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EVAN’S blog Eleven

December 19, 2011 //

 EVAN has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his eleventh blog post.

Recently, as Jessica and I have moved back together sexually, something quite fundamental for us has been understood and recognised – our sexual drives and outlooks are quite different. While mine has changed a lot since I started my work in therapy, I do still want to be sexually active much more often than Jessica does. We have become very honest with each other since our holiday and have found that we can talk about my porn issues now in detail and at last, without arguing. I think because I’m not asking Jessica to accept my porn habit, ‘hands down’ and because she understands that it is not a threat to our relationship (I don’t want porn more than I want her), we have found a place to discuss our issues between us.

In this whole process I’ve been perhaps most surprised to find out that Jessica sometimes masturbates as well, when she is alone, and I think talking about that has helped us both understand each other a lot more. There is an understanding between us about our sexual drives for the first time in all our married years. At the moment our love making is quite high for us (three times last week) and I can get by on that quite well but I do still want to use images when I’m on my own and Jessica and I have sorted something between us. I am promising her and myself (and my therapy space) that I’ll not use the Internet for images at any point now. The Internet is unpoliced, uncensored and unlimited in supply, and I clearly can’t handle that. However, I do have a small number of 18 and R18 DVDs. I do not use them every time I masturbate and there is now nothing secret about them. I keep the discs in the top drawer of Jessica’s bedside cabinet. I don’t know that this is my final position on porn, or Jessica’s. I’m still actually working on lowering my use much further but I find that having to go to Jessica’s side of the bed and taking out a disc really makes me think about what and why I’m using it, and it makes me consider us as a couple, even when my focus is on myself. For the moment I’m very happy with where I’ve got to. Therapy has helped both of us a lot so far.

NB It was agreed that blogs wouldn’t be posted until at least three months after they had been written.

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Copyright Porn Recovery UK 2011

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Categories EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Men and pornography, Porn addicts wife, Users stories

EVAN’S blog Ten

December 14, 2011 //

EVAN has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his tenth blog post.

Since I started this process and, in particular, since we came back from our holiday, Jessica and I have really sorted important issues that were wrong with our marriage. She’s recently had a few sessions with a psychotherapist who was recommended by my therapist, and quite quickly the tensions around her view of my porn usage eased. It was the right time for her, I think, because I had by then explained my relationship with porn much more fully and this has helped her to see that as my problem first and foremost but that the difficulties we were experiencing between us were not so much about the porn but about other things that needed to get ‘centre stage’. Once we both seemed to understand this, we were quite quick at getting back to know each other in our sex life. I can’t say that it is all plain sailing just yet, but it’s getting there. Porn use is a difficult thing and all I can say is that it gained so much control of me that sometimes, even now, I discover a trigger and then I can feel quite scared. I get scared that it will all come back and take me over and yet, at the same time, I can see how it was what was wrong between us in our marriage that fuelled my continued retreat from the problems and the use of hardcore porn as a quick, feel-good fix instead. Having just read this back to myself I’m amazed that I’ve been able to write it. In fact, to me it sounds like I’ve swallowed a text book! In some sort of way, perhaps I have – but it’s a bloody good one that I’m really understanding right now.

NB Evan’s blogs are posted at least three months after he has written them.

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Copyright Porn Recovery UK 2011

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Categories EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Men and pornography, parteners of porn addicts, Users stories

EVAN’S blog Nine

November 9, 2011 //

EVAN has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his ninth blog post.

The kids haven’t really been aware that I’ve been sleeping in the spare room every night, and any discussions about my therapy or what I had been looking at and doing have been kept to late-night conversation or when the girls have been out of the house.

We’ve just come back from our annual family holiday. Obviously we booked it before all of my porn activities blew up, and so Jessica and I have had to spend the last week in the same bedroom. Thankfully, she didn’t ask me to sleep on the floor and also thankfully, as the week went by, we began to get physically closer to each other. Lucy and Maxine are getting older so quickly, I think we’ve both been aware that family can’t be like this so much longer. Call it holiday romance but by Thursday evening Jessica and I were cuddling in bed together and talking – really talking to each other.

