Hello from Flamel

[Flamel]

Hello everyone. This is my first attempt to reach out and seek real hep for a problem which I feel is ruining my life.

I have been amazed at how similar many of the stories are here. Mine is no different, really, apart from in the incidental details. A habit which developed in childhood. A gradual acceleration of the problem which kept pace with the growth of the internet. A feeling of helplessness and hopelessness as I repeatedly fail to break the habit. Feelings of disgust and depression after a "session", but the feelings are soon overtaken by the desire to log on again. Things reaching a crescendo; a hiatus in the habit; a slow creep of telling myself lies again until I think that it's OK just to have a quick look . . .

Like many of you, I have somehow managed to live a successful life on the surface, with an excellent job - a career I have wanted since a child - a wonderful wife and child, friends and hobbies and so on. But there is this rotten core which eats away at the energy I can invest in those things and my ability to enjoy them.

I am fed up with disappointing myself, and not having my actions live up to my ideals. I do not want to be this weak, nor do I want any longer to objectify and demean women in this way. I'm not sure how, or if, I'm going to do it, but I'm determined to give my all to giving up. I look forward to your input, and to sharing your successes with you too!

[Stanley]

Hello everyone. This is my first attempt to reach out and seek real hep for a problem which I feel is ruining my life.

I have been amazed at how similar many of the stories are here. Mine is no different, really, apart from in the incidental details. A habit which developed in childhood. A gradual acceleration of the problem which kept pace with the growth of the internet. A feeling of helplessness and hopelessness as I repeatedly fail to break the habit. Feelings of disgust and depression after a "session", but the feelings are soon overtaken by the desire to log on again. Things reaching a crescendo; a hiatus in the habit; a slow creep of telling myself lies again until I think that it's OK just to have a quick look . . .

Like many of you, I have somehow managed to live a successful life on the surface, with an excellent job - a career I have wanted since a child - a wonderful wife and child, friends and hobbies and so on. But there is this rotten core which eats away at the energy I can invest in those things and my ability to enjoy them.

I am fed up with disappointing myself, and not having my actions live up to my ideals. I do not want to be this weak, nor do I want any longer to objectify and demean women in this way. I'm not sure how, or if, I'm going to do it, but I'm determined to give my all to giving up. I look forward to your input, and to sharing your successes with you too!

Hi, Flamel. Welcome. I so identify with you.

I'm only a week into this site myself, so I don't have any miracle answers for you, except that people here care about you and about what happens to you very much. I'm rooting for you, mate, and I hope you find what you're looking for here.

the one thing I would say is, take it one day's troubles at a time. Don't worry about tomorrow - just deal with today. I'm beginning to discover that I can do something for this one day that would be impossible if I tried to do it for the whole fo the rest of my life.

Hang in there, pal. There'll be others along in a wee while. :)

[Zibble]

Hi Flamel,

Welcome to the site, and congratulations on deciding to fight back against your bad habits! We're all in the same boat, which you described very vividly and accurately, but we *can* get out of it if we really try. I think a big part of why a lot of us have slipped up in the past was that we thought we could escape just by deciding to quit, without also devoting some steady creative thought to figuring out how to build better habits and reinforce the clear-sighted view of porn we have come to. Anyway, that's why I myself could never stay clean until now: I would just say "never again!" without doing anything to make sure that was true. Now, I devote some time *every day* to thinking up and doing things that will make me stronger. I hope such daily discipline eventually won't be necessary, but we'll only get to that point if we really work at it now.

Anyway, it's good to have you with us :)

Best,
Zibble

[Flamel]

Hi Stanley, Hi Zibble, and thanks so much for your caring and thoughtful replies. When I read them I was struck by how you both gave simple and fairly common advice, and yet to "hear" a real person saying it, someone struggling with demons like mine, coping with temptations and weaknesses like mine, gave that advice real power and force.

Today I was thinking to myself that the first few days are often OK, but it gets harder later, and how on Earth was I to keep this up for the rest of my life. But then I recalled you advice, Stanley, and realised like you that all I have to do is get through today, and tomorrow will take care of itself.

Zibble, you recommended investing some creative energy in the fight, and that simple suggestion was so fortifying. I really identify with you when you said that you had simply said "Never again" in the past, and today I'm trying to follow your lead and meet the problem head on, see it clearly, and work against it. Thinking that the problem is so much bigger than ourselves makes it into an invincible monster, but we only need look it in the eye and square up to the fight.

Thanks, guys!

[seeker]

Hello everyone. This is my first attempt to reach out and seek real hep for a problem which I feel is ruining my life.

I have been amazed at how similar many of the stories are here. Mine is no different, really, apart from in the incidental details. A habit which developed in childhood. A gradual acceleration of the problem which kept pace with the growth of the internet. A feeling of helplessness and hopelessness as I repeatedly fail to break the habit. Feelings of disgust and depression after a "session", but the feelings are soon overtaken by the desire to log on again. Things reaching a crescendo; a hiatus in the habit; a slow creep of telling myself lies again until I think that it's OK just to have a quick look . . .

