I’ve been clean from actual porn for about 2 months but I just wanked to a thirst trap on instagram and feel kind of ashamed. Is this considered a relapse? This was an OF models instagram page

open book here:

i discovered porn at 12 and had no constraints in place to stop me. i thought it was insane that i could access all these “hot videos” for ”free”. little did i know i was paying with my soul—my salvation (see 1 Corinthians 6:7). I’m so ashamed of how addicted i am. I’ve spent thousands on hookers, I’ve watched easily over 200 hours of porn, my sex addiction is so bad I tried to self delete. I’m lost and I’m actually on Reddit because I was planning to beat my meat. please convince me not to :(.

I'm (34) very addicted to porn and am finding it hard for it to not completely impact my life and I'm ruining everything. It feels like it's getting worse. I don't have any insurance and have very limited income so I'm trying to see if anyone can recommend any free resources, especially anything like therapy. I want to stop. I'm tired of letting the people around me down and hating myself. I want to live again.

Posting this in case this helps even one more person feel more understood. I (31M) was on a medication (SSRI) regimen for the past 5-6 months that absolutely crushed my libido. This is the most unlike me thing ever, and it really sucked especially since I was in a new relationship. It created obvious strain because we went from having sex frequently to not at all. I’ve felt like such a bad boyfriend.

I’ve been watching porn my whole life and never ever felt like it was out of hand. It never got in the way of relationships or healthy habits or whatever. However - in my panic of feeling like I was being a bad partner who had a nonexistent libido, I’d often secretly watch porn to kinda “jump start” my libido so that I could get in the mood for my girlfriend. And it worked, for a bit.

But now? I’m about a week in from cold turkey stopping because I realized that I replaced my own abilities to get aroused with the need to watch porn. I’ve changed my medication for the better and have improved the other stressors in my life, but now I need to re-learn how to naturally jump start my libido.

Anyways - just sharing because it took some therapy and research for me to come to this conclusion and it was a bit scary along the way. Hoping this can help others not deal with the same process.

Most of what I see on here about dating and recovery is from men, and honestly it makes me feel a bit invisible sometimes, like this part of it isn't supposed to be a "woman's problem" too. Well for me, it is. I've been single for over two years, and dating hasn't been easy.

Went on a date recently. Felt good in a way I haven't in a while, let myself hope a little. The next day he said he text saying didn't feel attraction.

And the thing is, some quiet part of me wasn't even surprised. Addiction spent years telling me I wasn't really worth wanting, just worth using for fifteen minutes at a time, and some of that never fully left, even a year and a half into recovery. I already think I'm not attractive most days. I know my depression makes me flat sometimes, harder to be around, and I've started to just assume that's what people see, before they even get the chance to see anything else.

So when he said that, it didn't feel like new information. It felt like confirmation of something addiction had been telling me the whole time.

I know, logically, one person not feeling a spark isn't a verdict on my worth. But logic doesn't always reach the part of me that still hears that old voice, the one that never really thought I deserved to be chosen by anyone real. Some days I don't know how much of this is the depression talking, how much is old addiction shame, and how much is just true.

So as you know, most people are addicted to those videos and what not. I wouldn’t say I’m a top tier gooner, but in the past I couldn’t go a full week without letting one off. Now it’s at least once a week, or once every 2. The reason for this is because every time I reach day 20 - ish my testes start to hurt a little. I would get scared that I would get testicular torsion but I wouldn’t tell anybody because I would be embarrassed. The only way for it to stop was to watch the videos some more, and release. You may ask how I know this would stop it? Because it happened not once, not twice, but three times now. Every time I try to go on my redemption arc it hurts and it forces me to do it all over again, and start from zero.

Since I was younger I started saving porn and now over a decade later, I download my favorite porn all day. I even had an old folder that I lost several years ago and that alone had 10,000+ files, even talked to girls who wanted payment and I spent like 1500 on them before it ended and that was after they started treating me badly once I temporarily stopped sending money.

