Need help

Hello, my name is Mike. I am 44 years old and when I was a teen I started to masturbate as a way of coping with life. This behavior continued into my marriage at age 25. I started watching porn shortly after which turned into an addiction. My wife has confronted me several times and my secret life has destroyed my marriage. About four months ago my wife confronted me again, at this point I had cut down on my porn use to maybe once or twice a month, but I started a new compulsive behavior of looking at pictures of younger girls on Facebook. Even though I wasn?t masturbating to them I was still feeding my addiction. I have experienced pied, Loss of erection during sex, and no erections except for morning wood maybe twice a week. I have the internet locked on my phone, no Facebook, porn  or YouTube for four months. I have not masturbated in about 6 months, although I have sex with my wife several times, but have lost erections and have not been able to orgasm many times. My  wife is beautiful and has a high libido, I am very attractive to her and can get an erection by just kissing her but I can?t by just looking at her. This of course this is very upsetting to her on top of all of trauma I have caused her. My libido is totally gone, I have never felt this way before it is very scary to me that I have rewired my brain to real women and young girls when I am out in public, it is so bad that my wife says that when we are out together I notice every woman and young girl, I really don?t remember a lot of the women she mentions. She says that I am constantly scanning, this behavior has intensified over the last 6 months.I believe it is because I stopped looking  online and started a new addiction. I was never like this before, I would notice attractive women but I would not be so obsessive like this. Is  my brain to the point of no return? Has anyone experienced this?

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Mike

Hi Mike
Yes. It is common for addicts to use memories, fantasies and real life 'looking' to get dopamine hits. I still find it difficult with my favoured flavour of porn/sex addiction. High speed internet porn is like high grade heroin. Opiate addicts may use, under supervision or not, other opioids like methadone or Suboxone.  At some point, they have to make the break with all opioids including 'safe' ones like codeine. I know of no easy way to do this except to a) learn to respect oneself b) have or use some kind of counseling or mindfulness.
It is great that your wife has been able to stick with you. My wife has gone beyond the call of duty despite repeated betrayal. It is because of Love...both marital and Divine in our case. There is always hope. Don't ever give up. Use resources like YBOP to learn why you have fallen into the trap of addictive PMO. All the very best for you each day by day.

cranm329 said:

Hi Mike
Yes. It is common for addicts to use memories, fantasies and real life 'looking' to get dopamine hits. I still find it difficult with my favoured flavour of porn/sex addiction. High speed internet porn is like high grade heroin. Opiate addicts may use, under supervision or not, other opioids like methadone or Suboxone.  At some point, they have to make the break with all opioids including 'safe' ones like codeine. I know of no easy way to do this except to a) learn to respect oneself b) have or use some kind of counseling or mindfulness.
It is great that your wife has been able to stick with you. My wife has gone beyond the call of duty despite repeated betrayal. It is because of Love...both marital and Divine in our case. There is always hope. Don't ever give up. Use resources like YBOP to learn why you have fallen into the trap of addictive PMO. All the very best for you each day by day.

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That's the biggest problem for me with this addiction: The brain stores porn and then it brings it up to remind me I shouldn't stay away from it. I've never seen a day when this lost it's grip because some months ago, even after 1 month without porn I still hard hard urges given by porn playing in my mind.