Crikey!

Didn't realise I'd been away that long.

Well, my grand challenge fell apart a bit when I recently discovered some porn I hadn't destroyed. And so begins another downward spiral...

A challenge to myself

Here's the deal:

I MB'd this morning. Before that, I did it Friday. And before that, Wednesday, at the end of a binge of daily porn & mb.

Without consciously trying, I have managed to extend the period without mb'ing from, well, hours, to a day, to 2 days, to 4 days.

So from hereon in, I'm going to attempt to double the gap, until it kills me. Or I just lose count (which, now I come to think about it, seems like a useful cop-out, especially since I have a handy blog to help me track the days).

So, doubling the gap until it kills me.

Additional ground rules:

1. MB as part of sex with my now rapidly expanding spouse is allowed outside of the challenge
2. Use of porn (the definition of which is liable to change during this potentially life-long challenge) is so obviously forbidden that typing this seems a waste of time. Still, we don't want my addict cheating now, do we?
3. Each ocurrence of MB, whether allowed by the challenge or not, will be recorded here. If you don't want to read about such personal habits, well, you should have left this post long before now.
4. Doubling will not be applied strictly until I reach professional status. So, I am allowing myself to MB in 8 days time, but if I last for 10, the next gap will still be 16 days. Look, it's challenging enough already, OK? I'll up the ante as soon as I can decide what qualifies me as a professional non-w*nker.
5. The challenge runs alongside the non-use of porn. Illegal mb will not reset the porn-free clock, unless, of course, it is porn-assisted.

Let the challenge begin!

It's gone.

It comes and goes, this urge to examine pretty girls in scanty clothes.

Right now, it's gone, vanished without trace, and I don't know why. I wonder whether, if I knew the answer to that, the rest of it would suddenly become clear to me.

Maybe I just binged so heavily just before this sober patch that I'm sick of it. After all, that's what happened when I first started this blog.

It's a strange creature, this addiction.

I'm not sure why the attraction isn't there, why the urge has gone; but I'll enjoy the peace of mind it leaves me, because there's one thing I am sure of.

It will be back.

Addendum

Two posts back, I wrote:

Well, I'm going to take a couple of weeks to regroup. It would be nice to stay clean for the rest of June, but if it ends up weaning myself off slowly, so be it.

That doesn't sound very positive, now, does it?

So, I have decided, to clarify my position, that I intend to stay clear of porn for the rest of June, but won't make any commitment about MB for the time being. I just tumbled back into the stinking pit and think I'm better off climbing out a step at a time, for now.

Just realised

I just realised I had to cut a sentence from the 'About me' bit on this page. Disappointingly, that sentence was:

The last time I looked at hard-core porn was 11th November 2004.

I'm not sure when that ceased to be accurate, but, well, I saw some yesterday. Not just saw, but sought out, looked at in some detail, and actively enjoyed.

Grrr.

Failed experiments

Over the last couple of months I have been dabbling with some alternative recovery plans.

While I was without a permanent internet connection, ignoring the problem, including not blogging and not visiting the support board, seemed to work. For a time. I found alternative ways of acting out, and without this blog to let off steam, or the support board to go to for help, the addiction began to grow.

But I din't binge; I looked, I got bored, I went away again.

I thought that meant it was getting under control; that although looking at porn was something I did, it was just a bad habit, not a harmful compulsion.

And so I started treating it as such; I recognised that it had its place in my life, but that there were more important, not to mention wholesome, things I should be doing.

I would just prioritise porn out of my life.

That also worked, for a time.

But porn wasn't prohibited; it was just, for later. A tiny crack in the defences, but a crack nonetheless.

And, when I had done everything I needed to do, Porn was there, prising open the crack, ready to break down the defences and overwhelm me again.

So, what am I going to do? How do I break the binge-feel crappy-purge cycle?

Well, I'm going to take a couple of weeks to regroup. It would be nice to stay clean for the rest of June, but if it ends up weaning myself off slowly, so be it.

I'll try to prioritise porn out of my life, and I'll work on a new plan. And then, July will be the month I stay clean.

A recurring theme

As I look back over some past blog entries, one thing, above all else, is painfully obvious.

When it gets bad, when I feel at my lowest, when the temptation is strong, whatever else may be affecting me, one thing is always true.

I'm trying to do it without God.

I don't have the strength to get through this. Not alone.

So why do I keep trying?

How Bizarre

Having decided, before the occasion arose, that I would save myself for marriage, keep sex as something special, unique to myself and my wife. I struggled to beat off my natural sexual desires during my teens and early 20s, showed as much restraint as humanly possible as my relationship with my now wife flourished, and saved myself for the wedding night. Sex was special, and remains so because of this.

And yet, since the wedding night, I have cheapened it, in the privacy of my own little home office, by watching other people doing it. By lusting over other women. By feeding unrealistic expectations of how my sex life might be improved. By thinking, however 'hypothetically', about replying to personals and seeking fulfilment of these expectations elsewhere.

All that effort, those years of emotional restraint....

That's not just bizarre. It's f*cking stupid.

Reasons not to porn

A non-exhaustive list, in no particular order:

For the girls who claim to be 18, but neither look nor act it. Can you say 'Jailbait'?
For the girls who do it to get money for drugs. You're feeding their addiction as they feed yours. Break the cycle.
For the girl who looks like she just doesn't want to be doing this.
For the girl with tears in her eyes as she's made to go beyond her limits.
For the girls who are tricked, conned, bribed or otherwise unfairly persuaded to be part of a porn film.
For the even sicker crap I haven't seen yet but, if the addiction goes unchecked, will be the only way to go.
Because the lows outweigh the highs.
For your wife.
For your child.
For yourself, dammit!
Because it's just morally wrong.

Brand New Start

This time I am back.

It's been a while because, although things have been very up and down over the last month or so, I had strung together a respectable period of sobriety, and really didn't want to think about porn, at all.

But, perhaps inevitably, avoiding the subject just allowed it to sneak up on me, and earlier today it got the better of me.

So here I am, thinking about it, because I don't like how slipping, in however small a way, feels after avoiding it for a while. Today marks another brand new start. I don't know how many more there are going to be. I certainly can't guarantee this will be the last.

But, now life has returned to something like normality, I will try to get a plan working to avoid porn in the longer term.

In the meantime, it's a humbling thought, as I wallow in the post-porn muck, that this blog has been accused of being inspiring in my absence. Maybe, if I'd checked here before I found myself on the slippery slope, I would have stayed away. As it is, I feel anything but inspiring.

It's nice to be inspiring. Maybe I should try and stay clean a bit longer, in the hope of inspiring others? Or maybe just to avoid needing to beat myself up over failing.

OK, that's enough of that. Let's find the silver lining. I slipped, but I did not binge. I will not binge, as I have done on so many occasions.

Let sobriety start here.