Therapy seems to have allowed me to break down many of my barriers to talking about my problems (and not just with porn), and I felt able to tell Jessica all about how I first got into porn and how I was already quite a user before we got married. Just before we left for our holiday my first few blogs had been posted on to the web.* Reading them back I could already see how conflicted I was about facing my stuff. The truth is that my use has been much heavier for much longer than I’d said. It was the Internet going broadband that brought the genie out of the bottle, but I have been a much more frequent user for much longer than I said in the early blogs. That’s the sort of secret that porn is. Even when you think you are being truthful, another part of you is playing games and still trying to hide some fact or other. On holiday Jessica and I faced some hard truths. We talked a lot about how we had got so distant from each other, I know I could sink back into porn late nights and leave her in bed alone. (I’m just so thankful that she thinks we have both had a part in this distance and she now really seems to be understanding that porn has been a problem long before we got together.)

The joy of touching my wife again has been so great that I’m so strongly aware of what a pale imitation of the sexual world porn is. Jessica has now asked me to come back into the marital bedroom. You can’t believe what a step that is for me. At least this week my fantasies are all about a real loving relationship with my gorgeous wife and not about plastic-enhanced blondes.

* It was agreed that blogs wouldn’t be posted until at least three months after I’d written them.

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Copyright Porn Recovery UK 2011

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Categories EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Men and pornography, Porn addicts wife, Users stories

EVAN’S blog Eight

October 28, 2011 //

EVAN has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his eighth blog post.

I’ve been having very conflicted feelings about the whole idea of recovery. Recovery from what and for what? Jessica seems to refuse to see how much work I’ve done. We are still sleeping in separate rooms. I flick on my computer and think, there is all that skin to look at, all those lovely bumps and curves, and I could be using them … I switch my computer off. The idea, even, of the phrase ‘using them’ makes me feel so sad about myself. I don’t like the idea of ‘using’ anyone. But I’m so frustrated because I’m changing, but Jessica refuses to see it. She does not know how difficult it is to be around her. I still love her. I still want to be with her. Shit! I’m craving every part of her again – in my head. It’s stupid I know but I thought my wife would somehow know all this by now. Then, she begins to talk about how hard it is for her; the trust Jessica says she’s lost; the negative feelings she says she now has about her own body because of all the porn stars I’ve been masturbating to. I wish she would look at what I’ve been watching these last few years. Few of them have been the perfection she seems to imagine. I’ve got myself off on grannies; I’ve got myself off on degradation so many times – not on beauty and perfection. I get frustrated at Jessica. I lash with my tongue, with my frustration. I say really stupid things like, ‘I’ve been looking at foot-long pricks for years and I don’t feel fucking inferior’.

In therapy I get that I’m not approaching her concerns very well. I do listen to my therapist voicing what my wife’s concerns and difficulties might be. I almost shouted back at him ‘So why the fuck am I doing this if she can’t take account of my changes.’ The changes are so massive for me, they have happened so quickly; I’m impatient, I’m a child, I want comforting by the person who I’ve thought least about during my addiction period. I want my wife to love me, make love with me, heal me. All I have at the moment is a middle-aged man who sits and listens so carefully to what it is like to be me; this unlovable porn addict. He encourages me, understands me and supports me but, just once a week. I sometimes also have the hope that you, the readers, might feel some form of understanding for me as you read this blog.

If your partner is anything like me, he or she is craving your support and wants a way to make things alright again. I’m almost embarrassed to write this but, love your addict partner if you can.

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Categories counselling, EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Men and pornography, Porn addicts wife, Porn problems, Psychotherapy, Users stories

EVAN’S blog SEVEN

October 7, 2011 //

EVAN has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his seventh blog.