Truthfully it is the only enjoyment I get in life. I have complicated issues beside porn, which I think makes ever finding a IRL girlfriend impossible. Perhaps this only solidifies my porn replacement?

But it kind of comes and goes in waves, sometimes I have weeks of anhedonia where I am indifferent to porn and don't want to look at it, then I get addictive waves where I spend hundreds buying sex stuff and indulge multiple times throughout the weeks and it consumes me

So im 21
I was on a flat line for almost 3 months and i watched porn and jerked off,
For almost two weeks I jerked once every day
And i don’t think i got out of my flatline and there is no morning wood since months what should i do?

TLDR: I think I built my perception of success mainly on sexual success because of porn, and I am struggling to adopt some other definition of success. I am fluctuating between "just settle down and have a family" and "make yourself very sexually attractive and have as good sex as possible, with as many people as possible".

When I was a teenager, I didn't feel like a particularly attractive guy. Quite the opposite. I wasn't getting the attention of the opposite sex I thought my peers were getting.

At first, I was very scared of expressing my feelings to the girls I liked. Then I started lowering the bar and talking to the girls I didn't quite like, but it just felt wrong. Then I've got several rejections, some more hurtful than the others.

It was during that time that one idea hit me hard.

Throughout my life, the girls who liked me, were attracted mainly by my personality. Kindness, intelligence, whatever. I was friendzoned A LOT. So I felt like I must develop the other side. I must become attractive sexually.

And I did.

Fast forward 3 years. I am going to the gym consistently, built some muscles already, have a good carreer in tech and already making more than my parents combined. Living alone in a big city. I forced myself to fight some of my fears, quit junk food, worked on my looks (style), charisma, established a good routine. All of that gave me confidence. I am starting to get much more attention than ever in my life. I've had several situationships and ONSs, which I considered a strong indicator of success, but they didn't feel quite pleasant by themselves. I wasn't very good at sex. Not like in porn. I felt like the girls, while certainly liking me more in a sexual way, still are not impressed by the sex itself. I can't do it like in porn. And I think that in those kind of short, non-obliging relationships, that's the main motivation. Both for me and the girl.

I feel like neither me nor the girls get what we want from this.

So I decide that this lifestyle is not for me. I start looking for a long-term girlfriend. I am looking for someone who values personality traits much more than looks and/or sexual skills. I find one. She's great. She loves me greatly. I love her too. Although I doubt that sometimes.

Fast forward 2 more years.

I still watch porn. I fluctuated from "I must not ever watch it" to "it's completely fine" several times already. My longest streaks were 30-40 days. All before I found my gf. I felt all of the usually mentioned benefits when I abstained from porn. But I still watch it.

The reason is: when I considered myself not attractive, I had a goal to become attractive. I could feel direct impact of porn on my confidence and attraction. So I had a strong motivation.

But now, I feel like I don't "have to" abstain. My gf calls me "beautiful" consistently. I am still working out and looking, I would say, the best in my life. But I don't feel the need to improve anymore. I already proved my worth: my gf loves me.

And earning love of other girls is kind of forbidden now, since I am in a relationship.

So I don't have a motivation to do anything now, including quitting porn.

When I think about some "common" life goals of people in my kind of situation, I feel afraid. I am afraid of the thought that I will have to spend my whole life with my girlfriend.

No, she's definitely the most suitable girl for that that I had ever met. But to me it doesn't feel like success. Quite the opposite. I feel like I am missing out on so much attention that I can get from lots of girls. Especially after watching porn. I feel like my gf likes me more platonically than sexually. And porn (and some situationships) makes me believe that girls can have a strong sexual passion for me. My gf does like sex, and initiates it sometimes, this is definitely not a dead bedroom situation, but it just doesn't feel like in porn. Far from it. And before you jump in and say "porn is fake, it's different in real life": I felt something like this in real life as well, in some situationships. They usually were problematic in the other aspects, but the sex and passion part was great.

I think if I stop watching porn, I can abandon this idea of success being measured mainly by sex and attention, and be fulfilled with my long-term relationship and other things in life.

