Helpmefreud's journal

[helpmefreud]

Clean now for four days.

I am going to try my hardest to post here every time I have the urge to watch porn.

Where to begin? I'm currently 22 and have been watching porn at greater and lesser frequency since I was probably ten. The frequency with which I was watching porn this past fall, however, made me fearful and I came to realize that it was problematic. That said, I don't feel bad about... I should say, I don't feel about about who i am on account of it. I am fundamentally a strong person who wants to affect positive change in my life, in the lives of the people around me, and in society generally. I am a strong, stable, mature, and intelligent individual. I am a student at a respected east coast college and it is my aim to attend graduate school to study clinical psychology. I hope to focus on men's mental health - I think that there is a crisis among men in the US, and it is something I wish to spend my life addressing. I see problems in myself with pornography and sexuality, and I see other men increasingly becoming delinquent fathers, drug and alcohol addicts, and victims of a society that has overlooked their needs. I think the advances that women have made in all walks of social life are laudable and fantastic; I only wish that men could see themselves progressing at the same rate.

In any case, I don't direct negativity at myself for my behavior, but I do understand that my behavior is personally and socially damaging, and I hope to do everything I can to put a stop to it now. Although I've never acted out on my sexual impulses beyond the confines of my computer screen, the impulses have become stronger as time has passed, and the prospect that I might do something that I abhor and loathe to see myself do frightens me.

Journal though this may be, I'd like to ask an opinion question: Are our addictive longings legitimate and simply must be appropriately diverted and/or controlled, or can the longings themselves be extinguished? I'd like to believe the latter to be true, but I don't know that it is. If my sexual desires are so strong now, could they ever go away completely, or will I simply have to be vigilant for the rest of my life?

Looking forward to Monday and my first clean week on the road to a new start! \:D/

-helpmefreud

[Paul from Canterbury]

Clean now for four days.

I am going to try my hardest to post here every time I have the urge to watch porn.

Where to begin? I'm currently 22 and have been watching porn at greater and lesser frequency since I was probably ten. The frequency with which I was watching porn this past fall, however, made me fearful and I came to realize that it was problematic. That said, I don't feel bad about... I should say, I don't feel about about who i am on account of it. I am fundamentally a strong person who wants to affect positive change in my life, in the lives of the people around me, and in society generally. I am a strong, stable, mature, and intelligent individual. I am a student at a respected east coast college and it is my aim to attend graduate school to study clinical psychology. I hope to focus on men's mental health - I think that there is a crisis among men in the US, and it is something I wish to spend my life addressing. I see problems in myself with pornography and sexuality, and I see other men increasingly becoming delinquent fathers, drug and alcohol addicts, and victims of a society that has overlooked their needs. I think the advances that women have made in all walks of social life are laudable and fantastic; I only wish that men could see themselves progressing at the same rate.

In any case, I don't direct negativity at myself for my behavior, but I do understand that my behavior is personally and socially damaging, and I hope to do everything I can to put a stop to it now. Although I've never acted out on my sexual impulses beyond the confines of my computer screen, the impulses have become stronger as time has passed, and the prospect that I might do something that I abhor and loathe to see myself do frightens me.

Journal though this may be, I'd like to ask an opinion question: Are our addictive longings legitimate and simply must be appropriately diverted and/or controlled, or can the longings themselves be extinguished? I'd like to believe the latter to be true, but I don't know that it is. If my sexual desires are so strong now, could they ever go away completely, or will I simply have to be vigilant for the rest of my life?

Looking forward to Monday and my first clean week on the road to a new start! \:D/

-helpmefreud

Hi helpmefreud, to your question whether the longings can be extinguished. I think we are men and we feel the natural attraction towards women, there is nothing bad about longings, the problem is that P moves somewhere beyond normality, the P push your desire higher and higher, the more you watch it, the more you need, it is drug. You can't control it, it controls you. As with any addiction, you gradually become a slave of it.
Therefore I think, the longings are fine, but they can't be fed with

Good to have you here, P.

[helpmefreud]

Entry #2

Well, just had a meltdown. I don't know what to say exactly... I was doing fairly well these past few days. It's this powerful, powerful, irrational urge, and there's this moment when I'm sitting at my computer and I can make the choice to walk away... and then I don't, and its almost as if I "come to" after its happened...

I need to make sure that I don't use my computer alone in my room. I'm hoping that when I move in with my girlfriend next month I can move the computer and my desk into a public area where I don't feel so safe looking at porn... I find that when my life is busy, when I'm out and about doing things, it isn't such a problem. I have one minute alone here at the computer and I break down. These past few days, after my first entry, I was really determined, and approached my computer with caution: I had a specific plan of action, I did what I needed to do on the computer, I shut it down. I even did this while completely alone! Tonight I suppose I let my guard down.

I forget how stupid it feels afterwards...

EDIT: Also, would anybody be interested in being email buddies? I'll keep you real, you keep me real, we'll get to know each other.

[WifeOfNewLifeMan]

Does your girlfriend know about your PA?

[helpmefreud]

...oof, no. I mean, she knows that I look at porn, and that doesn't bother her. We have a really great sex life, at least by my standards, and a perfectly normal one at that. I never bring the demeaning stuff in P into my bed, nor would I ever want to.

