Somebody stop that wagon!

I reckon it had to happen at some point. I'm a bit disappointed that it came so soon after my big repentence speech, but hey, I'm only human.

It was actually plain old boredom that did it. I had work to do, but I was bored with it, and padding it out to fill the day wasn't an attractive option. So I got through it quickly, and found myself sat at my PC, bored... and managed to find some models websites that weren't picked up by the parental controls.

The temptation was to say hang it all, I’ve earnt plenty of credit in the last five weeks, a bit of a blowout now can’t cancel that out, can it?

So in the last 24 hours I went through a couple of cycles of downloading some (fairly soft) images, realising what I was doing and deleting them all before I'd really got into them, and then going back and doing it again...

And I found something harder still lurking on an old back-up CD I had knocking around too.

So, I fell off the wagon. There was the potential to make the most of it, let the wagon roll off into the sunset while I dove into the porn thing properly, but I did manage to stop myself, made sure I had completely deleted all traces of porn, got up and ran hell for leather after the wagon.

Getting back on might not be as easy as it was originally, but the fact that I stopped and stepped away from it so soon is a good sign. However, only time will tell whether the obsession/addiciton has got hold of me again.

Random jottings

Anybody care to critique that last post? It started out as a genuine prayer, but settled into an almost poetic style straight away. Part of me wanted to make it work as a poem before I published it, but I decided it was more appropriate to leave it as I prayed it. Maybe some poet/bloggers will tell me how well (or, probably, otherwise) it works as a poem as it is.

That was the first time writing has really distracted me from what might otherwise have been time trawling the net for porn. I felt the first hint of temptation, but instead of giving in I prayed, by typing my prayer into the blog. Unorthodox, maybe, but I can’t be the only person who thinks best with the written word (although I may possibly be the only one who prays best that way...)

Clean?

I'm not sure as this is the first time I've recorded it, but I think this is the first time I've gone a whole month without visiting a porn site since I discovered their appeal.

Undoubtedly blogging my progress has helped; my mind works best with the written word, so these confessionals have been a cleansing process. But how clean am I?

Well, in one sense, I have truly repented; that is to say, having realised I should stop using porn, I made a conscious decision to stop and have followed through on that for a month now.

But I'm still carrying it in my head. I know there are girls I find really attractive that have got their kit off for all to see on the net, and that knowledge leads, inevitably, I guess, to the temptation to look at them. I need a mental de-tox to purge them from my head so the temptation goes away.

I guess that's one of the consequences I'll have to deal with though.

But - and this is where the whole thing seems worthwhile - I have felt God speaking to me again. He has reminded me that it is not wrong to find women attractive. It is not wrong to be tempted.

It is not wrong to be tempted.

My mind may need some work, but spiritually I'm clean. I'm clean enough for God, and if that's not good enough for anyone else, then :-P

Thoughts about paying

Whatever part paying for the privilege of porn played in my decision to quit, it has made me think about why I feel bad about financially supporting the porn industry.

Initially, when my interest was in professional glamour models, I didn’t see that much of a problem. They had chosen a career, set themselves clear lines as to what they would and would not do, apparently made a decent wage, and it was their own choice. But as I got dragged deeper into this world, I found more amateur sites, and the obvious question arises: why? Why would some ordinary girl off the street take her clothes off in front of a camera? Why would she then proceed to have sex in front of it? Even allowing for the fact that there will be some who genuinely enjoy doing so, given the sheer volume of amateur porn sites available, surely they can’t all do it just for kicks? Some web sites I stumbled across used the fact that they had persuaded/tricked/bribed the subject into participating as their main selling point. Admittedly, this could just be part of an act, put on to satisfy a certain type of guy, while in reality the victim is a well-paid actress. The fact is, I don’t know the real reason why any of these girls are taking part, and the obvious assumption is that they feel it’s an easy way to get much-needed cash.

It shouldn’t be that way. I can’t change it, but by paying into the business I’ve done the opposite. Sure, maybe I was finally paying for what I’d been using for so long. Maybe I was helping someone pay her bills. But surely there are more constructive things that I, as a Christian and as a decent, right-thinking human being, could have done with the money, maybe even to help women who would otherwise be tempted to earn money this way.

And besides, I have this nagging feeling that the women in question will see very little, if any, of my money.

Moving the goalposts

I am up and down a lot at the moment.

I find myself looking at magazines (of the FHM variety) and enjoying the eye-candy. Because I'm allowed to go to the bikini line, I have been going.

Like I said, I'm not going to beat myself up for that. That does not constitute a breach of the rules.

However, I can feel it weakening my resolve: If X is ok, Y isn't much worse.

Add to that the occasional, unavoidable glimpse across the border: Oh look, she's got no top on. Well, that's not so bad either.

And before you know it, you're looking for a loophole wherever you can find it: Yeah, she's naked, but you can't see anything good...

and so the goalposts move.

To date, I have quickly looked away from so much as a naked breast. Any transgressions beyond the bikini line have been brief and inadvertant.

However, there have been some, so I am setting up an exclusion zone around the bikini line. I know it may sound extreme, but I have to set myself rules which will keep me off the hard stuff. And part of that means stepping back when the temptation gets stronger.

And yet...

...today, pictures of girls just did not interest me.

