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Clean,

I think you may have figured out that negative thinking leads you towards a dangerous path because the addiction feeds off of them

Now if you had developed a plan of action and self awareness, the instant that you found yourself wanting to do that quick search, it would not have happened because you would have stopped and done something constructive.

So the takeaway from this is that without an action plan to address the addiction with a contingency plan to address the temptations, the addiction will win out every time.

It would also be helpful to ask yourself how committed you are to your recovery and why is it so easy for you to slip up. The truth of the matter lies in the erroneous belief that those images are more powerful than you. They are only images that you have convinced yourself they are salacious, external sources have no power over you.

The key here is to see your recovery as the most important thing in your life and do whatever it takes to overcome it. Nothing else will do and if need be seek the help of a recovery program

Hope this helps,
Wolf (5 years sober)

Hello,

I think I had a relapse at around three months. The key for me was I had to without question admit my powerlessness and become aware of the compulsion driving that lack of will power. The compulsion is more powerful than I am, and non-addicts will never fully comprehend that because it does not occur within them. After I admitted I had this illness, sexual compulsion with lack of will power to fight it, leading to negative consequence, I began to change.

In my opinion you still think you can do it from within from you own mind making the decision. You still are relying on your own power as a sex addict to stop, but what your mind isn't allowing you to see if as a sex addict you don't have the power to stop, without admitting you will never be able to stop on your own, and that creates the cycle.

I think it is time for you to get serious about without a doubt asking a higher power or God to show itself to you. The illness never goes away, however the higher power does provide a new perception of our actions. For instance I have a middle circle behavior of masturbating to older women who I'm fantasizing need love and attention. This is dangerous I'll admit, because it leaves the door open for my illness to persuade me to go into my acting out zone, which is gang-bang porn that is dominant, selfish, and controlling. Before I thought, through my resentment that women were just playing their role by being the center of attention in gangbangs, but now I see that it is not right to dominate a women in any way and also it is kind of wussy and immature. I never would have seen that if I hadn't admitted I was powerless.

I see it time and time again, and I do it too in regards to manageability. I think I am impressing others or "being a man" by trying to do things on my own, and it always leads to depression and then some kind of desire to release the frustration. The day I realized that my self-reliance is as good as missing the mark every time, I stopped. As addicts we are not like normal people where giving up is the less of the two options, actually as addicts giving up what we are doing wrong is the best option. Normal people don't help us because they don't have the compulsive component that creates the obsession, they will never understand and it is wise to not invest too much energy in their teaching, because it can increase frustration and shame if they are dictating the terms.

They are not doing anything wrong, it is just a case of the wrong teachers for the wrong students. We need other addicts to identify with, specifically with the compulsive component, and then we can get some clarity on the need to give up an the need to ask for something higher (that isn't a human) to guide us.

I hope that helps.

Cleanup,
Although I am not the one with the addiction someone that I love very much is. I can't personally speak of relapse on this. I can say that our moods have a great impact on our actions. The two are very likely related. I do want to know what your reasons for discontinuing pornography are.

There is definitely a link between depression and addiction. I used porn to momentarily escape depression, but it always left me even more miserable after each indulgence. While quitting, I learned to focus not on what my urges were telling me to do, but on how I would feel AFTER giving into them.

I also learned to look for positive ways to address my depression. The irony is that addiction was actually making the problem worse, so once I broke free of that, my emotions became generally more manageable.

I've now been porn-free about a year and 9 months, but prior to that, I had gone about four months without indulging. Part of the problem was that I had become careless, watching things that were not technically porn but that fed the same lustful urges. Another problem was that I was letting my feelings drive my behavior instead of choosing behaviors that would improve my emotional state.

Personally, I never adopted the view that I am powerless. I do turn to God for my strength, but I take responsibility for cooperating with God, saying yes to His plan and no to addiction. If I screw up, it isn't because God didn't give me the power, but because I didn't avail myself of it.

I just wrote a massive reply to these comments but lost it when I looked at one of your profiles to see who I was writing to.

The crux of it was that I am really happy to have had you all care enough to write back and help me with my battle.

Wolfiepa, you are dead right. If I had have just stood up and walked to the post office I am sure I would have broken the momentum of the progressive slide toward clicking that button again. It is funny how a walk can stabilise your desires.

Guhzootigh, thanks for the insights and I agree, in fact the last three months has only been possible because of God's help. I have a wife of 25 years who is incredibly frigid in many ways and has a lot of trouble coping with any sort of emotional or sexual situations. I have always been incredibly sensual and previously had a girlfriend who matched my sexual drive. In this time I felt bullet proof and had more emotional and physical energy than anyone else I knew. The more my now wife pushed me away the more frustrated and rejected I felt and this has resulted in a lot of self loathing and the substitution of sex with porn.

This hasn't worked as you will all know and I have had many years of depression and even suicidal thoughts, even to the point where I have thought of castration to remove the pain. I have also begun enjoying sexual pain and will get my wife to perform painful acts to y genitals in order to get a really large sexual release. I know this sounds extreme and unbelievable but continual rejection and emotional isolation can be devastating to the human psyche.

