The demon inside me

Pretty standard story.  I started watching my father's massive VHS collection of porn when I was about 10, and had been exposed to it even younger.  I was obsessed to the point where I masturbating 4-5 times in a row at night.  This would mutate over time to wanting to bring this magical world I had discovered to real life - looking down shirts, up skirts, and pretty much knowing no one was suspecting an 11 year old boy of having all this going on.

It did get me a reputation as a good lover in my teens - having *experience*, but by the time I hit my 20s I was a sex tourist.  It was a good way to maintain the addiction, and not get people I considered *innocent* involved in my obsession.  Things got started to get weird, well weird for me...  rather than go out and have a fun night out with my fantasy and all the willing folks I'd encounter, I wanted to stay in my hotel room and jerk off.  At that stage, it was like - why be here?  Change my flight, and head home.

I took quite a few years off from dating due to massive weight gain, and sloth.  After getting my body back in shape, I re-entered the dating market as a very high-sexual being.  Meet ladies online, craft my perfect fantasy with them, swap dirty pictures, and meet....  The first lady I met back in 2013 commented that I seemed like two different people - the person she texted me, and the me that was in front of her.

After swearing off dating for awhile, I entered maintenance mode.  Get the through the day, and jerk it to some porn before bed.  This would go on for years, and not only did a look forward to my nightly routine, I was enjoying the adventure of finding new and interesting porn from the new generations of models that would emerge every few years or so.

...then I fell in love, really in love.  I moved my life to be with her, and the whole time I kept wondering how the hell I was going to deal with this addiction.  First it was jerking off at work using the power of 21st century technology to watch, and if I couldn't do it at work, I even got to the point of masturbating to porn while taking a #2.

Somedays I wake up without feeling the need to watch porn, but that only lasts a day or so.  Others I wake up like I am on a mission, and need to "get this demon out of me", so I can move on with my day.  Today I was cleaning our house with my lady, and while listening to an audiobook, I had a trigger - a brief passage in a novel that described some sexual acts.  I said - "Ok, I'll finish up here, and while I wash up, jerk one out quickly before she is any of the wiser".  After almost getting caught, but I am certain there is still part of her that is like - yeah he was masturbating - even though I had this very reasonable excuse for taking so long in the bathroom with evidence - I am like WTF am I doing?

I had this great day with this great lady, and I pretty much ruined it because I got that itch I couldn't rid of.  Then I lied to the woman I love, because I am so powerless to my addiction.  At work I even avoid leaving my office out of fear of seeing someone in the hallway I might desire as an object, and go masturbate to later.

So yeah, this has to end.  I can't really call myself a man with this behavior.  So I am here, writing about my addiction, and how determined I am to beat this.  What happened today can never happen again - lying to the love of my life.

How can I start to really deal with this 32 year addiction?  I feel like it owns me. 

Thanks for sharing your story.

My own humble suggestion would be to seek counseling.  There is too much going on and too many big decisions to make based on guys like me on an internet forum.  Do you tell her about it, or not?  How?  When?  And as you said, where do you start with 32 years of stuff?  There are therapists who specialize in sex addiction (which may be a better description for you than porn addiction).  Hopefully you live in an area where there are not only some specialists, but enough of them that you can look at what is out there and compare.

If you genuinely want things to change, they will change.  We can (and should try to) be the men we want to be.  It won't be overnight, it won't come without failures, and it won't erase all of our scars.  But, it can happen.

Best of luck.

I echo doneatlast's suggestion of getting some counselling.

In the meantime you could try break this habit. If you have a smartphone, lock it way for a week and get yourself a standard handset with no internet access. This should eliminate this source of temptation. Eliminating computer use is much more complex, if not impossible. Try installing porn blockers.

The difficulty about this addiction is that you need to come to the realisation that in order to heal you need to eliminate porn from you life forever. I know that this seems impossible. I've tried and failed on many occasions. My latest approach had been to set myself a target of 3 days without porn or masturbation. 3 days doesn't seem so bad really, does it. It doesn't have the same sense of dread as saying I'm never going to watch porn again in my life. After 3 days I just added 1 extra day. Adding 1 extra day is pretty easy. After 4 days I just added 1 extra day, and so on. With this approach I'm doing pretty well on this current reboot.

I have no idea how many times I used to masturbate during the day, but sometime I would cum, continue watching porn and 10 minutes later be masturbating again, and again, and again.

There may be other psychological issues which push to to porn use and you should consider this and perhaps counselling, but from a very simplistic perspective you have developed this habit and now you need to break it.

Good luck!