my day 1 of abstinence

Submitted by DJax on Mon, 2009-03-30 15:46
Addicts

Hereby I make an official pledge not to use porn and not to masturbate to orgasm for two weeks.

a bit on my background if you are interested.

I feel like I am stuck in a rut for about ten years now in this cycle. I felt intense guilt and went to therapy because of this and felt like I was a future women molester because of my strong addiction. My addiction began because I felt unsure as a man and I used porn to stabilize an imaginary masculine persona. Porn was a safe haven but now I feel it only dries me up and hollows me out. Today I feel like a guy with rich personal qualities but when I use porn I mechanically revert back to being a needy teenager. It feels like I don't want to loose that alienated teenager persona though I've grown it out in the pastime. I was raised as an only child with only my mom parenting me and I developed a "good boy" persona and always thought any aggressiveness towards women was totally wrong. So I was the more fascinated by violent porn and the more ashamed of it when I caught myself viewing it. When viewing porn the movie articulated my mistrust and anger on women I could not muster to consciously live. When I was porn addicted and felt guilty I attracted a girlfriend who was sort of the reverse, she was frigid. She made me feel bad about my sexual drive so I reverted even more to porn. I was always fearful on my animal instincts because I also am a very intellectual person who was baffled by his urges.

I am willing to give this experiment a try and accept not only its good effects but its bad effects as well. wish me good luck.

I am simply soooooo tired about my mechanical masturbations.

I do not have grand new plans but at least I want to allow some creative space in my live in order to fill my voids in a more creative way. and not to live on as a sort of robot. There are too many zombies and robots in the world already. I want to stand out.

Any comments are appreciated.

Djax.

Submitted by Seeker on Mon, 2009-03-30 16:30.

You have made the biggest step already. You have decided to make a change to help yourself. Just hang in there and do not get too upset if you can not go the 2 weeks on your first try, my first try got to 7 days. If you fall off get up and dust yourself off and go again just do not give up. I am not going to lie it is an up and down thing but over all it goes up more than down if you keep trying. I think the rewards of stopping this addiction are many. I am still fighting every day. I am fighting as i type this. Your story is helping that fight so thank you. Please keep coming back if you have trouble there is much support on this sight.

good luck to you.
I know you can reach your goal.

be safe

Submitted by time_for_change on Mon, 2009-03-30 16:31.

I've been similarly stuck for years with a porn/masturbation addiction, and have also felt a lot of guilt over it. I once read how there isn't the concept of 'guilt' in Tibet - makes you think about what guilt actually is... I find that it can easily become this negative energy about something in the past that cannot be changed... also, with addiction, you're not even in control, so why feel guilty? It doesn't help, and actually makes things worse by depressing you and feeding the addiction. Better to turn it around into a positive energy that looks for ways to beat the addiction.

A note about the 'frigid' girlfriend - when you're in the depths of the porn/masturbation cycle it changes the way you are with other people, without you necessarily realising it. It could be that she was simply reacting to what you were projecting and it put her off intimacy. Hotspring wrote about this kind of thing:

hotspring wrote:

I've been reading into some affective neuroscience and found this interesting: "Recent research has discovered a discreet set of nerve pathways from the skin that go to the center in the right hemisphere that reads the context of the touch rather than the sensory component of it. This context center gets sensitized during infancy as to whether touch is nurturing and loving."

Women are the more right-lobe orientated of the human species. If nerves can sense more than sensation and can sense also context, then the context of touch from someone who watches porn is going to be very different than someone who doesn't - the context being all of the associations, the imagery, and guilt that might come along with porn use. Whether the secret is "out in the open" or well-hidden, the context plays itself out each time you touch your wife. She may not detect it consciously, but her overall organism as a whole is always taking in a full array of data. So I think whether you tell her about the porn use or not is moot, when we consider the inherent interrelatedness of all phenomenon and the amazingly intricate communication pathways our biology has set up to give and receive signals. Fact is, in a real sense, no action is isolated and so no action is secret insofar as it having an effect on the way the world turns round. You're downloading your system with a certain kind of data and that data doesn't go away when you turn of the computer - its in your very organism and touch. I'd say accountability in terms of the personal integrity needed to be selective about consumption, and taking seriously the phenomenon of immediate cause and effect, is much more important than wrangling over whether to tell or not. If you take care of your own need for personal integrity, the rest will fall into place.

So good luck with your pledge, I hope it goes well. I've tried to stop on many, many occasions, but have always failed in a few days. However, now that I've written about my experiences here and told everyone I'm trying to stop it has really helped - I'm on day 19 now, I don't have strong cravings, my head is so much clearer, I'm generally happier in life. It is such a worthwhile thing to do - good luck smiley

time_for_change

Marnia's picture

Submitted by Marnia on Mon, 2009-03-30 22:31.

Good for you. Never hurts to try something new. Just remember that the goal is balance, not perfection - even though an extended period of abstinence from porn and orgasm is initially quite helpful.

Guilt actually makes porn more addictive, so try to leave it behind. And, honestly, there's nothing to feel guilty about. Your primitive brain has played a trick on you. (And it's a rare person who hasn't had some experience with THAT problem, even without porn in the mix, smiley )

Blog if you like.

*a big hug*

Submitted by Tantra11 on Tue, 2009-04-07 19:35.

I used to have the exact same pattern you describe, where outwardly you'd never think of being "mean" to a woman, yet you have violent fantasies and then guilt over them. It was only after I found the teachings of David Deida that I learned what was going on and that it wasn't anything to be guilty about. Here's an excerpt from his book for men: http://www.bluetruth.org/blog/_archives/2007/9/26/2668893.html . Basically, you suppressed your masculinity, which is a fundamental part of your being, and it came out in the only way it could. The trick then, is to bring it out but in a good way.