While I'm sure The Science™ hasn't established one, is it possible that there's a connection between sexual excess and gut permeability? I have this condition and deal with food sensitivities as a result. No one in my family, going back several generations, has ever had anything even slightly resembling food sensitivities so there is likely no genetic link. This is important because if I could succesfully patch up and heal my leaky gut, I think that I would be able to have most of the foods I'm sensitive to (including a list of foods that cross-react with gluten on a molecular level). I've long suspected that p/m/o causes or execerbates digestive and immune issues. I would love to get your opinions. Please share any information you may have regardless of how controversial it may be.
Well, then I guess there's also a very good reason I've not left this site: I can't seem to get past 2-3 weeks. Even that's rare. I usually can't go much longer than 3-4 days before I relapse. You're probably right, though. I wouldn't stick around here if only I could start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've stated for the longest time that I think this site is to p/m/o addicts what the Truth "anti-smoking" campaign is to smokers.
This is exactly what I was getting at with that analogy I made. I feel like this site somehow manages to over-dramatize the harmful effects of p/m/o to such an extent that people start to disbelieve that anything they read or see on here is true if it comes from a true critic of degeneracy, hedonism and the like. The Truth "anti-smoking" ads and commercials do the same in that they show 1 in 1,000,000 patients whose lives have been forever altered to supposedly get people to quit. All it does is make everyone think of the associated impracticalities. I've been on and off NF for many years. I've made a couple friends on here who I stay in touch with regularly. My story is similar to yours. I have times I can abstain and live clean for weeks at a time – with relative ease even – and then I create a new account on here and I'm down to a week, then 5 days, then eventually 24-48 hours. They say "energy flows where attention goes" and that's all fine and great and may explain a lot of this but there's got to more to it. I'm 99% convinced that I do better off this site than on it. Kinda makes me wonder why I stay and waste time on here.
Definitely painful. It reminds me of something I came across the other day. It was a man talking about how you can't chase after butterflies because they'll always get away. He said that you have to build a beautiful garden and they will come. The point is to get yourself to a point where you'll naturally be attractive rather than someone who repels people automatically.
I can relate but not quite completely. Like you, again, I can and do feel the pain associated with being cast out and ostracized or even forgotten about entirely. It sucks. And while I don't want to defend anyone who may have wronged me or others in similar predicaments, I can't really blame them for wanting to stay away either. Through everything, I've become a shell of the person I was and I'm not even a shadow of who I could've been by now. I see and recognized qualities and personality traits in myself that I know somehow act as a repellant to people. I ask myself: who would want to be around me? The answer is clear. It's next to no one. People who are around me kind of have no choice. They are my family and coworkers. Aside from two or three guys I used to know or chat with online, I have zero friends. Girls? Dates? Absolutely none of either. At the same time, I get where you're coming from about wanting to own what you've made of your life, for better or for worse. I find that commendable and feel similarly to the way you do. I also wouldn't want to be average. I watched on as every average high school student I used to know went to college, got a degree, got a job that paid 3-4x more money than I make and then start to wear face diapers and hoard toilet paper because the media told them to do so. Trust me, I get it. I don't like where I'm at but I wouldn't want to be where they're at so I'll deal with my shit and try not to be miserable about it.
