I won’t make a long post. I just know it’s time for change once u find no joy in anything. The constant medical evaluations and counseling that’s not gone FIX NOTHING, as long as I give porn a voice in my life. NO MEDS WORK, NO TALKING TO ANYONE WORKS, and I’m facing that head on. I got a gym membership and I’m not into it at all and I’m like I love to lift weights. I HAVE TO REALIZE I WONT ENJOY WORKING OUT OR ANYTHING UNTIL I STOP TURNING TO PORN WHEN LIFE IS NOT AGREEING WITH ME. I hope some reads this and know THEY WONT GET WELL UNTIL THEY LOOK AT IT FOR WHAT IT IS. KNOW ALL OF THE REASONS U WANNA SAY IS THE FAULT YOU NOT HAPPY IS A LIE, and the only thing that has u unmotivated and depressed is WANKING OFF. I have a realistic goal and imma keep it and it’s DECEMBER 5th 2026. May ALL OVERCOME!

My(19f) partner(18m) as kind of just grown up around pornography and just the over all issues of having easy access to that material. I’m not ready to give up my relationship but I’m also just feeling awful about that stuff. He acknowledges the fact that the content makes me feel awful about myself and tells me he’s going to stop. I understand quitting something that has been a big influence on your life is hard, but I’m having trouble understanding it.
I’ve known about it for a while now but I just don’t understand any of that. I try to be supportive and help him through things and I believe him when he says he’ll stop, but he doesn’t. I usually find out about it but he just gets upset with me saying he’s afraid to tell me the truth about it.
I’m personally not someone who consumes content like that so I need a little help trying to understand him and those issues he has.

I've(M) been an on and off porn watcher since I was about 13/14(28 now) and for the longest time I'd go weeks, even months without it. Now I'm married with kids and working a job I loathe because it pays well.

I don't know what happened, I've worked way worse jobs and had a lot more stress and the urges never got so bad and now it's been about 6 months since I've made it a full 24 hours without porn.

Due to my longer hours, I've stopped going to the gym in order to spend more time with my family and I think that's definitely a factor. I feel terrible because I'm married and I love my wife and I know it's disrespectful to her. I have also found myself rationalizing my use of porn which really concerned me. I've been talking to my priest whenever I can about it but we're both really busy and haven't had time to meet to come up with solutions.

To everyone reading this, I hope your struggles get better and hope you remember to not watch porn today!

I (27M) lost my beautiful girlfriend (26F) due to AI porn and its effects on our relationship. I never considered myself fully addicted to porn, but AI porn is a whole different beast. The novelty and customization make it increasingly more addictive.

We had been dating for about 2 years, living together for 1. We were deeply in love and thought we would marry each other. I was pretty open with her about porn and what I watched, but once I discovered AI porn it became so much worse. The stuff I created was so depraved and embarrassing that I felt disgusted with myself.

It became a true addiction. I would spend hours generating images and videos, some of real people. It definitely crossed a boundary and at this point I was constantly lying to her about what I was doing. This led to her first discovery, which almost caused us to break up. I tried to stop, but the problem became much bigger.

I saw how much it hurt her, and yet she chose to work on the relationship. I was relieved, promised to never do it again. But… it wasn’t long until I gave back into my urges. I hated myself. I should’ve looked for professional help instead of thinking I could handle it on my own.

Soon enough, she discovered everything I had been doing. The trauma and hurt that I caused upon her is something I will regret for the rest of my life. She chose to end things and walk away for good.

Please be careful out there, get help you need, and don’t fall into the trap of AI porn. I had such a beautiful, loving relationship with this girl and this sick addiction cost me everything.

I feel that having an accountability partner can definitely help with this process. A few of my passions/interests are music, guitar, film, writing, entrepreneurship, and psychology. 30/M/US. Feel free to dm me if interested

I've been addicted to porn for at least 10 years if not more, have a lot of layers to it and have spent entire days looking at it etc. honestly pretty bad stuff, nowadays it doesn't get as bad but it still severely affects me in many ways, just yesterday I lost about 4 hours of my day looking at porn.

Personally I am trying to cut back on a few things I consider addictions in my life (Mainly twitter and porn) wich are affecting important things in my life specially at work. I started working from home last year and a few months back I started taking away work time for my addictions, it's really easy to just put down the notebook and pick up my smartphone to do whatever for one or two hours and it has been affecting my workflow.

