Beating the Boredom/My Journal

Hi all

I've been tinkering with NoFap for a few weeks now - 2-3 days/relapse, rinse repeat. My longest stretch was 19 days and I felt amazing. Trying to get back on track is proving difficult so thought I'd start afresh and chronicle my progress here.

I'm determined to beat this but it's bloody difficult. I'm just beginning to realise how powerful the mind is - it will tell me anything, absolutely anything to get me to look at porn. And the arguments it very neatly stitches together are always rational. I actually find myself arguing with it - anyone else experience that? The biggest argument my mind puts forward is that reality is too tedious to bother with so why put in all this effort. I've had lots of partners, and yes sex can sometimes be great - but you are essentially at the mercy of another person which often leads to frustration. Porn at a click of a button was, to some extent, a remedy. But here is the rub - do I find reality boring because my dopamine addiction has mushed my pleasure centres? I don't know the answer to that, but the brainonporn film puts forward a very compelling argument.

Bit about my background: first encounter with porn - Escort magazine in 1985 when I was 13. The expression Shock and Awe springs to mind. After that I did everything I could to get hold of those very tame but vivifying magazines. I even shoplifted some in my mid-teens because it was the only way I could gain access as a minor. I walked miles trawling roadside ditches - I even leapt into a skip once. Infact, that's reminded me of a recurring dream I used to have- of me jumping into a skip and finding hundreds of porn mags - all the UK oldies, but just as I was feverishly gathering them all together I'd be disturbed by some of my old JW friends (was raised as a JW, part of the reason for my skewed interest in porn - athiest now for 20 years) and I'd blunderingly sputter out "reasons". Then I'd wake up. Then I stumbled across "those guys" who sold VHS copies at carboot sales, very popular in the 90s. I'd buy a dozen or so at a time and binge (despite being married at the time). I'd take days off work (was self-employed) to watch them. And I'd travel miles - and I mean 100 mile round trips to buy the stuff from the car boot people. Then came net porn - I thought I'd floated to heaven. I sometimes spent days looking at porn -12 hours a day consecutively for sometimes up to a week. I can't even begin to add up all the hours I've wasted on the stuff.

Much more to say - I'd like to talk about how it affected my relationships but this post is rambling so will write that later. I'll also talk about the event that began all this a few weeks ago.

So my goal now is 90 days hard mode. Soft mode isn't working - my brain is too cunning. I'm working out every night and have signed up for Tai Chi and yoga classes. I have cold showers every night. All porn has been deleted. I'm eating well and socialising more. Must say none of these things have stopped me relapsing so far - but if I focus and post here every time I get an urge then all to the good. I've got to beat this thing.

Been great reading your posts by the way. Some very inspirational stuff here.

Saturday morning, the day stretches endlessly before me. This, for me, is the biggest obstacle when confronting life without PMO: the void, nothingness, emptiness. Porn has been my bedfellow for 30 years, my life-partner, my soulmate. Without it there is so much time! But what to do with it? I have replaced friends, partners, socialising activities with screen flicker. And now, aged 44, I feel as if I have to start all over again. It's like being pushed into nursery by a blurry-eyed mother saying - "Go on, go and make some friends".

So, confronting the void. I need to keep myself busy and focussed. I live alone and don't have many friends and those I do have are busy with family-life.

What do you guys do to stem the rising boredom? For it is boredom that causes me to relapse.

Well, I can't sit here all day in front of the device that houses the very thing I'm trying to avoid. Imagine trying to quit fags and having a packet of smokes on the table in front of you. One click and sucked into the usual black hole.

I'm going to do something I haven't done in a long time - work on a Saturday. I'm self-employed and Saturdays are sacrosanct. But I have to fill this time doing something.

Later. 

Welcome to the Nation. You have read some of our stories.  You know you are not alone in your struggles. Be sure to read the success stories also.