I’ve just come back from a therapy session and I’m still thinking about why, when I’ve been doing so well, I should choose to sabotage myself. I’ve just been talking about how I can see that self-sabotage is a pattern in my life – both at work and at home. I can see how I’ve been using porn to smooth out pretty much all my emotional ups and downs – just like taking a tablet. It really closes down my horizons, closes down my thinking and then my feelings. It’s really interesting to be faced with how vulnerable I am to porn. Clearly not all people who use it are like me. I long for the idea of being able to just go ‘porn-lite’.

My therapist talks about my choices, how I have to decide where to set the bar of what I can view and what I can’t. I thought I was doing okay with that idea, and then I binged on the stuff. I took myself to a really dark place with it yesterday. I looked for the destructive stuff to me. Talking about it in therapy just now, I can see how I am using it to punish myself. I’m not going to write about those details here (at least not yet – if ever) but I can see how I’m trying to work through my past messed-up stuff.  My therapist made an analogy to the way people sometimes use sexual fantasies to work out past sexual trauma – like when people have been abused. Although nothing like that happened to me, there is relationship stuff that I can see I’m trying to fix – or is it destroy? – when I look at the heavy, nasty porn.
I’m not going to beat myself up here but I do wish I could have the beautiful sexy images without it triggering me to the dark stuff. I’m not one of the lucky people who can use porn without consequences – even though my therapists says they really do exist.

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Categories counselling, EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Men and pornography, Porn problems, Problems, Psychotherapy, Users stories

EVAN’S blog SIX

September 28, 2011 //

EVAN has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his sixth blog.

I’ve only masturbated three times this week – despite having magazines and R18 DVDs. I’ve started a couple of times and felt bored, zipped up and got on with something else. It’s like something has disconnected in me at the moment. It’s not a bad feeling, just very different. I know it’s because I’m keeping away from the net. A couple of times this week I’ve just thought, at the oddest moments, wow, I’ve not been thinking about sex all afternoon … or … all evening. I just know if I had been on the net it would have been different. The Internet would have kept me there for an hour or so before it finally fired up my interests. Breaking this cycle is what success is all about for me. I can, for the first time in a long while, say ‘I feel good!’

CLICK FOR THE FIRST SIX OF EVAN’S BLOGS

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Categories counselling, EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Men and pornography, Porn problems, Problems, Psychotherapy, Users stories

EVAN’S blog FIVE

September 14, 2011 //

‘EVAN’ has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here is a much longer-than-usual blog from him about his psychotherapy process.

Therapy sessions are helping me to order things in my mind a little more now. I’ve started to get a grasp of the idea that porn is a very big and diverse subject for me, that I’m not responsible for it – just my own use of it. I’m also really beginning to get to understand that masturbation isn’t bad! It never has been, but the way I’ve been engaging with it could have been. The Internet drove my compulsivity.

I’m starting to see the shape of my time with porn, that when I began to use [erotic materials], it was exciting; the women in the pictures were gorgeous, sexy and beautiful. They were not, to my mind, degrading themselves in sexual acts I’d rather not write down.

When I compare what I started with and where I am now it makes me sad. Those magazines I used to look at as a young man seemed exciting. I didn’t look at them 10 times a day; I didn’t even look at them every day. The women in the pictures I was masturbating to looked ‘happy’ and sexy. They were glossy, artful images of women who looked interested in being naked in front of a camera. If my girlfriends of the time had been in those pictures, then I’d still have taken them home to meet my mother! Well, perhaps not my mother. Then there was the much more artistic/fetish stuff. I remember feeling I was a bit of a connoisseur when I looked at those black and white magazines or bought the coffee top, hardback books. When I think about them now, I see them as being part of my sexual identity, my way of being.
And then there was the Internet …

I started with the Internet in a very different place to the magazines. The endless source of new, free pictures, then the streaming videos. I couldn’t control my looking and I didn’t view or go looking for the same ‘sexy and beautiful’ images I’d used in magazines. I went beyond the artistry of fetish and into the darkest places I could find.

Therapy is making me find words for what I sought out: degradation, exploitation, violence. Those words don’t sit pretty on the screen. I sought out the degradation of women; I supported the exploitation of women; I looked to watch violence acted out on women.

