Reboot

I have zero sexual attraction to my wife.
When we started dating a long time ago (~15 years) I was very attracted to her. I do not know if this is due to almost daily porn use or some kind of psychological factors. I want to go 90 days without porn or masturbation to see if it will change things. This is day 2.

Hey Buddy,

you've come to the right place! you've taken a great first step in recognizing that P has a negative influence on your life.

I look forward to reading more of your story on here. Also, please check out the other threads. You will find a lot of recognition and tips and tricks!


Good luck my friend

Day 3/90

Shade, thanks for the welcome. I will be sure to read around. I read quite a bit from the PIED forum, and am thinking that might be my problem. I guess arousal is all in the mind, so it is not so surprising that lack of erection and lack of attraction would be paired.

On my journey I thought I would give a quick update each day with positives (improvements) and negatives (difficulties or further decline).

Positives: as is usual at this time I am getting better rest. Emotions were slightly up.

Negatives: had some difficulty with staring at a hot neighbor. A somewhat graphic sex scene came up in the show I watch with my wife. I got an urge to use porn but told myself that it can wait until after 90 days. Hopefully at that point I won?t want to.

Day 4/90

Positives: gave my wife a hug. Thought she was pretty.

Negatives: no major difficulties.

Day 5/90

Positives: none I can remember. Did wake up with MW so I guess that?s good.

Negatives: got in a fight with my wife. I told her I was upset about how she talked to me but tried not to make a big deal out of it. It was not a disaster.

Day 6/90

Positives: had a Dream last night about making out with some girl from high school
It was not my wife, but I would be very surprised at this point if I had such a dream with my wife. At least it was an exciting, non porn-like experience.

Negatives: had urges to use porn after our show last night. I kept telling myself: you are at day 5, you can wait until day 90. It helped.

Hey TerribleSail,

Good to see you to continue posting on here ! I also like your positve/negative response. But maybe you can think of it as challenges in stead of negative. Struggling with getting urges from seeing a sex scene in a show is not negative at all, it is you who deems the struggle negative. But in reality its something that is difficult because it's something you are learning to fight against. If you ask yourself if you are glad that you are now struggling because it is a part of the reboot, would you not consider labeling it as positive? Struggling means fighting and that means that you are actively working on the problem!

So don't be to hard on yourself my friend, self love is an important aspect in the process!


Good luck and stay safe, I am rooting for you

Day 7/90:

Shade, thanks for your continued support
You bring up an excellent point about not being too hard on myself and framing the situation more fairly. Probably my negativity is due to repeated attempts to quit. But now I have some more tools, in particular this site, so there is no reason to believe things will always remain the same.

Positives: nothing specific, but the porn urges have gone away for now.

Challenges: hot neighbor outside. It seems like over the past year several very hot women have moved in to our development. I probably would have been very excited about this a while ago. Now it is a little exciting and also frustrating. I want to give my brain a chance to heal. On the other hand, women are everywhere, so it is best to focus my efforts on healing from porn and try to forget about viewing these women as only body parts.

Day 8/90

Positives: again nothing specific. Just feeling rested and pretty normal.

Challenges: sun bathers by the pool. I may have had a sexual dream last night but don?t remember. Got stressed at the grocery store, but I?m not sure this qualifies as a challenge since I don?t really think I use porn to cope with stress.

Due to the super normal stimulus P is giving us, our wifes and GFs aren't enough any more. For us, this is challenging and we don't know how to handle this. Is the wife just not hot anymore or are other women more attractive? You guess right, it's nonsense. Once your brain rewired at normal stimulus level, a normal touch will be just enough to arouse you. This takes probably more time than 90 days, since you've been a daily user like i was.
On the other hand, like all addictions, this is not fair to our partners and familys. They suffer because of what we are addicted to. It's socially unfair, this is normal and that's why we have motivation to fight against P by all possible means. Our partners most of the time deserve better than a guy with his pants down his ancles when the partner is grabbing groceries.

