a lot over the years, and I'm not entirely sure I think it's wrong for people to watch it, which, obviously, hasn't helped my situation. My question comes from the fact that in the past I've so easily been able to drop it for years at a time, and not experience any of the side affects of porn withdrawal, as described on YBOP, but in spite of that, whenever I do go back to porn, it happens because I've gotten these cravings, and I've just felt helpless to them when they've come on. That's the one trait of an addiction I can't shake. Relapse. It seems no matter how much time I spend away from it, I keep going back to it eventually. I don't like it, I want to wean myself off from it for good, and I think a reboot can help with that, but I'm not sure how I should approach a reboot because on YBOP, the common string is porn addiction and sexual dysfunction caused by porn addiction. I know I don't have dysfunction, but I can't tell if I have a porn addiction.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If anyone has any thoughts or analyses to share on my story, please, I'm all ears.