A man on the edge

Don't expect too much in the way of coherence today, I just need to get some thoughts down.

Glancing back over this blog, it doesn't really look like there's been much of a struggle. It reads almost as if I over-reacted by calling this an addiction, and all I've done is decided to rant about how evil porn is instead of surfing for it.

But since I woke up this morning, those girls have been calling to me, trying to convince me they're just a click away. Today I haven't been resisting the temptation; I'm actually having to fight it off. I'm suddenly all too aware how close to the edge I am. I kind of think I shouldn't be writing about it, but since I was thinking about it anyway, I might as well put my thoughts to constructive use.

On the positive side, I have realised I can't get through this on my own, and have surrounded myself with the things of God. I made sure I gave the day to Him first thing, read a few chapters of the Bible, and even now have some Christian music playing.

Even now I don't think I've done justice to the struggle that's going on inside my head. Part of me is convinced that a picture of my favourite model, even fully clothed, as a bit of eye candy, is all I need. Yeah, right, it would stop there wouldn't it.

I won't do it. I'm not giving in.

Not today.

Why now?

I’ve said before that my subscribing to a porn site was the catalyst for this change, and lately I’ve given more thought to why this should be.
I’m certainly far enough from the breadline that the money itself isn’t the issue.
Maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t claim it as an accident, or maybe it was the scale of the binge, rather than the money.
Perhaps God had got so fed up of me repeatedly going back to it that He would have caused me to crash anyway.

Arguably these are all factors, but I’ve realised something else.
Since getting into internet porn, there are things I have done, things I haven’t done, and things I have thought about doing.

To start with most of what I did was surf free sites, download some pictures and the occasional movie. Mostly it was professional glamour models – I could be fairly certain they were consenting adults, earning what they considered a decent wage for the job. In the main it was pretty soft stuff I liked too.

What I didn’t do was go anywhere that looked remotely illegal, especially if it hinted at children being involved. Sites bragging about taking advantage of ordinary women are also way out of line and I’d leave them if I happened across them.

The free sites were, of course, just teasers, giving me the appetite to subscribe to everything they had to offer. I didn’t want to do that, I liked being anonymous and not spending so much, so I surfed off elsewhere.

In doing so, I discovered harder pictures: threesomes, foursomes, wild orgies caught my imagination. They were a fantasy at first, but as I was drawn deeper into this world I found myself wishing I had the chance to do these things.

And so I discovered swinging, and contact websites full of women seemingly like those I saw on porn sites, looking for no-strings sex. I checked out adverts for women in distant towns I would be visiting on business. I began to word my own advert in my head, although I never posted it, or replied to anyone else’s.

The ‘cyber-sex’ option came to mind – it wasn’t real sex, after all, just a kind of game, and I could pretend to be someone entirely different – but I didn’t follow that up either.

When I subscribed to a porn site (and not one of the softer ones I’d have been satisfied with a couple of years ago) a line had been crossed.

Had I been a single man, I would have been more seriously tempted than I was to try cyber-sex or reply to those contact ads.

Many years ago, before discovering internet porn, I refused to go to a strip club with some colleagues on principle. Had the opportunity arisen this year, I would have leapt at the excuse. Using porn had changed my view on this point - after all, how different was it?

By subscribing to porn websites I had crossed another line, and in doing so the rest of the lines blurred. The porn addict in me was taking more control, and I wasn’t sure how much further I would stretch the boundaries if it didn’t stop there.

System Checkpoint

Three weeks.

Two deviations to the bikini line.

A bit more masturbating than I would have liked.

Not as much praying and Bible reading as I had hoped.

But no porn.

Little steps, eh?

Harmless entertainment?

The defenders of pornography will say that’s all it is, that the women involved do so of their own free will, and will deny any claims that it objectifies them or changes men’s perception of women.

They’re wrong.

I’ve been visiting internet porn sites on and off for the best part of two years, and it has undoubtedly changed the way my mind works. I am still strong-willed enough to have stopped looking; a long way from thinking all women are like that and becoming a degenerate perv. Probably being married has kept my feet on the floor, a constant reminder that most women are a long way removed from the girls on those websites.

Even so, now I am aware of more subtle changes in my thinking. I thought about doing the things I was seeing, wondered how I could make them happen. Sexual fantasies may well be harmless in context, but porn made them real, showed that there were people out there willing to do the same things… The value I place on my marriage was the only thing to stop me crossing the line and trying to find such people at some points. The fact is, the experience has shown me how some, less strong-willed individuals may be led astray by the portrayal of women in pornography.

On some level I’m still disappointed that my wife isn’t like that. In my mind everyone else is having wild sex at the drop of a hat, while I’m having pretty ordinary sex (relatively speaking) a few times a week. It’s a thin line between encouraging her to be more adventurous, and turning her into an object.

I am strong enough to realise that these thoughts are wrong and put them aside, but I cannot unsee the things I have seen, the images that have made me think this way. This way of seeing women has burrowed into my mind over the months. It’s become acceptable, at least to part of me. After the bikini incident I did want to see more, and the pull is still very strong. Images of all kinds of acts are in my memory, and while I may avoid seeking them out afresh, the memories are there, when I close my eyes or my mind wanders. It’s as if they haunt me.

I can only pray to God that this won’t last.