Make sure you read the posts by William:
http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?3549-Action!-or-not!!!-Have-you-actually-Prepared-for-it

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=1256.0;topicseen

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=1256.0;topicseen

Get to the bottom of your self.  Most people continue in a cycle of booting and rebooting until the costs outweigh the rewards.  If you haven't reached that point, it's easy to allow a relapse. Yes, you want it.  You know what it's doing to you, your loved ones, your future.  But, knowing is not enough.  The longest trip is the one from your head to your heart...

Best wishes on your journey. 

Howdy CF,

Boredom is the biggest fear for me and most rebooters it seems.

I am a semi-professional musician, so to keep me busy, I have double the amount of practice I do.
Thus far it is keeping my urge to view P at bay.

Good luck and stay strong.

TN

Hello CoinFlip and welcome to RN,

I'm working out every night and have signed up for Tai Chi and yoga classes. I have cold showers every night. All porn has been deleted. I'm eating well and socialising more. Must say none of these things have stopped me relapsing so far - but if I focus and post here every time I get an urge then all to the good. I've got to beat this thing.

Click to expand...

You seem to on a good path with this stuff. Erasmus's link to William's thread is also a good move! I've read William's stuff sometimes to 'stem the boredom' as you say, and also to educate myself. I have found this really helps with the process, educating yourself, as you start to understand on a deeper level why you are doing this.

Post on here and contribute to others threads (if you want to - I'd recommend it ). One thing that's changed for me over the last couple of months is that I act out less. I eat healthily more than I used to, when say, I'm feeling a little down (as opposed to eating shite), as a direct 'contravention' of old patterns. For me, it's a little bit more of 'taking control of your life', and steering away from hitherto unwanted and damaging pathways that we have gone down. You can make the correlation with Porn also.

Anyways... That's what I think may help. Hope it does, or is at least some food-for-thought

PS. Porn/site-blockers like K9 have helped me, and still help too. As people say on here also, they're good at reminding you that you are trying to quit porn, as when you put in a search, the result is blocked when you click on it.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys.

Erasmus - thanks for the links. I've read William's inspirational post. Some great stuff there. Feel I am prepared  for this. The only thing I haven't done is written an emotional balance sheet. I'll give it some thought and write one on here.

TM - Music must be one of the better distractions, something to immerse yourself in. Writing's my thing and guess what I used to use as a gap-fill during writer's block?

Fyg- Yes, a healthy diet does help. I've been eating fish salads for almost 2 months now. Juicing also helps - spinach, carrots, apples and blueberries. A great combo. Also brocolli to boost testosterone. I've switched on Sky shield, but haven't done much more than that with porn blockers. I know what I'm like. I'll find a way around anything if the mood swings that way. What I need is to focus on how to block the thought/desire.

Ah, Saturday night. No where to go, no one to call. Good to have this forum to turn to. Going to work out, have a cold shower, then walk round the park, sit on a bench and stare at a tree. 

Well, I got through the night. Was so bored I went to bed at ten. I need friends. I find it quite sad all these Saturday nights are passing me by never to be repeated. Just think about it. There will never again be Saturday 18th June 2016. It has come and gone and I spent it on my couch trying and failing to find something to watch, staring out of the window, pacing up and down the living room. But at least I didn't look at porn.

Anyone else find it difficult making friends/opening up socialising opportunites as a forty-something male? I'm friendly, well-educated, a good conversationalist, a good listener, people generally warm to me...but socialising doesn't seem straightforward as I seem to remember it when in my twenties. It's a difficult age. I read a few academic articles that suggested it is the worst/most depressing decade. It's the decade when humans shake off the hubris of youth. We realise we are mortal. Youth has passed and it wasn't what we expected. We try to cling onto it by refashioning our bodies, dating younger women/men, taking up adventure sports, sitting in overcrowded bars and wishing they'd turn down the music. 

