Thank you very much for your support, not only to me but to the whole community! You are giving a great example!
I like your mindset BlueHeron! I do think looking at someone vs. sexualizing them could be different in some ways, like if you want to approach a woman you might have to look at her first, but it could be because of genuine interest: "I wonder what her story is?" rather than "wow she's hot." The hard part is deciphering if you're actually interested in her or just her body given the limited information; I'm trying to pay attention more to how the woman carries herself, body language, mannerisms, facial expressions > body features. Definitely a struggle though lol
Way to go Blueheron! Really close to that 100 days.
I can't let other people's normal be my normal, and that means that some "normal" things are off-limits for me.
Instead, I've been thinking about this process more as a complete lifestyle change. Instead of trying to go back to my life "before porn," I'm focusing on learning to live a life where my addiction is just a fact that I can't change. So I'm focused more on building new routines, avoiding triggers that might be innocent for other people, and to take care of myself knowing that it doesn't take a lot to push me into a PMO binge. It's not about living the life I wish I had but instead about living the life I do have in the best way possible.(I've never really thought this through in quite this way before, but I think that's good advice for me to think about in other areas of my life. I probably spend too much time wishing I had a different life instead of working with the life I do have.) Thanks for the helpful insights!
Thanks for your support
Yes, I relate to this so much! We are completely different people than before we discovered PMO, so there's no point trying to be that same person. The only thing guaranteed in life is change, and the more we can embrace it the happier we will be.
The weather was nice, and the girls were out. But I was prepared for it this time, and I didn't have the same trouble I had a while ago. I was aware of the skin they were showing, but I wasn't carried away by it. It's amazing how much more successful we can be when we know it's coming. It's the unexpected triggers that get me, and I think part of it is like my brain saying, "Oh hey, here's something sexy that you weren't even looking for. You can't feel guilty if it just happened to be here in front of you. There's no harm in looking if you weren't looking for it." Like sometimes I have fantasies that I'll get pornographic spam in my junk folder because I think it will be a "freebie." Of course, that's not true. Whether I was looking for it or not, if I end up looking at it, it's still harming my recovery.
You're still doing great, keep it like that! I can relate to the first part, lots of relapses happened when there was some clickbait news or a social media pic out of nowhere... it's really annoying as we can't just be 'normal' again but have to look out for those triggers constantly...In terms of the first part about girls in summer I'm not quite sure... isn't it our main goal to disconnect from a screen and connect to girls in real life? I get the idea that staring at them is not a behavior we should seek, but to me there's nothing bad about noticing the skin they show...
Anyways, it's nice to hear you're going day by day pretty smoothly, you keep going and I'll do the same!
Nice that you cleaned up, every time I do that I feel like my life is more organized even if it isn't haha. I'll say one more thing about women in public- I don't think it is necessarily a wrong thing to factor in a women's looks if you are looking for a potential partner...looks do matter, but at the same time I have separated looks and personality with women so that is the ONLY thing that matters because of my PMO addiction. If we are able to balance appreciating their beauty (or hotness or whatever) with a general curiosity and interest in who they are as a person, I think that is what will fully motivate us to pursue a relationship, accounting for both needs.
I think porn trained me to look for the hottest woman, some kind of physical perfection. But even in years and years of watching porn, I never found a perfect woman. And that's because there probably isn't such a thing.
In other news, I'm on a 12-day streak of posting here, which is the best I've done in a while. I post regularly, but it's really helpful for me to have a daily check in and a chance to just see where my thoughts and feelings are each day. Posting daily helps me to focus on fighting this addiction one day at a time.
This is more common than we think and I'm in the same boat too. P definitely trains you to elevate your expectations, like some kind of OCD about attractiveness. The thing is, you might not noticed for a period of time like I didn't either, only to think about it one day and realize how, in the previous years, I was more pretentious about girls' looks. I would be like: "Nah, that girl is ugly," even though she was just average and we could've gotten along. I lost potential relationships because of my "high expectations". It definitely made be only have eyes for the "top 10%". Just like in P because I didn't watch any girl, I was very very selective about how they looked to the point where I started becoming obsessed with the best bodies. I didn't even like girls without a tan in P. Now, I don't have any streak away from P so I can't say my taste has returned to normal. I have to quit P and then see who's the real me. P has definitely transformed me. Also, people look different on the screen than in real life. In videos they look better, in pictures too. That's why you are shocked to see how some P star looks in real life. They know how to shoot those videos and take those pictures to stimulate you like crazy. Real life doesn't stimulate you like that because in real life people just look normal but our definition of normal gets morphed by the screen.