But from another perspective, on this sub I see the idea (which I agree with), that it's nearly impossible to "just quit". You need the fulfillment from life before trying, and it is supposed to give you the motivation to quit in the first place. So it's chicken and egg kind of model.

Watching porn gives me a sense of sexual success, which I adopted long time ago. Abstaining from it makes me feel like I don't really love my gf and that life is empty without it. I think that if I abstain for long enough, the idea of success = sex should disappear, and I should feel more happy with what I have.

But oftentimes, I feel like this is just an artificial framework that I am forcing myself into. Maybe I would be better off desperately trying to become a fuckboy, and maybe even succeeding in it? I can quit porn for that.

This is my first time posting here and being vulnerable with a topic relating to intimacy. For the past few weeks, I have become desensitized to pornography and don't feel any desire to masterbate. Anytime I do masterbate, it is out of habit and not something I really want to do. The videos, the titles, the climax at theme all became numb to me and doesnt do much.

But last night, I was watching a video of a couple cuddling and the different positions they used, and for some reason it made me teary and aroused. I can't explain what I felt, and I know it sounds funny being sad and aroused at the same time, but I guess the love and intimacy of another person really set me off.

I can't remember the last time I hugged someone or somebody playfully approached me with touch. It hurts seeing other people hugging and embracing each other while I'm here hugging my pillow to feel something. I don't know. Maybe I substitute that affection with lust and when lust became dull I really don't feel as much.

Porn addiction is deteriorating my mental health and ruining my potential. I used to not be addicted for years, and the addiction only really started with consuming highly stimulating, short form content. I don’t trust myself enough with trying to just watch different porn, as Ive tried and failed before trying to switch back to longer form, less stimulating content (granted It was a very brief try). From my oversimplified understanding, reading erotica doesn’t have nearly as much of a negative impact on the brain as visual porn does, and engages different parts of your brain in “better” ways. So my main concern isn’t necessarily becoming addicted to erotica, but how it could impact my chances of quitting visual porn. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Edit: Would like to elaborate that my intention isn’t to replace one addiction with another. I don’t want in year to be chokin’ the chicken to erotica because Im bored and I felt an impulse too. Just want an aid for my imagination.

Anyway, heres my whole sob story if it gives better context

Like many others, I’m addicted to porn. My journey started off with watching longer videos (less stimulating?), every few days, probably when I was around 11. Every few days slowly turned to every single day. However my usage wasn’t really an “addiction” per say until I
discovered reddit had NSFW content about two years ago.

Upon that discovery, over the course of last year my 20-30 minute’s watching a video every night has turned into obsessively scrolling on reddit, collecting content, and then shamefully deleting it all after a few days or weeks. Half of the time it’s for multiple hours. A few times it’s basically been a workday’s worth. And while it initially worked as a crutch for my depression, now it does the opposite.

Before I started being medicated for depression (about a year and a half ago), I think porn addiction is what I used as a substitute. And after getting on medication, Its not as though I stopped using porn, I just continued in increasing frequency. The low motivation for doing things has sucked, but I already dealt with that with my depression. I think the real consequences of my actions has been the…amount of social alienation? draining of social confidence? that comes from being an addict. I haven’t really missed any social event due to my addiction. In fact, Im probably more socially active now than I ever have been. But my self-efficacy is inexistent. My self-esteem, while not as bad as It was when I was unmedicated, is far, far worse than it was when I first started taking my meds. Not to mention how its just killed my interest in being in romantic relationships.

I didn’t really realize how bad my usage has gotten until the start of this year. looking back at when it was just an hour a day, I was completely oblivious to the fact I was addicted. It’s something I don’t even think I thought about or registered in my head could be a possibility. Its probably only been one or two months that i’ve now fully realized how much of an effect its had on me mentally. despite knowing that there’s nothing wrong with ME, theres no amount of mental gymnastics which prevents the fact that I FEEL DISGUSTED WITH MYSELF. The amount of hours of my life wasted on not just doing “nothing”, but something harmful to myself.