Dating is a minefield. Date almost any woman in their mid to late 30s and you know at the back of yourmind it isn't you they want but someone/anyone to give them children. That happened to me a few years ago. She was a former model/party girl. Lots of friends, very popular. I thought I'd won the golden ticket. Really fell for her. We moved in and lived together for two years. Behind the facade she was actually quite boring. Sex once a week on Friday nights and only for ten minutes. I remember thinking at the time that if we kept that up for the rest of our lives I'd only have 260 hours of sex before I'd be too old to get it up. That's One and a Half week of sex. But I ignored all that because I had my prize girlfriend. She turned 37 and said, "right, when we return from holiday I want children." I told her I didn't want kids. "Well, we'll have to split up then," she replied matter-of-factly. And we did a week later. She was only in it for the prospect of kids, which in retrospect is fair enough. It's what she wanted. But the whole experience taught me to question the basis of love. As Blake said:

                                            What is it men in women do require?
                                            The lineaments of gratified desire.
                                            What is it women do in men require?
                                            The lineaments of gratified desire.

We are all driven by our desires, our own self-agenda.

But I have strayed off-topic - and I am not as bitter as this post perhaps suggests. I'm just sounding off and rather than delete the post I'll post it. In fact I'm not bitter at all- I've been through the bitter period. This is a rebuilding phase.

This, for me, is not just about quitting porn. Porn is only a symptom. I look at porn to offset boredom. That's what I would have done last night. Nothing to do? Look at porn. I need to focus on building a social circle so that on Saturday nights I have so many invitations my head spins.

Getting to that destination is the tricky part.     

I know I'm writing a lot but I want to express and explain (partly to myself) the negative aspects porn has had on previous relationships. This may also help others as a cautionary tale.

Firstly, I don't know to what extent porn has caused sexual problems with new partners. There is one other factor that needs consideration. I was raised as a strict Jehovah's Witness (left in my 20s) and anything sex-related was strictly taboo. Lingerie pages in catalogues were ripped out. Any hint of nudity on TV and the thing was switched off. All this hiding-away/brushing under the carpet quite naturally created the opposite effect: I became obsessed with the very thing hidden from me. So when I first saw a porn magazine in my early teens I was hooked. Not only was I indulging in a pleasurable experience, I was also rebelling against an overbearing grandmother and tasting the delights of the "dark side".

But rather than hover on this point, let's just say I was raised to court. I was raised to treat women with respect, to not view them sexually, to not objectify. I was also taught that women didn't like sex. I was raised to believe women enjoy lengthy courtship (six months or so) leading to marriage. We would, of course, be virgins on our wedding night. My new wife would tolerate my nightly pursuit of her body, and would most certainly not enjoy it.

I know this may seem counterintuitive considering why we are all here, but this hasn't been my experience of women and I've known a lot. Sex isn't black-and-white. There is no such thing as "woman". They are all different and unique. But one thing I have discovered is how quickly many of them want to jump into bed and how some actually crave objectification when the mood swings. Many, if not all, enjoy feelings of self-abandonment, of being a "body". They crave release from all those weighty pressures society puts on them. This has always - and still is to some degree - been a shock to someone raised to believe women are like the ones you see in Edwardian costume dramas. I've been in situations where women overtly state they want sex after only knowing me for two or so hours (and I'm not special so this must be fairly common). To go from shaking someone's hand, swapping names to being naked with them within 2-3 hours has always been too overwhelming for me. It doesn't compute. I have no moral objections. I believe in sexual freedom. But it's as if my brain is not wired to deal with the suddenness of sex in our modern age. It needs to court.

This is getting long again (but at least writing here is stopping me from looking at porn). The point is this: I have always, and I mean always, suffered ED during first-sex encounters, and there have been a lot. I've probably been in bed with 40 or so women and it happens every time. There could have been many more but I stopped trying knowing what would happen. When naked in bed with a woman I've only just met I can't relax and just go with it. My brain seems to be saying, "hang on, shouldn't we be sitting having tea and scones with a middle-aged chaperone watching our every move through half-moon spectacles?"