...the problem is that my P addiction sometimes revolves around craigslist ads. That said, I've never acted out on the desire to respond to them, but I do look at them in my weakest of moments. That would be hard to explain... not that I would need to, but I'm not sure that if I said, "I have a P addiction because I look at P twice a week" that she would really view that as anything terribly serious. I really don't watch with much frequency, its just that when I do I look at CL ads, not all of which are straight, either... I have no problems with being attracted to both men and women, but the gf might...

[helpmefreud]

Here we go, fresh start.

I don't have a lot to say at the moment, but I just wanted to post an entry here as to get in the habit of doing it regularly. Here's to keeping clean and staying vigilant!

[artguy34]

Hello helpmefreud,

I was just reading over your post and I see you are in a very unique situation than most here. For starters, your g/f knows about your P use and is ok with it. Plus you are planning to move in with her in a month or so.

If I can make a suggestion that may help you? I would recommend having a talk with your g/f before you move in and let her know how much of a tough time you're having with PA. Even though she is ok with it, let her know that you're not ok with it and that you would like her to understand that you want to get "sober" for yourself to be a better person. This will also help her in the long run.

Based on what you have said, she does not understand the ramifications your PA may have down the road. And if you ask any of the SO's here, they would have wished that they knew ahead of time.

This could be your chance to break the PA wide open, get more help and support from someone who loves you and also be 100% honest to her. This could strengthen your relationship with her as you move forward.

I say this because most of us PA's (if not all of us here) have done things the wrong way and hid our addictions from our loved one's which in turn really destroyed them. You have a chance to be upfront and honest before your PA does some serious damage to your g/f.

If I could do it all over again, I would change things knowing what I know now. But we can never change the past. However you can change things now and not make the same mistakes most of us PA's have done by hurting our SO's.

Just something to think about? I wish you luck on your journey.

[Medium]

Hi helpmefreud
I'd also add that if you have feelings of attraction towards men then please don't use this as an excuse to hide your battle with p from your partner. This will only allow you to create a path back to p. A justification for yourself. It may be hard to discuss because she will ask which one is it and your only answer will be I don't know but not discussing it is giving yourself an out. I'm in the same position as you except that I have a wife and 3 kids. Whilst there should be no question of acting out on attractions in my case I am still finding it very hard to talk to my so about it and it doesn't get any easier with time. If you don't talk to her about it at least be aware of the increased risk you are facing and where your urge to go back to it will come from.

[helpmefreud]

Well, maybe today will be the fresh start... I tried so hard today, yet still broke down. I made a deliberate, conscious effort, yet still slipped up. Time to pick it back up and try again! I was clean all through December, so here's to trying to beat that one month record yet again.

Thanks for all the replies. Yes, I know I should talk to her about my feelings, but that doesn't make it any easier. When's the right time? How do I go about saying it in a way that doesn't make her panic but says the right things? When I'm with her, P isn't a problem, so it never really comes up. It's a problem when I'm alone.

I really just want to beat this thing and not have to drag her into it. I'm not going to cheat on her and I'm not choosing P over her, nor am I sneaking around behind her back. It just happens when I'm alone and bored and I find myself sitting in front of my computer.

I know I'm making excuses, but I'm not making them as rationales for not talking to her about the issue. I'm just explaining my fears and hopes.

[Daniel]

I'd like to ask an opinion question: Are our addictive longings legitimate and simply must be appropriately diverted and/or controlled, or can the longings themselves be extinguished? I'd like to believe the latter to be true, but I don't know that it is. If my sexual desires are so strong now, could they ever go away completely, or will I simply have to be vigilant for the rest of my life?

Welcome to TTF helpmefreud.

You have posed a great question and in the process put your finger on both the short- and long-term situation facing the P addict: what to expect now and in the future?

"Longings" -I agree with Paul from Canterbury as to the normality of certain longings or urges. In and of themselves they are not "bad".

When you say "addictive longings", I'm assuming you mean something like a compulsion where you feel slightly or way out of control as you are in a tractor beam and feel you must 'act out' (surfing P etc.) or go out of your mind. An overwhelming urge and the apparent inability to circumvent the urge.

My view is this "addictive" or "compulsion" aspect to our desires is where the 'wrong-ness' of it all enters in. This compulsion is probably the composite of all of our sxual/stimulating experiences from our earliest memories, including the many tons of cultural garbage we unwittingly consumed not knowing it would cause us to believe we were supposed to live in a semi- or totally stimulated state nearly all of the time. The "sexualization" of the culture if you will.

Through all of this consumption, the pervasiveness of P, and the ever-growing tolerance of all things sxual (witness music video content evolution since MTV debuted in 1981), it is no wonder that you, me, and millions of others (hopefully), are asking themselves if/when/how to control these sxual desires that are amped up way past their design specifications.

So, YES.

I believe the urges can be controlled.

"Normal" needs to be brought way back down to levels that can be orchestrated in healthy ways.

In my worldview, every single person has at least one weakness and probably a handful of weaknesses. One or a few of these weaknesses can be mastered or perhaps completely eliminated. But there may be one or two that will remain sensitive and problematic for life.

Even so, with the right amount of diligence, victory is possible.

Daniel