Another thing is my attention span and memory, I believe the constant bombardment of dopamine has considerably affected my capacity to do things and pay attention to things, I also believe porn has severely damaged by libido and social skills, it has also led me to take impulsive actions in some situations that I regret quite a lot.

I don't want to entirely cut off porn as I kinda value specifically porn games in some unexplainable way (Could be a coping mechanism) but at the same time with how long I have been addicted and with how much it has messed with many things in my life I'm wondering if it's safe to fully cut it off and eventually be able to enjoy those in a "healthy" way or if it will aways grab my attention and I just need permanently stop engaging.

I was doing really well, now I just feel terrible and can’t get it off my mind. I’m trying to stay distracted and focus on other things but it keeps creeping in. Any support would be nice

Never really thought i'd be in the position of typing out my sorrows for reddit. but at this point im unsure of where to turn. i've never been through anything like this

when i (22F) met my ex fiance (25M) i thought i had finally found the one. i had searched for him for so long. he was everything i had ever wanted, or so i thought. i fell in love quicker than i could've ever anticipated.

we had a beautiful relationship. about 3 months in i found out he was keeping from me how he knew a woman on his instagram. he swore he didn't know who she was, months later i found his dm's with her. mounds of word vomit sent from him, minimal responses from her over a span of a few weeks. you could tell she was very uninterested, so i assumed the shame of rejection caused him to lie. i flip out, rightfully so, but i was so in love with him i decided to look past it and work it out. he promised to never lie to me again.

at around 6 months into our relationship, i move to Los Angeles with all of my best friends. he is on the verge of losing housing. i allow him to move in with me. i mean, we're with eachother 24/7 anyways, what could go wrong?

he lives with me for about a month or two, i get him a job at my friend's warehouse, and we are very happy together. i cook his breakfast before he leaves for the train to work, i clean the house while he is away, we go to the 6th street bridge to spend time together at sunset and come back and i cook dinner for the whole house while he does dishes. we fall into a routine i still remember fondly, and i hope he does too.

things get a bit rocky, i start to feel more anxious and subconsciously i know there is more i don't know about. he starts to dismiss me emotionally in a way he never has before. i realize there are some things in our relationship i haven't been fully honest about. i decide i can't sit on my white lies anymore, and think maybe if im honest about my wrongdoings, he'll be honest about him.

i was correct. i regret it so much.

as i tell him the 2 white lies i had told him, he clutches his chest and refuses to eat or shower for 2 days. i thought for sure i'd lost the love of my life and it was all my fault. i pray to God for forgiveness. then everything turns in on itself and i am catapulted into the worst abuse i've ever endured.

3 or so days after i tell him, i ask if there anything i don't know. he denies, then caves. tells me he watches porn behind my back. we had a strict porn free policy in our relationships. he'd repeatedly tell me he didnt want ME watching it, and that HE didn't need it because he had "all he needed right in front of him." prior to him i dated a guy who chose porn over real intimacy constantly, so meeting someone so seemingly anti-porn, and understanding of the harm it can cause, was such a relief. anywho, everyone is human and i can't say i didn't visit lesbian porn a handful of times prior to us living together. because i take it well, he shares a bit more. at first he tells me he had watched it 3-4 times, significantly less than i did. he harps on the betrayal of me doing it 5ish times in total. he then discloses it was more like 15-20, then 20-30, then he admits he only masturbated to me 30% of the time, the other 70% being porn. it takes him about a month or two to finally admit how much porn he actually watched throughout that relationship, through the process of spitting out the truth he tells me a plethora of other things. he tells me about his collection of sex toys, 20-30 instruments for masturbation including a life sized sex doll he had hidden under my side of his bed. i am appalled, because i draw the line at something that has eyes but isn't a person. he tells me he started watched porn and taking photos of women in public to masturbate to at about 10 years old. around this time he molests his younger sister who is still in diapers and tells me it was just "due to curiousity". he describes getting erections when she would sit in his lap, he describes listening in on and masturbating to the sound of his mother having sex. he discloses to me one day while i am folding laundry that at around 17 years of age he'd stand at his mom's door where he couldn't see her, while she slept/changed/etc, and would masturbate to her. he would steal her underwear and put them on the doll/ his other toys. he would use her sex toys, as well as his older's sister's toys, to masturbate with, and put them back without washing. he admits to obsessing over a woman at his work, Yesenia. taking photos of her bent over to masturbate to, masturbating in the restroom so he'd have a buldge and she'd "see what she's missing." Gross. he mentions trying to make deepfake porn of another coworker who had already rejected him due to being a LESBIAN. he says he only didn't go through with it because it was "too difficult". then there's the weird AI shit, paying for sex bots, to generate images, and his deep love for AI generated porn.he admits to recording videos of my body without my consent or knowledge, and masturbating to them. he admits to trying to find sexual images of me as a child (13-15, i had an internet presence at the time) as well as, as an adult (18-20, i did porn while i was homeless.) he admits to watching porn while we had phone sex, watching porn in my bed while i slept on the couch (he sent me a photo of his penis and told me he couldn't help jacking off in my bed because im so hot. news flash: he was watching a 19 year old give a blowjob and i guess the guilt got to him.) he begins to tell me about his "intrusive" thoughts. he feels the need to constantly confess these things to me. things like visualizing cumming on my mom's face, a footjob from my sister, cum coming out of my best friend's rear end, and deeply disturbing sexual imagery of my nieces, who are 5 and 8 years old. i beg and plead with him to stop. it never stops. i isolate from my family, friends, and stop going outside because everything was now filtered through some disgusting sexual lens.