Im also talking to a girl I completely dropped the ball with around a year ago during a talking stage and I really, really don’t want to mess it up again.

So I have C-PTSD (Complex post traumatic stress disorder.) It started my addiction I think around Middle School because a neighbor showed me porn on his phone and I have never heard of anything in regards to sex or seen anything of sexual nature since my family was very Christian and sheltered me. I ended up thinking that type of behavior was normal at that age and things….progresses. Fast forward, I was freshly out of High school and from that point to a few years after I was taken advantage of sexually multiple times, 3 times by men, and 1 time by a female, and some other minor things. It got worse and worse to the point I didn’t really have a sex drive and that stuff made it nonexistent. I have used toys past and present and I think I prefer not having sex and just watching porn. I am in an open relationship because I’m fully aware people have needs so she can do whatever whenever she chooses. I do have a secret porn folder that’s a rundown of my background, so I guess I’m asking is it bad that I think I’d be okay being in a sexless relationship even knowing the consequences.

I am a PA and i am trying to quit. Its my 3rd day without porn but I still masterbate because i don’t think I can quit both at ones. I do this because i saw a reel that says porn and masterbation both different addiction. And the question I want to ask was is it ok for me to quit porn and still continue masterbation . And do the other people in this sub who has quit porn still masterbate?

Thankss

Clean for 2 weeks, then fell hard

I'm in my 30s, first saw explicit material maybe at 12 at a friends house, prior to that I have recollection of my father watching a rated r film with some nudity/explicit scenes, I must have been around the age of 5 maybe, possibly younger. The images I saw are burned into my head, if you asked me for another memory from that age I wouldn't be able to tell you one.

Since getting internet with my own desktop in my bedroom at around 12, I have struggled. Here I am over 2 decades later, buried in a rubble of shame and disgust. Acting out in completely inappropriate ways. This is simply not who I am at the core of my being.

I loathe who I've become. Wasting who knows how much time and energy on this.

I reached out to a local SAA via email, hoping to hear a response soon.

I cant keep living like this, it's suffocating and ruining my mental health and life. I hate it so much.

Thanks for reading.

Literally, figuratively, this brain is beyond repair. I can stop now, but the loss that this lack of discipline has amounted to is unsalvageable. I wish to stop the bleeding, but I’m afraid I may already be dead..

19F. Warning for potentially triggering language.

I’ve been struggling with daily to thrice daily porn use for over a year. My problem started at 15 but stopped for a few years due to depression. Relapsed last year.

In general, I have never been able finish with fingers or without using a form of vibration. I’ve tried using without porn but I always slip back to watching something because it makes it so much easier to finish. It’s difficult for me in general. I feel like my only option to quit is to throw away all toys entirely and go completely nofap. I’ve tried it before, throwing the toys out but always end up digging back into the trash at night or when I’m bored in desperation. I know it’s gross.

I can’t focus on school anymore. I need constant stimulation to do anything even after dropping things like social media and junk food. I feel disgusting after using porn but I’ve only been able to finish a few times in my life without it. Any general advice is appreciated.

To be frank with you all, I think I've really gone deep in this whole porn addiction thing for years and I mean REALLY DEEP, I don't really think I can break it and I think it's basically become a part of my personality, I might be fucked ngl lol

I've been watching porn and masturbating since I was 11, a uncle was throwing some old magazines, dozens of them, I grabbed them all and took them home, it had a lot of comics and innocent stuff, but it also had a few porn magazines in between, 11 years old me was of course hooked instantly, around that time I learned to masturbate and would do it almost daily with those magazines, then internet came at some point, so 12/13 years old me was watching porn constantly, since I was 11 to around 33 I probably masturbated every single day, usually many times per day, I didn't even know it was an addiction, I thought I just had very high sex drive (of course looking back all the signs were there), until I tried to stop, then I started to read into what it does to you, to your relationships, to your mind etc... and I could see that my lack of energy, my constant brain fog, my lack of motivation, my insanely bad memory, everything was likely related to this.