It surprises me that I cried in the last session. I sat with another man in a closed room and let my feelings out about the place I’d taken myself to. I cried as a father of two beautiful girls. I cried as a man seeing the loss of his own sexual life. The Internet is totally the PornNet for me.

It’s only just occurring to me in my last couple of sessions that I have a life away from porn on the Internet and I’m realising as I talk in therapy about so much more than porn – it makes me feel a little bit hopeful.

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Categories counselling, EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Men and pornography, Problems, Psychotherapy, Users stories

EVAN’S blog FOUR

August 24, 2011 //

‘EVAN’ is in psychotherapy. He has agreed to collaborate, from time to time, with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his fourth blog.

I’m so disappointed in myself. If you have ever tried to give up Internet porn, you’ll know the feeling. A whole load of things got on top of me at work yesterday. I feel quite depressed – what’s the point! It’s five days to go until my next therapy session, I’m sleeping in the spare room, I’m struggling with it all.

I’ve promised myself I’ll be honest in this process. Yesterday I flipped the laptop open. I had some thought in my mind that I could stop, but the drive for the high… it was the meaning of the word desperate.

As I started off the whole process I realized I’d been planning it all out unconsciously. I had made circumstances so that I’d find myself with the time alone. I knew which site I was going to use, what I was going to search for. I really wanted to close the laptop, disconnect myself from this stuff, be good, ahhhh! I even thought about how bad this was going to look on the blog.

After I’d used, I had this distaste for myself. I wrote it all down, I’m taking it to therapy and I promised myself, if nothing else, I’d tell the truth in this entry – not pretend that I hadn’t looked or that there was some external factor that ‘made me do it’. If you are trying to give up porn, know there are set backs. My advice – don’t just try to do this work on your own; you’ll simply lie to yourself.  I think now I’m ready to listen to someone else’s suggestions of how to get through this mire.

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Categories counselling, EVAN'S blog, internet porn, Problems, Psychotherapy, Users stories

EVAN’S blog THREE

August 22, 2011 //

‘EVAN’ is in psychotherapy. He has agreed to collaborate, from time to time, with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his third blog.

How long can I go around in this mood? I’ve not had sex for six weeks and I’ve not  even masturbated for the last five days. I’ve set myself a target not to masturbate until Jessica let’s me back into the bedroom. I’m feeling really ‘tight’ in my whole body. My therapist asked me why I was being so extreme – trying to stop porn and ‘tormenting’ myself like this? Maybe he is right that I am being extreme; maybe I am trying to sabotage my own recovery.

Not masturbating for five days might not sound a long time to you, but that’s the longest I’ve been without an orgasm in pretty much my whole life. I’ve masturbated since I was really young. I can’t remember from what age exactly but I do know I was in my first house so, I can’t have been more than six years old. I’ve masturbated pretty much twice a day (and sometimes even more) since we got broadband. Knowing my ‘struggle’ is being recorded like this is giving me some purpose and point – it’s one of the first times in my life I feel I’ve got something positive to associate my porn life with.  Now I feel I’ve got something to prove.

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Categories counselling, EVAN'S blog, Problems, Psychotherapy, Users stories

EVAN’S blog TWO

August 15, 2011 //

‘EVAN’ is in psychotherapy. He has agreed to collaborate, from time to time, with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his second blog.

I dreamed about sex. I think I must be scared that I’m giving up all of sex – not just porn. It’s 8.50am now, and I feel bad tempered. I’ve just woken up, and the girls have already gone out shopping. Normally, this would be a great chance to masturbate to Internet porn. But I’m sticking to my resolution. Every time I think about porn I say to myself, ‘I’m not doing that at the moment.’

I decided to get up and write an entry. I want to write how much I love Jessica and my girls – Lucy and Maxine. I feel more comfortable writing this here and talking about my issues in therapy than I do with Jessica, though. I realise that there is still a lot for us to sort out since she discovered what I’d been up to on the Internet. I wish we were back together sleeping in the same bed.

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Categories counselling, EVAN'S blog, Problems, Psychotherapy, Users stories
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