Relapse: What happens just before IT happens?

[MAB]

If you are a PA in a relationship, you know that your actions are extremely damaging to your partner. You know a relapse could end the relationship, or at least severely damage it. You know how much it hurts the person you love. We do not want to relapse, but yet, some do. I did, you may have. So what happens in our mind to allow that to happen? How do we go from a place of "nope, won’t do that" to a place of "alright, here we go". How does our mind make it okay to commit to the act? How do we hold the knowledge of all the hurt, and all the risk, and all the damage – hold that up in our minds, and despite that knowledge STILL decide to click? I've thought about it and cannot figure out what it was for me. I just cannot figure it out. Did I just not think? Did I not care? Did I think nobody would find out? What happened?

[Disillusioned]

MAB, if there was a 64,000 dollar question ever (reference to an old game show, by the way), this is it.

I am not a PA, so what I have to say probably lacks impact, but I do have something to share. When a PA trying to recover relapses, he does so because he does not handle triggers well. He might not even be aware of them. If he already knows what does this to him, he has to have absolutes to deal with them, as in when I come home and find the place empty, I usually look at P and MB.
JUst as a cigarette addict must recognize that there are activities and places that he used his cigarette during, so does a P addict need to recognize the times and circumstances under which he used P. Can be an empty house, a difficult day at work, a long list of chores that need done and that is soooooo hard to start. That said, what are you going to do when these arise again? 50 push-ups, reciting a long poem from memory, running, punching a punching bag, reading or posting on TTF....all acceptable, and there are many others.
They have found that s-xu-al thoughts and images travel at a speed that is 2% faster than nons-xu-l ones, so you hit a trigger, have the opportunity, and while you are still thinking about trying to resist, you are still thinking about how much you want to use, your mind might travel to how interesting this is, some type of person or activity that you really find exciting...boom, you are there without having gone anywhere. It just comes that quickly. As addicts we dare not even get close the edge, as we have one foot over the edge before even getting near it.
Hope this helps. Good luck in your struggle and your journey to becoming the better man that you intended to be, and the better man that nature gave you the skills to be.

[comet]

Hi my friend, I was confused by how IT happened also, I am a PA, I think when we enter a certain atmosphere, a certain environment, as Ms.D. Said "I come home and find the place empty ", we will start to flashback the scenes of ourselves using p in the past, and in that atmosphere we start to have flashbacks automatically, sometimes without our realization. And once we start to flashback the scenes in the past, we have an urge of getting that "high" again, and there is usually no way to turn back.
So we need to avoid that atmosphere, stay away from the things that trigger us, it is much easier to run away from the triggers than combating the strong urge in the battlefield which it's hard to triumph.

[WayFarerNation]

The last time I relapsed, which was about a month ago, I reflected on answering your question in the thread title.

For me, it's when I let my guard down, either out of complacency or a desire to escape from something that is really stressing me out. On that particular day, I felt more stress than usual, as I was painting a picture as a Christmas present and it wasn't coming out right, it was cold and rainy, and a woman had jogged by me earlier bouncing around as I was biking to the location where I was to paint my picture. After the woman jogged by me, I let in just a slight lustful temptation, and as the day progressed the temptation started to build in my mind, and I did not shut the door on it. I let it sit there and grow, slowly as my stress began to increase.

There's a point where, if you refuse to shut the door, the temptation will take you over and all rationality, everything you know about the shame and guilt, will just disappear for just long enough for you to act out if you have the audacity to do so. Man, when I acted out, the shame was tremendous, because I really do know better than that.

It's the guilt and shame that keeps me in check most of the time. I have to bar the door against those small temptations that can just snowball, and if I don't, I have to somehow remember what the horrible shame feels like afterward, which will give me enough strength to bar the door against the snowball effect.

I hope this helps.

[TYC113]

I am actually like both WayfarerNation and Comet, and have stumbled both ways they described. What seems "sexually innocent" in terms of thought has to be eradicated. Any sexual thought will trigger you and can overtake you to make you want to revert to that old behavior. Our thoughts must be absolutely clean, and anything lust-filled and erotic has got to go. It can quickly lead to a slip-up.

I think for me when I'm alone, I have no threat of being caught watching P. If no one is around, then there will be no repercussions for what I do since no one will be offended and hurt (even though it's a lie. It hurts us as PAs to indulge it). But that thought will enter our head and our s_ual drives are so powerful that it can convince us to believe that lie. And if we don't get away, we can slip up fast and end up in lust fast. That is why I am trying to lock down my computer when no one is home with me. I would say get away from any computer. Shoot for me, I have a hard time turning on TV since a lot of programs deal with sex anyway. I get away as fast as possible. That's what I do at least. I just have to get away from anything s_ual. I'm thinking of perhaps playing basketball more outside or at a gym. It's so rough to be alone with my P filled mind for me.

[no_excuses]

I'm a PA, and I think trying to avoid triggers can only take us so far. As WayFarerNation pointed out, triggers will collide with us in life no matter how much we try to avoid them. Whether it's on the street, on TV, at work, etc. Avoiding as many as we can is important, and certainly avoiding the ones that are connected in our minds with P use (e.g. being up alone at night). But just as important, or perhaps more so, is how we handle ourselves once we encounter a trigger. That's the real gritty battlefield where the hand-to-hand combat takes place. I think what's helped me here is two things:

1. Preparation. Our daily practice of focusing on the importance of this work, reminding ourselves of the horribleness of P addiction, and being our true, happy selves TRAINS the mind the accept the new, better path. It's like training yourself for any other belief or skill, through conscious, daily repetition we are literally rewriting the neuro-pathways with a better program. So when triggers arise, we're not complacent, we have an established path we can redirect ourselves toward. Without that, we're caught off-guard by desire and are knocked off-balance. We can't reason well and we scramble for a stronghold but it's not there because we didn't BUILD it.

2. Deal with the physiological as well as the mental. When desire hits, my heart rate increases, my breath becomes faster and rises tightly in my chest, and I can't reason well - a sandstorm is clouding my brain. I believe these symptoms are connected. So I must consciously calm my breath, which calms my heart and settles the confusion in my mind so I can reason again. That's when I switch my thoughts to my practice and go-to bedrock thoughts of how I don't want to be disgraced in front of my family, and I how I want to live a true and honest life. These are emotionally powerful thoughts/visions that help me reason through the desire emotion and disperse it.

[HopefulsRock]

MAB, intriguing question... I think we PA's all know why we did it in the first place because of a false belief that it would;

• make us feel better
• we deserved it
• it's normal, every guys does it
• no one will know
• blah, blah, blah....

In reality though at some point if we are ever to get past that nonsense we need to get out of those false beliefs and realize we are not only hurting our SO's and damaging our relationship but we are also damaging ourselves! Face it, if we continue in that life we are becoming a type of perverted old man that none of us men or women can stand... at some point I realized this in my own recovery and it hurt bad... I will never do that to myself again and everyone around me hopefully will benefit from this choice in my life, especially me!

[Deelmo]

For me, it was the final realization that S** is NOT about ME. When any unappropiate thought of thing comes across my path I immediately think of what my life should be about. It is about me pleasing the other person. It is about loving and serving. It is about giving with no thought to what I'm going to get out it. If I try to make it about me, then for my actions there will be a reaction. Reaction - I will my respect, I will lose my honor, my integerity. I will be a cheater, a lair, a theft. I will lose my wife, my children. I will no longer be a man but a selfish spoiled little boy in a grown up body. I want to walk with my head high.