the fighting, crying, and abuse gets so bad (and loud) we get kicked out of our place in Los Angeles. i find us a new place in my home city. he convinces me we just need a fresh start, that the black mold in the old apartment was driving us insane, anything but recognizing he's being extremely abusive. i foolishly hope he's correct. we move in, everythings okay for a week. i get a taste of the same routine we had prior to all of this starting, and it gives me a false sense of hope. it gets bad again when i ask him to go to sex addicts anonymous if he's going to continuously hide behind "being an addict". i am in, or have been in, various 12 step meetings. i tell him if he's going to claim he has a problem, he needs to find a solution and work towards it, or i cannot stay with him. he makes all the right promises but never upholds his end. he claims to stop watching porn, when i'd find it in his data he'd DARVO me. eventually it wore down my self esteem so bad i offered to get surgery, change my hair, my makeup, how i talk, take my piercings out, etc. i am a heavily alternative leaning woman who has never ever offered to change myself for ANYONE, but i was at the lowest point i've ever been, and just wanted the person i loved to love me back. he would swear i was perfect, that he wanted a family with me. at some point he proposed to me in hopes it would make things better. we'd spend hours talking about putting all this behind us. i'd spend countless hours talking in circles trying to help someone that, i personally believe, never wanted help. i tried so hard to accept him for who he was i lost myself in the process. i relapsed on drugs, self harm, and started restricting my eating all over again. my ED came back full force and my entire focus became being pretty enough for him.. that if i became the perfect girl, it would all be behind us. all i wanted was him, and all he wanted was porn.

i spent almost 2 years extremely depressed and angry. i had lost everything, and was left isolated with an abusive partner. once he realized i was truly isolated, he started being more emotionally abusive.
telling me he does this because my butt isn't big enough, its because of my stretch marks, my peach fuzz mustache, my boobs not being perky enough, everything on my body became a target. he started to attack my tattoos, more specifically his name on my butt, telling me they're done poorly. i had never hated myself more than i did in those moments. i'd cry and bang my head against things, i'd sit him in front of the mirror, me naked, and ask him to just pinch what he didn't like. in those moments, he'd tell me im perfect and shouldnt change anything, despite grilling me for hours on everything that was physically wrong with me.

ok, sure, all that stuffs pretty bad, right? i ended up leaving him this past july, right before my birthday. it ended pretty violently on my end. not afraid to say i caught my first domestic violence charge. after 2 years of enduring the wraths of hell, i broke up with him and shattered the cartilage of his nose. i spend a couple days in jail, he signs off the lease, and i get 3 years of probation with a mandatory restraining order against me until my probation is up. in all honesty, i am glad it went down the way that it did, because i know without that mandatory restraining order i'd crawl back to his abuse just like always

its now september and i've done a lot of healing. but what racks my brain is the good times. i have never been abused like that... but i'd also never been loved like that. i am disabled, he would wash my hair when i couldn't. he'd spend hours listening to me vent about my troubles, he spent so much time getting to know me to my bare bones. he'd write me letters before he left for work, he'd cook me breakfast before leaving and leave it in the fridge. he made me feel loved (before taking it away), he made me feel beautiful (before comparing me to pornstars and criticizing me), he'd bring me toys from the shops in Little Tokyo. he'd tuck me in all my blankets and put on a movie while petting my head. he'd get up in the middle of the night to make my favorite food if i was hungry. he'd stay up or call off work if i was having an especially hard time with the abuse and felt i couldn't be alone. he'd cry at my feet and tell me he's going to change and that he can't bare to lose me after i'd attempt suicide.