A few years ago I went back to boxing and the heavy sessions some how allowed me to get back on track. I am now a massive advocate for physical activity to help with mental issues. It has allowed me to get enough perspective to see what I needed to do to get back on track and one of those things was to separate myself emotionally from my wife. I know this isn't ideal by any means but we have two beautiful children and I am not about to be separated from them over this issue.

This has all culminated in me realising I am disappearing down a very dark hole and so I asked God to rid me of my sexual desires, which he has graciously done but even now with normal levels of desire and limited outlet I am still having to work hard to keep away from the porn.

I actually think it is a two edged sword, sex helps keep my depression at bay but I can't have sex so I get depressed and look to porn to get a release.

I hope this help explain the situation to you wanttotrust and I am sure it has no bearing on your situation. I am sure my wife is a bit of a unique case. She has made a number of references to incest and rape but I have never quite got to the bottom of the reasons she cannot access her emotions and may never. These sorts of things are unimaginable and a totally personal battle I know I can't help with. Having said that I know that I love her and need to work out a way to live my life without having the situation ruin me.

Wow, this has been a bit of an outpouring, sorry to lay that all out but it actually feels great to present that somewhere where I know I wont be judged. There are very few places when this would be at all appropriate.

Feeling a bit spent but relieved as well. Thanks again and for your comments and I will take the ideas on board and keep looking up and plugging on.

Clean,

I am going to start by saying that while your situation is rather complex is not without solution.

Perhaps, you could start by looking at it differently. One thing I learned during my recovery is that nothing anyone does to me has anything to do with me, it has everything to do with them, so there is no reason to take anything anyone does personally. While your wife maybe be having emotional and intimacy issues, it does not have to affect you directly because they have nothing to do with who you are as a person.

It is obvious she does need to resolve this so I ask, has she had any therapy? This may make a difference in her life in the long run for her, your marriage and your children. Distancing yourself emotionally from her while it may bring you relief, it does not help her. Perhaps you could ask her what she needs from you and start a ongoing dialogue. Just saying.

Back to the intimacy issue, if your wife was unable to "satisfy" you for another reason, say her hormones had rendered her without any sexual desire, would you still feel rejected? The point I am trying to make is this: I think the root of your problem has to do with expectations. We have been told that marriage hold certain duties among them is to provide sex for our partners, the reality is that this duty cannot always be fulfilled and we end up feeling cheated and resentful, so we find other ways to get our needs met, well sex is NOT a need. Food, air and water are needs, lest we die. Sex is an option.

But even more important, intimacy cannot be acquired by being sexual while the individuals involved are dysfunctional. Perhaps, your wife could be shown other ways to be intimate by getting to know her as a person not just a wife. If incest has indeed been present in her life, her perceptions about sex have been perverted and need to be addressed, not because it would benefit you but because we all deserve a healthy life and so do you.

So for that to happen for you, there needs to be a relinquishing of beliefs that no longer serve you. The most crucial one is that you are whole and complete. There is nothing you lack or need. Anything you need, you can acquire from within you. For that, you need to learn to love and accept yourself exactly as you are because that is the crux of the issue. When we love ourselves, nothing anyone does bothers us because our self worth does not depend on how others see us but how we see ourselves and best of all? We no longer have expectations because we know no one owes us anything and we are free to love others without demanding we are loved back because we are our own source of love.

Sexual desire is not the issue, anymore than thirst is the issue, it is how we view it that is the problem. During my recovery I did not ask God to rid me of it because I knew that it would be counterproductive, instead I simply asked to renew my mind and I wowed not to fight the changes and true, it took two years to get my mind back to normal but it worked, it was not easy but it was worth it. It all started with this simple question: "What does this addiction have to teach me about myself?" What I learned is worth a book, suffice it to say, I would not learned it otherwise.

Hope this helps,
Wolf (5 years sober)

Hi Wolf,

Thanks again for the feedback and insights. I have really tried to follow your advice and it actually did make it easier to understand that it isn't her fault that she can't connect. It is funny it did take us a long time to get married because I wasn't sure I could see the relationship through the way it was. We actually went to a councillor early in the peace and I was hoping she could break through some of these issues. Unfortunately the councillor locked onto the assumption that I was a committaphobe and while I was working through this I thought my wife was discussing the intimacy issues. After months of therapy I happened across my wife's notes and they were all about how to deal with commitaphobes. I gave up on therapy and have tried a number of times to offer help to my wife because as you say she is the one who is REALLY missing out on a full and happy life.

I have learned a lot about self love but still have a long way to go. It is certainly not in my nature but as you say it is actually the one thing great that has come out of the relationship and there was never going to be another way for me to learn it. I am actually not trying to teach these lessons to my children so I'm really hoping they will have better self esteem as they grow up.

The one thing about pulling back is that it does allow you to separate your feelings and rely on your own actions/activities to make your self happy. I have also noticed that my wife has actually improved slightly since I took some pressure off her. I am hoping she will keep improving until the point where she realises there is more to life than being shut off and eventually open up to getting some help.

I guess only time will tell but this sure has been a great way for me to let it all out and I am feeling exceptionally positive now knowing this forum exists as a sounding board.

Best Regards, Clean.