Restoring Intimacy & Emotional Connection

[DickPalmer]

I'm curious about this aspect of rebooting. I have a perception of myself through the porn use that I'm rather unemotional, however my psychotherapist has suggested I have a lot of emotion but just don't let it surface, that I have buried it. This might not be completely down to the porn use, but I've an idea it has helped to entrench it. I also know that I was less willing to touch or be touched, to show intimacy not just in a sexual way but in the act of holding hands, things like that. I found myself last night making a conscious effort to do so, which I know isn't good as it should be spontaneous, but again I have an idea that in some senses I am going to have to train myself to do spontaneous things until they do become spontaneous, if that makes sense.

Have any other rebooters noted a lack of emotion, natural empathy, etc, such as that described above? Did matters improve when you started to reboot. I am trying to work out, and again the psychotherapy may help, as to whether the causes of this have been made worse by porn, or if porn has desensitized me? I don't tend to think of women that I meet, in my workplace, etc, in a sexual way. I can tell they are attractive but a) I am married, albeit estranged from my wife (see my journal) and b) I don't objectify these women in the way some people might imagine a porn or sex addict would.

 

[Gracie]

I hope you are successful in your reboot.  One thing that struck me about what you said was, "I don't objectify these women in the way some people think a porn or sex addict would."  That seems to indicate that you do objectify them on some level.  If you are saying you are unemotional, then you may be looking at them and just not conscious about what you are doing.  I know my husband said, "I don't know that I am looking."  Then once he started paying attention, he realized how much he did.

What worked for us, and it will work for anybody was to have a routine.  It was to make us touch again.  We were both not very tactile at the moment of discovery.  He had withdrawn in to "pornland"  as a result, I did not like being touched because if he touched me on the arm, kissed me passionately, or smacked my butt.  It meant he wanted sex.  That was our foreplay.  YUCK!  So I had to learn to be touched and not freeze up and he had to take the porn out of his touch.  So think of it as conscious touching.  See how you feel when you do normal touching.  What is your brain thinking.  Your wife may have felt much the same as I did.

 

[profapper]

i feel like i had alot of emotional numming from porn. it felt like i was the only one in high school not having sex or geting in fights or playing sports or doing anything but being a pissed off dick to people, i hated my life. thats when my addiction was the worst. i think porn has a big effect on personality and mood, and health