Keep strong and focused

Day 9/90

Thanks imsorry for the post. This is an excellent point that it is not normal to be completely unattracted to a beautiful woman. It will make a lot of sense if stopping the porn will help this problem.

Positives: felt some good emotion while listening to a podcast. It was quite welcome.

Challenges: nothing extremely significant. I had some thoughts of a porn star before I got in the shower. But I again told myself that I can always go back to the porn later on if I decide to. At the moment I want to see if my attraction problem is porn related.

Day 10/90

Positives: again nothing to note

Challenges: got in a pretty bad fight with my wife last night. Then I had tons of sex dreams and woke up very aroused. It did not convince me to use porn because I want to see what happens if I stop.

Day 11/90

Positives: blank

Challenges: I keep forgetting to read on here daily. I missed yesterday and today. Again, for maybe the 5th time, I have to mention another hot neighbor at the pool. I looked at her and then when I came inside I watched her through the blinds for 20-30 seconds. It was not my proudest moment. Now that I think of it, I think a reason I have forgotten to read here is that the last two mornings, I had to leave the house on errands. This is normally when I read about porn addiction and PIED.

Day 12/90

Positives: had a good time playing ball with my daughter at the park. In the middle I thought to myself that I was having a lot of fun.

Challenges: not so much today

Day 13/90

Positives: I saw some videos of me teaching. I normally cringe when I hear my voice but I was strangely fascinated by the videos. Somehow I was able to see myself as another person and, oddly enough, I saw that I am not nearly as weird as I normally think I am. I appear to be a normal and put together guy!

Negatives: I have some urges to use porn last night. I have not yet reached the point of thinking seriously to end the reboot prematurely, and this is good. I just told myself that I need to wait to 90 days (at least) to be able to see if porn is really affecting me the way I suspect it is.

Hey TerribleSail,

After a streak of around 14 days the brain really understands that there is no replacement drug coming and therefore the urges increase heavy and sometimes to extreme. We all experienced this. It's difficult to handle this but be sure you can learn how to. They will also decrease over time. Patience is needed.

Day 14/90

Imsorry thanks for the comments. The urges certainly did strike today, like clockwork. But I decided I will not give in.

Positives: well not much

Challenges: as I wrote above, a lot of urges tonight. The old porn scenes were going through my head but I kept 14 days in my mind. I don?t want to have to start over.

Hey TerribleSail,

It seems you are doing quite well so far. But i'm missing quite a few days of positives. For me it always helps to look for something positive in the day, as small as it may seem. Identifying positive things in life will in general help you maintain a more upbeat attitude towards life in general. If I may suggest for the next day you can write that you've been at it for 14 days already. While it may not feel like it yet as 14 days is in general a number where urges me be very much present as imsorrynotsorry also wrote, you are fighting the good fight and already made great progress.

Keep going strong I am rooting for you

Day 15/90

Shade these are good points. I have managed to make it to half of a month, and this is a pretty good accomplishment. My life is pretty different than it was before starting the reboot, simply because I am not staying up at night looking at porn, and can therefore wake up early and enjoy the mornings. It is a good idea to think about positive things in the day even if they are not so easy to come up with.

Positives: I listened to a good podcast about an old video game I loved when I was in middle school. I have great memories of playing it and listening to this podcast made those feelings accessible again.

Challenges: quite a bit of porn urges in the morning. A particular porn Star I used to look at a lot kept coming into my head. On the one hand I wanted to think about her. On the other hand I want to take the reboot seriously. I told myself again that I am 15 days in and don?t want to blow it all. It is actually quite encouraging that I have been able to say no to the urges. I think this is because I have a concrete objective now. In the recent past, whenever I decided to stop porn, I would pretty much give in to the urge whenever it arose.

It is actually quite encouraging that I have been able to say no to the urges. I think this is because I have a concrete objective now.

Click to expand...

This is something to hold on. You started with a good motivation.

The actress coming to your mind is a result of us bonding to those fake people who will do everything just to make you attracted to her. Tell yourself that it's not real, never was, never will.
Us getting attracted to the actresses is a weired replacement for real relationships we could have and it's holding us back to achieve that.