So, the reason for this confession is that before I discuss porn-related relationship issues (and there are many), I wanted to point out some of the complexities of sexual problems. Porn does lasting damage, it has done for me. I reached the stage where I preferred porn to sex. But there are sometimes other factors too. Removing porn from my life is one step to addressing these other issues.

But now I'm going to to go for a walk and get away from this screen. Great talking to you guys. No idea if anyone will read these lengthy posts, but it is therapeutic.   

I guess I need to understand why I'm quitting porn. It's not entirely clear to me and clarity is needed if I am to succeed.

Firstly, in contrast to a few others I've read on here and on NoFap, I'm not quitting porn for the following reasons:

1. Morality: as a  broadminded athiest I hold no moral obligations to porn as long as the participants are consensual and of age.I don't feel ashamed watching it. I don't feel guilty. Neither do I hide the habit. I live in secular England. Porn is freely discussed. Everyone seems to watch it. Not everyone is addicted. I understand why the religious amongst us feel guilty - I did when I believed. But that's not me.

2. Family/Spouse/partner: I live alone and don't have a partner. I was, apart from when a JW up to my late 20s, always very open about my porn habits. I never hid it from partners.

So why exactly am I doing this?

1. As a voyage of exploration and process of self-discovery. I want to know what it feels like to not look at porn. To not crave it. I may not feel guilty for moral reasons, but I do feel guilty about all the precious time wasted. I want to find out who I am without the mask of porn.

2. To rebalance my sexual drive. Have my sexual tastes been shaped and distorted by porn? I will never know unless I quit.

3. To truly connect with another woman. I have always occupied my mind when having sex, playing out fantasies, encouraging the pursuance of such. I'd like to abandon my mind and truly bond with a woman before it is too late.

4. To lead a healthy sexual life, one reciprocated with a soulful woman.

5. To want sex with a flesh-and-blood woman rather than beat off to a screen. This I actually find quite disturbing - that even now I'd rather look at porn than have sex as I find sex quite tedious. I hope I can change that.

6. To find out if ED during first-time encounters is porn related or as a conseqence of my distorted upbringing.

7. To liberate my time. All that time wasted!

8. To socialise more and engage with fulfilling activities.

9. To self-actualise.

So, there's my list. I need to keep reminding myself of it.

Damn, Coinflip, it's almsot scary how similar we are in attitude and why/how/for what reasons we are doing this stuff. Glad to have you on the board here.

Thanks Gum, good to be here. I've been reading your posts too and it's inspirational to see the progress you're making. I see too you consider your last experience of ED as perhaps non-porn related.

I don't know about your experiences but I never suffered ED with long-term partners despite heavy porn use. I did try to avoid sex purely because I largely found it boring in comparison to the stuff I was watching. Not always, but generally the case. My last partner (the best love of my life to be honest) loved shared romantic baths, that sort of thing. I recoiled from them. Too intimate for me. Unless following some sort of porn-script I wasn't interested.

ED for me is a first-encounter thing. Or sometimes the first few times with a woman. I need time to feel comfortable. Once I feel comfortable I'm good to go.

I think objectification is a problem, and of course porn fuels that. I don't know about you guys but I find it difficult to become stimulated if I don't objectivise. I think both genders suffer from this. Anyone read Madam Bovary? Her essential problem is the gap that exists in her mind between her thoughts/desires and reality. Reality can never reach the dizzy heights of her desires and so she is perpetually disappointed. That is why she has affairs, and why she...ah, you may not have read it so won't spoil it for you. All those women who have read Fifty Shades? Are they really thinking of you when having sex? We live in an amusement park for the senses. Porn is only a part of that.

But reality with its cold sharp edges can never match fantasy (well, it hasn't for me anyway). I've booked plush expensive hotels with all-night filthy sex in mind only to discover my partner is on her period and we'd end up watching black-and-white movies whilst sipping hot chocolate. The amount of times we'd go out drinking, me with sex in mind, but upon returning home she'd be coiled asleep before I'd even taken my shoes off. I craved the sort of stuff I read (used to read a lot of erotica) but of course reality isn't like that. It doesn't mention headaches, back pain, a phone ringing, two unattuned minds, one wanting to hurry and get it over with, the other wanting to carry on all night...