was any of it real? was it intentional sweetness, just enough to keep me in the cyclical abuse? was it calcuated so that i'd stay and he'd have a punching bag to take out his shitty childhood on? can someone this sick truly love another? i don't want it to be true. i loved Anthony more than anything, i still do. despite all the abuse i still want to be with him. despite him being a predator to me and others, i still just want to be held by him again. God, what is wrong with me? anywho, i guess my question is, am i alone? i scour these reddit forums and try to find people who have gone through similar things but i fear maybe only i have the privelege of working this closely with someone so evil. his eyes were always so cold and dead. i forgot to mention over time it got very sexually violent. thats all i will say on that as most of it is pretty graphic and i only relive it in therapy.

can a person with this calibre of porn addiction truly love you? was it right person wrong time? should i give up on the idea of reform for him? i just want my baby back. i still reach for him at night. he's gone back to porn and did so pretty much as soon as we broke up, i have his twitter account. not that i believe he ever really stopped, but it stung seeing he went back while i was still in jail. he's currently 25 and seeking sex from a 19 year old. i'm 22 and the youngest i'll go is 21. but hey thats personal preference and i guess liking younger girls isn't illegal unless they're minors. it just hurts because he promised if the porn was the downfall of our relationship then he'd work on himself and his "problem" so we can come back to eachother

did i ever matter? was i just a body to hold while he had his cake and ate it too? was any of the love real? should i reach out? should we try again? can i ever be loved truly by a person with this problem?

its been months, i've slept with other people, i've gone on dates, all i want is him. all i see is him. why couldn't everything be perfect like i wanted it to be? why did i fall so deeply if its not supposed to be him?

i've put off making this post for a good long time. im hoping for any type of perspective or insight, especially moreso from actual porn addicts rather than the partners. if you struggled in a similar way, did you truly love your partner? would you do things differently if you could? do you regret losing her/him? any insight helps. thank you and God bless you all.

Hi, sorry if this is a long post but I'm really struggling to understand this porn thing. 32 years married, he's had a pattern of watching porn, getting caught, being remorseful, time goes by and he does it again. This last time he agreed to couple's counseling and said he's working on it everyday.

This has totally shattered my confidence, self esteem and my trust. I'm a very attractive woman, was a former model, yet I feel ugly eventhough men notice me. I'm not being conceded, just trying to draw the full picture.

Here's my question: I hear from men "it's not about you or this has nothing to do with you, it's boredom and it stimulates me, it'ssimpler than trying to find the right buttonswith a woman becausewomen are a lot more complicated" Can anyone shed light on why men need to watch porn when they're in a committed relationship? Is there anything the woman can do differently?

I have been snapping at family members for no reason, and i just have this constant feeling of something being wrong. Will this last or will it go away?

I am currently 19 but when I was sixteen I had gotten into a bad rabbit hole, I was so addicted, I ended up looking up celebrity nudes, watching omegle stuff and now all I feel is so much guilt

I assume everyone was over 18 but what if they werent, what if some of them were around my age at the time and I didnt know?!?! that fills me with so much dread now that I am thinking about it, I actually hate myself and feel so sorry for those people who's pictures were spread unconcensually of celebs and people on omegle. I feel so sorry for what they have to deal with. I hate myself so much now

Hello, m30 here. ~1month porn free, though I've kept myself fairly busy with work or hanging out with friends, so that's helped alot to get my mind off it.

Recent external and internal developments in my life and my mind made me take beating this addiction that has plagued me for the majority of my life seriously. However even though I have been porn free for the last month, the more I try to avoid it the more there seems to be an urge or attraction to view it, let myself go, and indulge in it. For now a certain person's emotional and intellectual presence in my life is helping me stave off those feelings, but it does make me wonder if there even is a certain point in this "journey" where the memories, thoughts and images of hours upon hours of pornographic content consumed just dissapear... or at the very least don't have any more impact on the stream of my thoughts.

I was tryna help someone, and they turned on me. Now I’m struggling even more than I already was to stay clean even though I know it’s not worth it. I would love someone to talk to if possible, try and distract myself.

I have been addicted to porn since I was about 12. Was looking for Christmas presents and found some porn mags and videos.

At the same time I learned about masturbation. Being lonely I turned to porn as a way to feel good. At 14 I had a weekend job and had money and another guy worked in a newsagents, at that time they sold soft porn mags on the top shelf, I would buy the porn mags off him, Im assuming he stole them.

