Sorry for the long post, I just feel like there's a lot to get off my chest. I've never openly (online or in person) talked about my porn addiction, so here it goes.

I've been watching porn since early high school, so it's been ~12 years. For as long as I can remember from that point, I have watched porn, never with a dip. Probably watched a couple/few times a week then. I always felt somewhat weird about it, but everyone did it so I wrote it off as totally normal, eventually reaching a point where it didn't feel weird. I did it all the way through college, through relationships and everything, never stopping or really slowing down.

I started dating someone in 2016 and got engaged a little over a year and a half later, all the while still watching porn regularly. I began to feel weird about doing it while in such a serious relationship, but it was easy for me to turn my mind away from it, telling myself that everyone did it and assuming that she "probably knew" it was happening and that, if she found out explicitly, she might not care because its so commonplace. Eventually, it started to affect my sex life with her, leading her to question me on whether I watched porn or not. I ashamedly scrambled to come up with an excuse but could not. She was devastated, feeling as though I had cheated on her and had been unfaithful, stepping out of our relationship. I personally had never understood it this way, so I was defensive, but eventually I understood. 

At that point, I vowed to never watch porn again. I think I thought it would be a lot easier than it was and that I had the self-control to handle it. It was going okay for some time, we were attending church and marriage prep classes regularly and I even had her set up screen time restrictions on my phone. I still had thoughts and urges, triggered by random, external sources, but I couldn't really act on them so it worked. I didn't realize that I was bascially covering up the problem, as opposed to addressing it. Everything changed when my phone broke, requiring me to get a new one. Naturally, there were no restrictions on the new phone. I told myself to control my urges, but eventually, they were too much, and combined with the fact that the "door" was open, I started watching again. Not a crazy amount, just whenever I could (~once every week/week and a half). I was watching porn regularly again. Even as we were approaching our wedding (originally in April, postponed to February due to Covid); even as we watched a church service weekly, where sexual immorality was discussed more than once); even with her asking on numerous occasions if I was still watching porn, to which I lied and she trusted me. The problem was festering in secrecy. Eventually, she learned of my repeated infidelity through porn, and she is again devastated.

I feel ashamed and awful for allowing this to happen again and I just want this addiction to go away. I don't want to cover it up anymore with restrictions and what not. I want to go to the root of this issue and stop these urges from even happening in the first place. Any help y'all can suggest would be immensely appreciated.