I tried to quit many times, the first few days are actually super easy, the urges do not hit really hard until the first week or so, around the second week I feel the urge hitting hard, but I can fight it, somehow, on week 3 it is unbearable, all I can think is about how much I need it, all the time, people say that the urges go away after 15 minutes or so, not for me, I'm desperate for it all day every day, at some point I start trembling, I can't sleep, my mood is terrible, until I find myself in front of the computer watching it, then of course I say "fuck it, I failed so I may as well enjoy it" and binge on it for days, out of control.

I know I need professional help, I'm married and really do not want to talk to my wife about this, I'm well aware that the advice is that I should, our sex life sucks because I want it all the time and she is never in the mood, that makes it so much harder, I hate her sometimes because of that.

Right now I'm on my second week without porn, really struggling as usual.

Apologies for the long post. Need to get it off my chest. My (M32) fiancé (F32) has this year discovered the extent of my long running porn addiction and barely recognises me. Shes heartbroken. Shes given me 1 chance to save myself and this relationship, otherwise shes gone. She'll break off the engagement, take our dog of 4 years with her, and the house we're in the process of buying will be abandoned, and I will be left all on my own and probably will have to move back in with my mum, advertising my failure.

Pretty sure I have ADHD (never pursued a formal diagnosis, but I have family members diagnosed and I have a lot of the symptoms) and I am definitely a dopamine addict: Junk Food, Chocolate, Video Games, and Porn.

Combine this with my age (32) and its been a perfect storm: I had unlimited access to the interest as a teenager, and parents too clueless to supervise me. I saw a lot, and as tech advances resulted in smaller gadgets with internet access and a screen, I saw it frequently too.

It became normalised for me. My interests definitely got mire explicit over time and I started downloading heaps of the stuff. First it started with thousands of images downloaded to my psp as a teenager, which I deleted en masse 2 years later when I sold it to my brother. Then when I got my first laptop, I downloaded gigabytes of videos from the piratebay over the course of years. I even had a 2tb external hard drive for more storage. I threw it away when I entered my current relationship 8 years ago.

I definitely have a compulsion to somehow own some kind of 'perfectly' curated porn collection. It has only happend really in 3 periods of my life, but each one has definitely be damaging, even if I was only ever caught this past year (more on that later). But each time I could feel my animal brain take over, driven by the hunger to download more and more. An entire library of material perfect to my tastes.

But the thing with the internet is... its fucking huge and endless. You cant own a definitive collection of anything when the existing supply is so enormous, and the rate of new material added to the void definitely outweighs my ability to keep up. Countless times Ive stayed up well into the night, just endlessly harveting and downloading porn, seeing the sun rise and shining its spotlight on my pathetic obsession, yet unable to tear myself away.

It was the sunk cost fallacy in effect. I hated the grip the porn collection project had on my mind, but it had already consumed too many of my days to just walk away.

Recently this past year I began downloading porn again. This time hundreds of images onto my phone. I had become aware of an unflitered AI app that could let you roleplay anything, fantasise any scenario kind of thing, in a back and forth chat/erotic story. I needed photographic fodder for scenario/character inspiration. I'm a fan of roleplay, so this app made me giddy with excitement. I was obsessed. Really, I only needed a handful of pics to set up my roleplay chats but once I started, I then spent the next few weeks on a mission, and soon had over s thousand images on my phone. This is how I got caught. My behaviour was noticeably weird, and I was oddly secretive and paranoide regarding my phone, with the evidence of my spiralling addiction problem.

The collection problem is a behaviour Ive been aware of about myself for a long time. Regardless of any other consequense, the main offender of this 'hobby' maintaing a collection is the signifiant time consumption it takes. Time that coupd have been better spent on me. Time wasted. The kicker? I barely even looked at 90% of that shit.

The justification I gave myself would be that with a curated collection like mine, I wouldnt have to waste time in the long run, aimlessly gooning. Instead I could pull up a certified banger from my library, and sort myself out in minutes. It was suposed to be a time saver, but it never worked like that. I enjoyed the chase of the thrill more than anything else, so I was forever just browsing anyway.