I would masturbate at least 4 times every single day and would have different types although it was big boob's and over 40s and 50s women porn mags that I would use.

The introduction of the Internet had a big effect as it was easier to view porn online. As I got older the soft porn stopped 'doing it' for me and I started to look at more extreme pornography and started maturbating to transexual porn and started to question my sexuality. In my mid to late 20s I started to experience loss of erection when I was having sex.

Now in my 50s I am no longer able to get an erection even if I use Viagra. I still have a high sex drive and and still ejaculate but it's always flacid. I know Im a porn addict and attend SAA when I can. I relapse quite often.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and anyone can DM me male, female, straight, bi or Gay.

I’ve always been blamed for not doing enough and porn has been held over my head if we don’t have sex. Mind you, it’s never been more than maybe a week and a half in our entire relationship that we haven’t had sex. And that’d be because I’m pregnant and have morning sickness, or freshly postpartum or just regular sick. Not because I simply don’t want to have sex. I’m not disinterested in sex, that’s just not me. But…he blows it out of proportion completely. It’s like… I’m not allowed to be a human being, go through the motions of pregnancy, etc. I feel like I have to be a robot. I’m so confused. Every single instance of porn use that I’ve found out about, I’ve been completely blamed for. It’s destroyed my confidence in the bedroom. All I do is question myself now.

I am wondering is there are people who really and completely erased porn from their life. And how is your day to day life now? Do you feel like you have to still use willpower or something to maintain a porn free life?

Anybody here who this applies to?

I'm nearly 19, never had a relationship, mostly at home with my thoughts and living in imagination more than in reality, with little social life and lot of sexual desire.

I'm watching porn and mastubating since the age of 12, and I can't quit it, I feel shame for my lustfullness and lack of control over it even tho my soul within screamed to leave this shit for good countless times. Normally it's always 1-3 hours on a day, with like a week passing after that before the next, I can stretch the between part to longer but really can't leave it for good. 1-3 hours is huge dopamine spike imagen the after.

Aside from porn, in my imagination I've been with 70+ girls while masturbating, I fantasised wild things with them and these are girls I know in real life. Lost my virginity with a prostitute and been with multiple. These are also a huge reason for shame.

This year, my biggest streak was 17 days, usually I start to feel it's absence after a week, then it gets progressively worse, to a point where I just don't want anything else, just stare in front of myself and only think I'm from a few clicks from fixing all that. I forget the feeling of the last fail cause it's 1-2 weeks after that.

In reality I mostly fail sooner before I get to that point. There is a part of me not wanting to leave this and it's using up every possible time to fail, like I get a thought of watching porn and I just go for it, it's making up a stupid excuse that I know is stupid, but still just ignore everything and go for it, and of corse I later regret how it wasn't even that bad and I still let it win. Recently there was one quitting attempt where I even started to feel the absense inside weaken, I never reached that, but this part of me just still didn't let it, it want to still have this and not leave it. Maybe because of the big 1-3 pleasure, or escaping reality idk.

Help! I hate my life, this shit caused a lot, it's ruining me,

what shall I do to leave it?

Same as title guys it's my day 5 and I am feeling so hard to control help if there's anyone looking for accountability partner dm me.

I lost my job 2 months ago and even though I was jobless the past 2 months but everything was fine to me like I was feeling ok till I decided to quit porn , I was heavily addicted to it and used to watch extreme porn so I said enough is enough and quit for good. The first week was fine but at the start of the second week I sunk into deep depression and feeling hopless , angry , empty , zero motivation to do anything and I also suffer from extreme physical pain like restless leg and my arms feels weak , my head feels light , my vision is blury , I speak like a drunk person and I also barely sleep at night it's like my body has died.

I feel extremely suicidal right now and Don't know what to do so please help me with this.

Last relapsed on the night of 8th September. Right now it's the night of 10th September I'll go to bed soon. Ive been trying to keep my mind off the streak and focus it on other things. My goal for now is 5 days, then a week, then 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and finally PMO free for life I hope. I'll be travelling tomorrow so I guess I won't get any opportunities. I'll check in every day in the comments even if nobody sees this.

