TK-421
Active Member
Where to begin? I stumbled across this website about a month ago after finding an article on porn addiction. I have struggled with porn and sex all of my adult life and a lot of what I have read on this site has hit home with me. I have had several half-hearted attempts to control the negative aspects of my porn and sex use, with limited success. I have been able to string several short periods together where I feel more positive about who I am and the role porn/sex has in my life. Inevitably I seem to relapse and find myself repeating the same old behaviours and adding some new ones.
Some Background
I'm in my mid-forties and married to a beautiful woman, with three kids. I have a professional career and many people would probably say I've done quite well for myself. We have a nice house and a decent standard of living. Porn and sex, however, has been a weight around my neck for a very long time. Like many, I started as a teenager with magazines - I loved the sight of a naked woman. I think I saw my first XXX movie around the age of 15, was mesmerized, and thought "They are actually doing it! They're not faking that".
My porn use evolved with the internet as I'm sure many can relate to. I no longer had to make a periodic late night trip to the adult video store to get a fix; porn was available at any time with relative ease. My wife was initially very upset when she became aware of my porn use early in our marriage, which caused many fights. She couldn't understand it and I resented her for being ignorant and controlling. The advent of internet porn and all that goes with it was like gasoline on a fire for me. Porn movies, forums for every taste, amateur porn, chat apps, etc. With mobile phone technology, porn use became easier to access and easier to hide (it's easier to take a phone into the bathroom than a laptop).
I should also mention that I'm a sober alcoholic. I quit drinking twenty years ago. I find the parallels between alcoholism and porn addiction to be astonishingly similar actually and I understand that it is not uncommon for an addict to replace one vice with another. I also don't think it's a coincidence the role that dopamine plays in the brain's reward system with both alcohol and porn use.
Where I'm At
I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the depression, the anxiety, the brain fog, the desire to be alone, the isolation, the confusion and the stress. I don't like the person I've become. I am not focused on my job or my family as much as I should be. I stress about being discovered (and have been several times, but won't go into that here). I don't like that I can't let my kids see my phone. I don't like that what I do behind my wife's back is dishonest. I don't like that I've got to the place where I can spend three hours masturbating in a washroom and not know where the time went. I like to think that I have values of honesty and integrity, with the one glaring exception being my porn and sex use. I seem to be able to justify crossing all sorts of boundaries and not being true to my values when it comes to porn and sex.
A lot of what I read here resonated with me. In particular William's thread "Hello Gentlemen. Now we begin" really hit home and explained things in a way that finally made sense to me. Thank you William for your broadcasts to the "occupied territories". When I first discovered this forum I cleaned my phone and made a serious attempt to stay clean. I lasted for about 21 days and then fully relapsed. I'm now back where I want to make another attempt. I don't want to be one of the serial relapsers that can only go 2-3 weeks and never makes a commitment to long-lasting change. My commitment to myself is to create a profile here, do the "Hard 90" and check in and post here every day.
Thanks for reading.
TK-421
Some Background
I'm in my mid-forties and married to a beautiful woman, with three kids. I have a professional career and many people would probably say I've done quite well for myself. We have a nice house and a decent standard of living. Porn and sex, however, has been a weight around my neck for a very long time. Like many, I started as a teenager with magazines - I loved the sight of a naked woman. I think I saw my first XXX movie around the age of 15, was mesmerized, and thought "They are actually doing it! They're not faking that".
My porn use evolved with the internet as I'm sure many can relate to. I no longer had to make a periodic late night trip to the adult video store to get a fix; porn was available at any time with relative ease. My wife was initially very upset when she became aware of my porn use early in our marriage, which caused many fights. She couldn't understand it and I resented her for being ignorant and controlling. The advent of internet porn and all that goes with it was like gasoline on a fire for me. Porn movies, forums for every taste, amateur porn, chat apps, etc. With mobile phone technology, porn use became easier to access and easier to hide (it's easier to take a phone into the bathroom than a laptop).
I should also mention that I'm a sober alcoholic. I quit drinking twenty years ago. I find the parallels between alcoholism and porn addiction to be astonishingly similar actually and I understand that it is not uncommon for an addict to replace one vice with another. I also don't think it's a coincidence the role that dopamine plays in the brain's reward system with both alcohol and porn use.
Where I'm At
I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the depression, the anxiety, the brain fog, the desire to be alone, the isolation, the confusion and the stress. I don't like the person I've become. I am not focused on my job or my family as much as I should be. I stress about being discovered (and have been several times, but won't go into that here). I don't like that I can't let my kids see my phone. I don't like that what I do behind my wife's back is dishonest. I don't like that I've got to the place where I can spend three hours masturbating in a washroom and not know where the time went. I like to think that I have values of honesty and integrity, with the one glaring exception being my porn and sex use. I seem to be able to justify crossing all sorts of boundaries and not being true to my values when it comes to porn and sex.
A lot of what I read here resonated with me. In particular William's thread "Hello Gentlemen. Now we begin" really hit home and explained things in a way that finally made sense to me. Thank you William for your broadcasts to the "occupied territories". When I first discovered this forum I cleaned my phone and made a serious attempt to stay clean. I lasted for about 21 days and then fully relapsed. I'm now back where I want to make another attempt. I don't want to be one of the serial relapsers that can only go 2-3 weeks and never makes a commitment to long-lasting change. My commitment to myself is to create a profile here, do the "Hard 90" and check in and post here every day.
Thanks for reading.
TK-421
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