When two minds are sexually attuned (out of quite a few partners this has only happened with two) then sex can be amazing. I'd still look at porn though.

What I would like to experience now I'm getting on a bit is sex of the romantic variety. Part of me feels a little disgusted even contemplating that. It reminds me of the sort of sex in eighties movies. But my last partner told me - repeatedly (she was very much aware of my addiction) that she felt I wasn't really "there" when having sex. I was wrapped in my own distorted fantasies. If only you would relax and enjoy the moment you'd find the whole thing much more enjoyable. So that's something I'd like to experience before I'm too old. Maybe I'll find it boring. But I'll never know unless I try.

So, I've got through a weekend without PMO. Well done. Congratulations. Pat on the back.

List of things I've done instead:

1. Read half a book.
2. Bought a Nutribullet and used it twice.
3. Washed all my clothes.
4. Wrote endless nonsense on this forum.
5. Excercised twice.
6. Four cold showers.
7. Watched self-development videos.
8. Cleaned the kitchen.

Feeling tired, but positive. Looking forward to a week without porn.

Well done, you got this!

Hi CoinFlip, I just happened to log on to this forum and read your posts; I'm rarely here.

I really like what you've written, and it's made me think about things as well. Just as you say every woman is unique, so is every man, and your experience of ED with partners will be different than mine. It only happened to me after online porn became a regular habit, yet I still did not make the connection until I stumbled across Your Brain on Porn. After hard mode for 80 days and just not touching myself, ED was gone. However, it returned with my current partner when we began having sex, and I still can't say for sure what the main factor is: the fact that I was dating someone else too at the time who I was definitely in tune with sexually, or my partner's unstated but obvious desire for a relationship, or even the fact that she is a different faith (I'd say I'm agnostic or atheist at this point, is that a faith??). Bottom line it resolved itself.

If hard mode doesn't resolve ED with new partners for you, at least you know it's something else. Good luck on the journey!

Well done Coinflip on reaching a weekend of being PMO free. You deserve to congratulate yourself.

TM

Hi Coinflip,

I can relate to alot of what you say.  I am not doing this for a partner or moral reasons either.  I want to know what freedom from this thing is like.

One thing I would say is that boredom is very interesting.....

I've spent alot of time in meditation.Hours a day at times.  Just sitting still  It hasn't cured PMO - although it does help.  It's helped with a lot of other things too...It can also be very boring and frustrating....sitting and doing nothing - not even scratching your nose - for hours.

What I've found is that if you sit still with boredom, feel it's texture, notice where you sense it in your body....there can be a lot to be interested in in boredom.  All sorts of anger and resentment and fear turn out to be behind it, even grief...and once seen clearly, it can start to resolve and pass.  You can see more clearly what you need to do to move forward, when you see clearly what your boredom is.  Maybe one of the most important parts of your journey could be learning to bear boredom.  Once you make the choice to do that, you may find it's not quite as bad as you think - making it easier not to PMO too.  If you study it in yourself, boredom can even be interesting!

Although of course, you don't have to study boredom all the time!  And on that note, have you tried the meetup website (google meetup).  There's loads of groups covering everything you can imagine....Once you've joined a few groups you could be out every evening and weekend if you really want (but don't do that - because there is alot of merit in getting to know boredom too).

Hope that's helpful.  Take what's helpful and leave eveything that isn't.  I wish you all the best on your journey!

tomnop said:

I really like what you've written, and it's made me think about things as well. Just as you say every woman is unique, so is every man, and your experience of ED with partners will be different than mine. It only happened to me after online porn became a regular habit, yet I still did not make the connection until I stumbled across Your Brain on Porn. After hard mode for 80 days and just not touching myself, ED was gone. However, it returned with my current partner when we began having sex, and I still can't say for sure what the main factor is: the fact that I was dating someone else too at the time who I was definitely in tune with sexually, or my partner's unstated but obvious desire for a relationship, or even the fact that she is a different faith (I'd say I'm agnostic or atheist at this point, is that a faith??). Bottom line it resolved itself.