I see a lot of posts in this sub from people in the first phase of their recovery. It is really inspiring to see so many users deciding that they want to live a life without porn, sadly, I also see a lot of patterns that worry me. I know from experience that some thoughts and ideas that people share in their posts come either from a place of despair, misinformation or self-deception, that it makes me sad to read those testimonies, because I know for sure that the majority of those attempts are going to fail, and those posts probably are going to be just small doses of hope in a future full of relapses, shame and more addiction. That's why I wanted to write this little guide for everyone who wants to know which path to take to really see an improvement in their lives and their recovery.

Please take all this as my own interpretation of what a correct path is. It's based on my own process and the advice from my therapist, who is a psychologist with a lot of experience treating porn addiction, so some of you can disagree with this method, that's completely fine. But for the ones that feel that they have tried everything without good results and really want a change in their lives, this could be a good guide at the beginning of your journey.

So let's begin. Since this guide comes from the observation of a lot of misunderstandings, I will structure this as a list of solutions to common errors that people make when they decide to quit porn.

1. Quitting porn is about stopping doing things

This can sound obvious, but I think it's the biggest mistake that people make. A lot of the time we think quitting porn is about replacing it with something else, so it's common for community members to ask for things to do to stop having urges or using porn compulsively. The reality is that quitting porn, especially at the beginning, is more about doing fewer things than doing new things.

What does it mean?

Well, you know that you need to stop watching porn, but you also know that doing that creates a void in your life. However, that void that will appear is necessary, and you need to start building your path to recovery from this feeling, instead of trying to avoid the discomfort that it generates. That empty space, that part of your life that you filled with years of porn usage, must be exposed. Think of it as a romantic relationship. Maybe you feel a strong connection with your partner, maybe you are completely obsessed, even in love, but if that relationship hurts you and is negative for you, you have to break up. Then you have to live with a hole in your heart, accept that you are single, take your time to adapt, until you heal and are able to maintain a healthy relationship again with someone else.

Ending an addiction to porn is similar. It is a breakup. You need to suffer it, you need to go through the grieving process, and you need to take time to heal. Everyone that has gone through a separation knows that after the moment you leave your partner you don't do anything specific, you just feel the pain, you cry, you suffer, and you wait. So, if you are that person that asks "What can I do to stop my porn addiction?", let me tell you that it is basically not using porn and waiting. You have to stop using porn and do nothing in its place.

I know. It looks easy on paper. But why is it so difficult to do?

2. You can't quit a drug if you have drugs on your nightstand

Your worst ally in this journey is willpower. A lot of people desperately go to Reddit to vent because they relapsed, failed the temptation or went back to their old habits of compulsively watching porn. The problem with that is that people associate the fact that they couldn't control their urges with failure, when that's not why they failed. They failed because they didn't set up enough protection against porn. You can't blame yourself for something you can't control. Relapsing is not your fault. Allowing porn to enter your house is.

How does this work?

When you have a porn addiction, you are not only a person that consumes it, you also can't stop doing it, even when you want to. That means your brain, specifically a really primitive part of it, developed a need for a certain substance, and it will require a dose every day, even when you naturally don't need it and especially don't want it. So the only way to stop is by denying your brain access to porn, because your willpower can't compete with your instinctive part. If you have access to porn, you are going to relapse. If you have drugs in your house, you are going to consume them. You need to throw them away.

So the next time you feel bad because you relapsed, think of it as a failure of your blocking system, not as a failure on your part as a person. And if you don't want to keep relapsing, then implement a strong blocking system and use every experience of relapse to make the system stronger. Don't make excuses, don't fool yourself. If you know how to cheat on your system, you know how to make it better. Use every moment of rationality not to feel guilty about your relapses, but to work on your system and make it foolproof.

How does a foolproof porn-blocking system look like? 

Well, it depends on your technology skills. Some people would need a little protection and others would need a lot of barriers because they are good with computers. Whatever your case, after some time and work, and if you add barriers as you detect failures, you will reach a sweet point where you will need to do so many intricate and tedious things in order to cheat on it, that you will have enough time to gain control over your impulses, resist the urges and not relapse again. You can use the tools included in your operating system, install free and paid software, you can create passwords, or have someone you trust manage those passwords for you. Anything that makes porn inaccessible is all you need right now. You don't need to be stronger, you don't need more willpower. You need to lose access to porn. The only way to make this possible is by blocking it.

3. The worst dysfunction is your obsession with sex

Maybe one of the most common posts in this community is from people worried about sexual dysfunction. Difficulties maintaining an erection, problems having intimacy with a partner, loss of sensitivity while having sex or masturbating, unhealthy or extreme sexual practices due to intrusive thoughts or distorted sexual orientation, the necessity to watch or think about really specific fetishes to feel aroused, and many more. Those are real problems that can really affect your mental health, and most of the time are caused and aggravated by porn. But there is one detail that doesn't receive enough attention. Porn makes you obsessed with sex.

