Outside of this forum, did you reveal that you are rebooting?

jms42

Member
Okay, so besides the supportive folks on this forum, I never told anyone that I'm rebooting. I must say that it is hard not to feel a tinge of embarrassment knowing that I'm dealing with a P-addiction. I never told my family or some of my best friends. I know, it's a super awkward subject, but I feel like I'm lying to their faces and I feel awful. There are days when I feel like absolute crap, but I would make up some excuse about not sleeping well, or a bad day at work. Sometimes I just want to scream and bitch about this whole struggle to my best friends, so that I can give them a bat to knock me over the head when I'm dangerously close to the edge (no pun intended) of failing. But then I imagine myself in their shoes feeling ten shades of WTF awkwardness when suddenly imparted this information.

Has anyone revealed their P addiction and reboot to some else who is not a spouse or gf/bf who is well aware of your heavy use of P? How did you go about it? And how did it turn out?
 

fnatk

Active Member
Hey jms42, I talked to a girl-friend of mine I'm fairly close too. She's turned to me a lot for advice with her boyfriend turned husband and their sexlife (She was a virgin until him) and some other issues she's gone through over the years, and I knew to keep what she said under strict confidence so I was 100% sure she'd do the same. It turned out very well, she was very surprised about some aspects (I escalated into transexual & gay porn and even meeting ladyboys & men) but wanted to know everything and how she could help. I explained how the PMO behavior works as she didn't have the time to look at TED talks and read lots of articles (She's just started a new job) but she thought it all made sense.

Its been a big relief having someone to talk to about it, even if we've mostly talked over the internet, we've met up a few times since then as well and talked. I don't think I could tell any of my guy friends about this, much too ashamed about it and how Gabe finds that courage to be completely open and honest about it I'll never know! I have another girl-friend who I've been contemplating telling about my addiction as I know she'll keep it to herself, if the moment comes I might just do that.
 
Hi jms42, I talked to my best friend and, since he is my best friend, he understood and now supports me a lot. You know what? I'm sure that in your past porn addicted life you spoke to your friends (as almost everybody here) about porn videos: how hot was that babe, how exciting was that video etc. So now it's time to say: "you know what, mate? I think that porn is not so good for our brain health, I stopped watching it because there might be a relation between that and my not very satisfying sexual life...".

What do you think of that?
 

fugu

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Yeah I did! It was very slowly and incremental for me. When I first saw the idea and was toying with it in my head, I told my best friend about it. It was casual and not a big deal - porn was (unfortunately) such a norm for my friend group. Slowly, I started opening up with more and more people. There are problem 15+ people in my life that know about it now.

In my personal opinion, opening up to someone is singlehandely the best thing you can do for your reboot. There's other great things you can do during the course of your reboot to help you, but I opening up to people is so therapeutic and gives you someone in real life to vent to.
 

Bibbity

Active Member
I could never ever tell anyone about our journey from PMO.  I would feel so ashamed as a woman to have to tell someone that my husband preferred M to sex with me because no one understands this issue at all.  The forum is my relief and I guess we have each other as well.  I almost told my Dr when she asked me about stress but I never did.  It's hard but thankfully we have fully recovered and now I'm trying to help others if I can in some way.
 

Viper

Well-Known Member
The doctors knew about my ED but not about the reboot process.
My SO is the only one that knows.

How else was I gonna explain why I wasn't haven't sex with her?
 

stangles

Member
I mentioned to one of my friends that I have trouble with sex because of porn. But I haven't gone into details like telling him I've watched gay porn.
 
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