If hard mode doesn't resolve ED with new partners for you, at least you know it's something else. Good luck on the journey!

Click to expand...

Thanks Tom. Great to hear ED is no longer causing you problems and well done on the 80 days! That's some achievement.

Yes, Ed can be caused by lots of factors. Despite saying mine may not be porn-related I think it is definitely a factor. I also benefitted from PornonBrain - my brain is most certainly suffering from desensitisation. I think one of the reasons I suffer ED during first time encounters is that I need to objectivise my partner in order to be stimulated. It's very easy for me, like most males, to see a sexually attractive woman on the street or in a bar and do the usual..."God I wouldn't mind...etc etc". But as soon as I know her as a person, her hopes, fears, dreams, likes, dislikes, hobbies - I find it difficult to see her as a sexual being.

There is for me - and I believe this is true for many couples - a strange blurry boundary between normal everyday relationships and sexual ones. That's one of the reasons many couples encounter sexual difficulties. They find it increasingly difficult to entertain sexual thoughts about a partner they wash the pots with. Why do people role play? Dress up? Namely to discard the everday self to transform it into a sexual self.

But I digress. I'm not sure what my problem is. I just know I have been in bed with many beautiful women in some amazing locations (used to travel a lot) but I could never ever get an erection. About five years ago I pulled a gorgeous 21 year old at a party, the sort who makes your mouth drop, but again nothing happened......Writing this has caused me to pause. I really need to try and work this out.

The only way I see NoPmo helping is that if I don't MO for 90 days I'll be walking around with a permanent erection, beautiful females in the vicinity or not.

   

Tom_Michaels said:

Well done Coinflip on reaching a weekend of being PMO free. You deserve to congratulate yourself.

TM

Click to expand...

Thanks TM- It does feel good!

Anothertry said:

Hi Coinflip,

I can relate to alot of what you say.  I am not doing this for a partner or moral reasons either.  I want to know what freedom from this thing is like.

One thing I would say is that boredom is very interesting.....

I've spent alot of time in meditation.Hours a day at times.  Just sitting still  It hasn't cured PMO - although it does help.  It's helped with a lot of other things too...It can also be very boring and frustrating....sitting and doing nothing - not even scratching your nose - for hours.

What I've found is that if you sit still with boredom, feel it's texture, notice where you sense it in your body....there can be a lot to be interested in in boredom.  All sorts of anger and resentment and fear turn out to be behind it, even grief...and once seen clearly, it can start to resolve and pass.  You can see more clearly what you need to do to move forward, when you see clearly what your boredom is.  Maybe one of the most important parts of your journey could be learning to bear boredom.  Once you make the choice to do that, you may find it's not quite as bad as you think - making it easier not to PMO too.  If you study it in yourself, boredom can even be interesting!

Although of course, you don't have to study boredom all the time!  And on that note, have you tried the meetup website (google meetup).  There's loads of groups covering everything you can imagine....Once you've joined a few groups you could be out every evening and weekend if you really want (but don't do that - because there is alot of merit in getting to know boredom too).

Hope that's helpful.  Take what's helpful and leave eveything that isn't.  I wish you all the best on your journey!

Click to expand...

Thanks for this, it's really made me think. Boredom has plagued me all my life and suggestions on how to remedy it are more than welcome.

Your comments remind me of a video I watched recently - on selfactualized.org. It was about Do Nothing Meditation. It seems you know all about this - the principal of sitting alone in a quiet room and doing nothing, embracing all your negative emotions and learning to accept them.