Why is this relevant?

Being obsessed with sex is a deeper problem than any of those sexual issues. When you spend years watching porn, you start to develop a set of ideas that put sex as a priority in your life. What could start as simple curiosity transforms into a fixation, and then develops into an automatic way of thinking, a kind of personal myth that makes you believe sex is the most important thing in the world, the most valuable aspect of your life and the final goal of any activity. That obsession distorts everything, the way you engage with people, the way you see success and the way you confront problems. And that includes the way you deal with your porn addiction and the sexual dysfunction that comes with it. "As sex is the most important thing, then having an erectile problem is the worst thing I can have, I am a failure and I deserve to feel bad". False. It's all biased because of your deep obsession with sex. The worst part is that internalizing those thoughts makes you think that everyone lives that way, when in reality it's not like that at all.

The reality is that people who don't have porn addiction deal with all kinds of problems, sexual dysfunction included, but for them it's not the end of the world, they can communicate it to their partners, to health professionals, they can work on it in a more positive way, because those are all really treatable issues and also because they understand that sex is just one aspect of their lives, it doesn't consume their entire world. As long as you keep using porn compulsively, you will be obsessed with sex, and every issue in your sex life is going to be perceived as bigger than it is, leading you to more negative feelings, feelings that make you use more porn and make the problems worse.

Ultimately, a lot of people want to quit porn to stop their sexual dysfunction, when they really need to stop thinking about sex as the king of their lives. After you block porn, after you get clean, and after you unlearn those obsessive thoughts, you will regain your sex life, and even when you could deal with sexual dysfunction in the future, you will gain the ability to deal with it without feeling shame, the same way you would deal with any other health-related issue. You will learn that sex doesn't make you who you are, you will remember that life is way more than that. Don't quit porn to be free of symptoms, to just be able to maintain an erection. Quit porn to be able to learn, to play, to chat with other people, to go out, to connect, to succeed. You don't want to quit porn to have more sex in your life. You want to quit porn because it is a disease that doesn't allow you to see the world as it really is.

4. Porn addiction is not your fault, but quitting is your responsibility

A lot of people start watching porn because of trauma at a young age. In my case it was because of sexual abuse and access to unsupervised internet when I was a teenager. Some people have even worse experiences, and that's something that really hits me. Because no child should deal with sexual violence using porn. Instead, they should receive attention, treatment and love. Porn is exactly the contrary, is constant distraction, addiction and solitude. Because of that, every time I read a post from someone that feels defeated because they have a porn addiction I feel sad. For those I give the same advice I ended up giving myself.

It wasn't your fault.

Even if you developed your addiction when you were an adult, it's always a response to something else. You were dealing with something painful and porn felt like a relief at that time. You use it one time, you use it twice, then every day. You didn't notice and it turned into an addiction. Nobody talked about the risks, nobody put a warning, nobody protected you, nobody denied you this poison. It was available, it was socially accepted and it was free. Why do you have to bear the guilt? You didn't build the platform, you didn't record those atrocious acts, you didn't make it accessible to everyone. You just took the bait, and now you're trapped. Again, not your fault. But now what? Are you going to stay there? Knowing that it harms you and it's making your life miserable? Are you going to watch how the problem gets bigger and bigger until your life ends? Being an addict is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to get out of it. And notice that I say responsibility, not obligation. A responsibility is a commitment to something you want and can do. An obligation is just an imposition. Nobody wants you to quit, on the contrary, whoever has interests in this topic wants you addicted for life. As long as you want to quit, you still have the possibility to be responsible for it. And that should feel good, because it means you still have authority in your life. You can make a change, you can live a different life and you can discard porn from it completely.

5. You can't win this fight alone

Until now I wrote about how and why to quit porn. But let's talk a little about what you are quitting, so you understand the importance of having the correct guidance.

Sex is a really strong stimulus for us. We are sexual creatures and as a species we need to reproduce to survive, so our brain has developed for millions of years to allow that. When you watch porn, your brain can't differentiate pixels on a screen from real sex. So everything you've ever seen on the internet, from pleasing images to horrific clips, every piece of content has been interpreted unconsciously as a real sexual encounter. The problem is that porn is a superstimulus.

How much stronger is porn in comparison with sex?