Like many of you, I have somehow managed to live a successful life on the surface, with an excellent job - a career I have wanted since a child - a wonderful wife and child, friends and hobbies and so on. But there is this rotten core which eats away at the energy I can invest in those things and my ability to enjoy them.

I am fed up with disappointing myself, and not having my actions live up to my ideals. I do not want to be this weak, nor do I want any longer to objectify and demean women in this way. I'm not sure how, or if, I'm going to do it, but I'm determined to give my all to giving up. I look forward to your input, and to sharing your successes with you too!

Flamel,

You are here because you want to improve yourself and your condition. That is a major step and one that I myself only recently took as I struggled to kick this habit for too long. This forum has given me newfound hope that I can put infectious routines of my past where they belong- expunged from my memories!

Surprisingly I haven't had that much trouble avoiding internet P and MB. I just made myself aware of when I was about to regress back to that horrible place at consciously stopped myself. I didn't like the person I was in the abstract and I feel so much more empowered now as a man who is capable a controlling his behavior like a mature, self-aware and compassionate person.

I am still tempted by image on television but I find those matters significantly less intrusive into my routine and marital relationship and strongly believe that I will be able to eradicate virtually all such cancerous influences from my world.

May you soon find the same light to guide you through your journey back to where you once felt strong and powerful as I have done in this short period.

[Stanley]

Hi Stanley, Hi Zibble, and thanks so much for your caring and thoughtful replies. When I read them I was struck by how you both gave simple and fairly common advice, and yet to "hear" a real person saying it, someone struggling with demons like mine, coping with temptations and weaknesses like mine, gave that advice real power and force.

Today I was thinking to myself that the first few days are often OK, but it gets harder later, and how on Earth was I to keep this up for the rest of my life. But then I recalled you advice, Stanley, and realised like you that all I have to do is get through today, and tomorrow will take care of itself.

Zibble, you recommended investing some creative energy in the fight, and that simple suggestion was so fortifying. I really identify with you when you said that you had simply said "Never again" in the past, and today I'm trying to follow your lead and meet the problem head on, see it clearly, and work against it. Thinking that the problem is so much bigger than ourselves makes it into an invincible monster, but we only need look it in the eye and square up to the fight.

Thanks, guys!

Glad it helped you, mate. I should say it's a lot easier to talk the talk than it is to walk the walk. I find myself worrying away ahead about so many things.
This is my eleventh day and so far, so good, although I did find myself lying half-awake early this morning fantasising about some quite nasty stuff that related to my PA.

I had got into bondage and BDSM stuff bordering on torture which isn't the real me (honest) but which had a horrible fascination for me. I'm still trying to work out just where that all came from - I'm coming to the conclusion that there' sa lot of anger and frustration in me, non-sexual in origins, but which flows over into my sexual feelings for my wife.

I clearly have a lot of work to do on myself, and I can't do it all today. So rigth now I'm not loking at porn images, nor have I looked at them for over a week, which is very unusual for me. I'm trying to get the computer and internet link shut down well before midnight - the dark hours were the time I surfed the XXX sites - and to get to bed a lot earlier.

What you say about having a successful and 'together' life on the surface, with all the rottennessunder the surface eating away at you and your relationships is exactly how I feel about my addiction.

I was thinking about things a couple of nights ago, and it occurred to me that in order to get to internet porn, I have to type the name of the link into Google. (I cleaned up my 'history' and 'favourites' files and such stuff.)

I then have to click on the buttone before the list of site names and similar site names comes up. I have to click on one of them.

The site homepage comes up, and I then have to make a selection - what do I want to look at?

I click on that, and that page comes up, and even then in many cases I still have to select and click again before I get to the pictures/movies/stories/blog/whatever I want to look at.

So when I'm looking at the Google homepage, I'm still quite a number of steps away from the images.

And even though I'm now having to deal with a compulsion, I still have a choice - a series of choices, actually - that I can make or not make before I allow the compulsion to pull me down again.

And life is so much better when I say 'no'. Sorry for rambling, Flamel. Hope things are going well with you. Be hearing from you? S.

[Daniel]

Stanley, seeker, Flamel, Zibble -where ever you guys went I REALLY hope you come back.

Daniel

[Little lock]

I agree. Sometimes I think of the "lost" generation of TTF, the people who were the first on this site in its fledgling days and guided it through its inception. I do pray that one day they will all be back. I wonder how are they faring now? Good I hope. I think the only member from that generation is FM. And Dominus.

[Daniel]

Wow. LL that's cool that you're thinking the same thing along "TTF History". I have had exactly the same thought.

If you look at the dusty journals and intros, going back to early 2008 -there's a whole bunch of them! And I wonder too how they're doing. I know what it means to "not post lately", if you know what I mean.

It's also possible that they have found another online community to be a part of. Not this boy though. I'm 'home'..

I hope they all come back, or at least a few... And these four, really just randomly selected, seemed to really have it together for a fresh start.

[Little lock]

Yeah. I did a check, and realised that most of them have been gone for a long time. Stanley I think was last online on the 26th of March! But Zibble was last online only 2 days ago though. Maybe some of them are still here.

And you said that you "came home? Meaning that you were once a part of TTF but went away and came back? Sorry if this sounds intrusive, I'm just kinda confused:D