I'm going to give your suggestions a try. I usually go to bed when bored. I don't mean the everyday sort of bored where you have nothing to do for an hour and flick the net. I mean a deep soul-destroying want to smash my head against a wall sort of boredom. It happens once or so a week, usually at the weekends. It's as if I have some sort of parasite in my brain. Nothing can shake it off. When like that I'm immobilised. Bored? then do something. But I can't because I'm bored! Nothing satiates when I'm like that.

But I like the idea of finding boredom interesting in and of itself. I'm going to pursue that.

I've signed up for yoga classes and hope they will help too.   

So I thought I'd remind myself why I'm doing this by listing the various ways my porn addiction has seriously screwed up, tossed to the wind, burnt in the bowels of hell, my relationships with women in the past 20 or so years.

My wife at 20: I foolishly got married at 20 (divorced 7 years later). She was very sexual. I preferred porn. She is the only person I hid my habit from until the day she found my stash of porn mags in the attic. There was a lot. Probably about 300 magazines. All very tame top shelf stuff. She was livid, bagged them all up and threw them away.

Why did I prefer porn to sex with her? Why would I wait until she was asleep so I could crawl into my seedy porn den? Why did I refuse sex with her for six months at a time? Why did I gleefully stay at home to look at porn while she went out with friends (me always pretending to have a cold or similar)? Why did I stop going on holidays with her so I could have a week of blissful porn musing? Why did I take days off work to look at porn, damaging our finances?

Simply put (without knowing it at the time), I was a dopamine addict. I loved, craved, more-or-less worshipped all those celluloid women staring back at me from the pages of those magazines. Sex with her was boring, bland, mundane compared to the rush I would get from them. We would have got divorced anyway (for other reasons) but porn definitely played a big role in the demise of our relationship.

First Gf after divorce: She was the one I projected all my porn-based fantasies onto. I loved erotica, all the stories, "real life" encounters in the magazines. I wanted to do the sort of things everyone else (I assumed) was doing. She became my outlet and I pushed, manipulated, cajolled. Don't get me wrong here - she was very sexual and is by far the best sexual partner I've had. She was vastly more experienced than me and was happy to oblige.

But I never really saw her as a person. I never got to know her. She was a sex object to me. Toward the end she grew tired of my obsession with sex and ended the relationship after two years. I suffered greatly for a year after that. I, of course, turned to my old pal porn for comfort.

All the women I've met on holiday, in clubs, at parties and could have had relationships with: massive regrets for many of these. Some wonderful women. I've slept with women in beach huts, lakeside cabins, hotel-converted castles in medieval forests, under the stars, and even in a tree house in southern Turkey. But I couldn't perform.

This reminds me of one experience that highlights the profound depths of my porn addiction. I met a lovely German girl when travelling in Canada. We spent a few weeks together. We stayed in some amazing places. Tried to have sex a few times but I couldn't. It's not just ED by the way. I just can't relax and don't even take my boxers off. I'm fine with the kissing but after that I clam up. Well, guess what I did? I left her for a week to go to Montreal. The first thing I did was peruse all the sex shops bought loads of porn and spent two days masturbating! Then I met up with her again and we still didn't have sex.

Wherever you are in the world let me say this: you were (and probably still are) a beautiful, soulful woman and I regret to this day not having had sex with you. Who knows? We could have had a longlasting and loving relationship together. You invited me to live with you in your home town in Germany. I refused. I preferred my right hand and the glossy pages of 2 dollar magazines which are slowly disintegrating in landfill.

Last partner (ended three years ago). A lovely woman. My soulmate. A truly incredible human being with infinite depth. A true pleasure knowing her and living with her. I preferred porn.

Toward the end we didn't have sex at all. She knew about my addiction and tried to help with it. She was very patient. But I would wait until she fell asleep to crawl net filth. She didn't give me the dopamine rush my very jaded brain needed. I can honestly say one of the primary reasons we decided to break off after five years was that I preferred looking at the naked bodies of women on a screen to sex with her. I, quite bizarrely, was the one who ended the relationship. I wanted to live on my own so I could look at porn. Now how serious is my porn addiction?

Enough now. I'm tired. Another day passes without porn.