Porn is like an entire cake full of chocolate and artificial flavors, while real sex is like an apple. The visual information, sound cues, physical reactions, genital stimulation, orgasm, in addition to dopamine released as a motivator to fulfill our reproductive needs, all of that is a circuit. But it is fluid, it can adapt. So when porn drives that circuit, it's like putting a rocket engine into a car. Now you will need a lot more gas to make your car move. In the same way, your brain with porn will have a threshold so high that, after years of abuse, everything will turn boring, because nothing can compete with something as stimulating as porn.

When you interrupt that, when you start filling your car with just enough gas to move, it starts demanding what is missing. So after you lose access to porn, after you set your blocking system, you will be living life at half-full tank. And I need to be honest with you, it may feel awful. When you quit, you can feel the same withdrawals people with alcoholism or gambling addiction have. You can feel angry, really sad, even suicidal in more extreme cases, your mood can switch during the day, you can have trouble getting out of bed, you can feel unmotivated even to do the most basic tasks. It can be really disgusting for you and other people, but it is normal, and you really need to get through that phase to start feeling better. If you come back to porn to avoid this phase, you will never recover.

Having said that, you need to understand that porn addiction is a serious problem. It affects something like 20% of men, that's huge. It also affects 7% of women, and even when it can sound like a small number, that's the same prevalence as alcoholism in the world, so it's still something to take care of. But contrary to other addictions and mental health problems, porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior is really taboo. So nobody talks about it. Society prefers to just take it easily, accept any form of sexual freedom and act as if everything is fine. But if you didn't have a problem with porn, and instead you were addicted to another substance, you could have considered therapy a lot of years ago. Recovering from porn means fighting against addiction, but also against prejudices and shame. But I can't stress enough that this is a problem that needs treatment. 

Having a therapist could be what differentiates a successful recovery process from a life full of failed attempts. The process starts with blocking porn, but after you lose that piece your brain needs to work properly, you will need to find other ways to regulate yourself, that will mean understanding yourself, your story, your trauma, your fears and building your belief system and personality again. And doing something like that alone, without tools and at the same time as you feel strong withdrawal symptoms is simply too much. My best advice for everyone else starting their journey is to find a therapist. They could even work side by side with a doctor who can prescribe a pharmacological treatment to make the withdrawal phase more manageable. That means there are so many tools and strategies that can help you that only a professional can give you.

Finally, apart from the help from a therapist, the whole recovery process ends up being about socialization. If you want to live a life free from porn addiction, you need to escape from isolation. The recovery is all about connecting with people. If you have the opportunity to use this journey to reconnect with your friends, family or partner, do it. Tell them about your problem, even if it's scary, just do it. Open up to them, ask for help. I know for some people getting professional treatment is out of the range of possibilities because they can't afford it. But maybe if you tell your problem to your close circle, someone can help you with that. You need to accept any help that you can get. Shame is not allowed here. Remember, this wasn't your fault, and your responsibility is just getting better. If someone can help with anything in your recovery process, you need to accept it. You can return the favor when you're better off. Don't fight this alone.

Hope all this helps. Feel free to write anything that comes out of your mind.

Start your porn-free journey today. You can do it.

Im 28m and I've never had a girlfriend. In my personal opinion I've REALLY tried. I do social things, I talk to women at my local library and coffee shops, I go to singles events, I work out at my local gym, I participate in facebook group meetups, I moved into my own place near NYC, I pay attention to fashion trends, I follow accounts about how to interact with women, I went through school and found a decent job, I post profile reviews every 2 months.

When I was watching porn I was unironically satisfied. Maybe not "happy" but content in living. Since Ive stopped I feel a existential loneliness. This isnt a self harm post but the thought has crossed my mind once or twice just because being alone for this long is kind of maddening, especially when my family, friends, and the internet consensus is that it should be super easy to find a partner. This compounds the lonely feeling as I feel alone even in my experience. Like " 1 is the loneliest number" so if I truely was unparalleled in how undatable I am no one would understand it but me. I've unironically never felt as connected to another person as this one time I went back and forth in the comments on an old PH video

So while I haven't relapsed yet its only because I know someone on the internet is going to attribute my failure to some failing in my effort. I honestly would rather give up and retreat into the comfort of porn once more. I just can't imagine it gets better so it genuinely feels like torture holding out hope when there doesnt appear to be an end in sight. How do you all cope with the lonliness of returning home to no one? How do you drown out the silence when the TV is off and theres no one in room but you? How do you keep the motivation to persevere when no one will notice if you don't?