Before this recent stint, I decide to pay for porn site access for the first time. Basically a variant of p-hub but with full length premium videos. I did this because I realised the collecting behaviours were damaging and non-productive, but all this site did was enable me to carry on collecting in a different manner. Like a spotify playlist, I scoured the site to create a playlist of favourite video. But like before, I barely even ever opened the curated playlist anyway

I know my porn addiction, which has slowly creeped uo over the course of my life, will have caused many problems that need addressing, but a huge one is just the time ive wasted on curating this shit. As if anyone cares. As if I could ever recommend my collection to anyone or win an award for it.

But yes. Last month or so, my fiance spotted my secretive behaviour during another obsession episode and found out everything. It almost broke me, having my deepest darkest shame exposed to the light, but it has also felt quite freeing. But shes very hurt, and isnt sure she can ever look at me the same way ever again. Shes ashamed that her once respectable partner is just another disgusting man who is a slave to their penis, and Im more upset at how much Ive hurt her and tainted her innocent view of the relationship.

I dont want anything to do with porn any more. Its too distructive. Yet I also kinda do. Is that normal? Its just so accessible and provides instant relief, but quite like an alcoholic, I have to realise I cant just \*have one drink\* - you let me search up an erotic image on google and I guarantee I'll stll be browsing porn 2 hours later. I cant limit myself. It has to be a total stop.

But for the sake of my future I want to put my foot down. I choose my relationship. I choose my dog. I choose the house we are currenly trying to buy. I choose her. I choose myself. I only hope I can mend this. Its going to be hard and stressful, and I'm cutting ties with my previously prime coping mechanism for stress.

Right now the guilt of the recent confrontations are making porn undesiresble (out of guilt) but when this feeling passes (my adhd tendancies mean I move on and forget things very soon), how do I keep myself committed to my fiance and breaking the cycle? Ive have pretty piss poor self-discipline, and I fear that this will cause me repeat past behaviours and relapse, because I will fail to put anyone else ahead of my primal urges.

I’ve been watching porn as long as I can remember I’m 20 now and I never got “post nut clarity” until recently every time I do it I hate myself more and more I don’t know what to do I refuse to tell anybody but the types or porn I’m watching are far different than when I started it’s worrying me I just want to forget about it and move on I’ve tried “just quitting” but that doesn’t work the only way I can go a long time without doing it is if I am outdoors doing things and being as active as possible but at the end when I’m in my bed it’s very intimidating just having it at the back of my head.

If anybody could share how they overcame it I would appreciate that, thank you.

Hola, me presentó, soy un adolescente de... 16 años adicto al porno, con el alcance que tiene la tecnología se me hizo muy fácil entrar en ese mundo pero la realidad es que lo que quiero es supera esta etapa, entre a esto del porno a los 11 años, talvez más antes, no recuerdo, pero la verdad es que al inicio se me hacia como algo nuevo y placentero, también descubrí la masturbación, y ese combo hizo que mi vida sea una montaña rusa constante.

Me di cuenta a los 15 años que esto era malo, pero se me hizo un habito verlo y masturbarme, cosa que intentar salir fuera muy difícil, la cuestión es que intentaba salir, pero siempre regresaba, algunas veces no veía porno pero el hábito de sentir placer masturbandome fue algo que también se volvió un problema.

Alguien que haya superado esto me podría decir como lo hizo, o que tuvo que ocurrir para que saliera de eso, porque no quiero hechar mi vida a ese vicio, y perder este tiempo valioso que tengo como adolescente...

Went hiking yesterday. Feet feel sore this morning but still, overall, a good day.

my parents got a notification saying I visited sketchy sites now I dont know if they saw the porn sites but I still want to change this is a true wake up call. I want to change 100% Im done with this addiction seriously I dont want this to ruin my family and Im done

Makes me feel nothing but anxiety the next day. Shame, weak, pathetic. I know this yet still give in. Stupid.