Journal. Cheer me on?

My last post was a whinge. So many thanks for the replies and for anyone who is praying for me. It was a very tough time. The difficulty passed, but difficulty is now back, so here I am! Go figure that I come here to post and journal when things are tough, but the radio silence between posts usually means things are a bit easier...

I keep thinking that my circumstances will get overall easier. But they are not.

My wife's treatment has finished. I knew things wouldn't suddenly get better after this, but I at least expected something to get a bit easier. It was kind of a psychological milestone. But if anything they have gotten harder!

Because, she lifted the baby a few days after treatment ended, and massively put out her back. Her bones / back muscles may have been weakened by the treatment / disease. She is in a lot of pain. So she really can't do very much with the kids at all.

Also, the nurse we had to help has gone on holiday for August, as was always the plan.

So it's me looking after baby, 5yo, wife still. That's ok. One day at a time. I need to go to bed at 8pm, but it's manageable.

Except I'm sick! I took a risk last week and helped on a summer vacation holiday club that my 5yo was attending, which was tremendous glorious fun, but I have picked up a throat infection at it. Sandpaper throat and streaming nose. Damn.

There is still enough grace to get through, one day at a time. And I can get some help from my mother-in-law. May or may not need to postpone our own holiday while things are so tough.

My wife will have an end-of-treatment scan on Monday to see what the state of play is. It would be surprising if this shows disease, because she was all clear at the mid-way scan. The three-months-post-treatment scan will be the real nail-biter. We have been quoted 14% of recurrence of disease within two years--after two years the chances become statistically insignificant.

I was doing OK but I've got some PMO cravings right now. Yesterday I was looking up couch-coop games to play at home during nap time (nap time is a saving grace, everyone has a rest while baby is asleep) and there was a clickbait spam ad for list of 'most paused film scenes' webpage which used an image from a scene I used to be well acquainted with. It's very delicious. It trigerred me.

I can not look at PMO, with God's power, but there is this lingering sense of 'there's something I need to do', 'there's something I'm missing out on' that my brain can retain. Hard to escape sometimes.

I'm over 9 months sober. That's massive. Glory to God. I'm seeing some difference after 9 months. However, in depths of night, 3am when woken by son, and at edges of sleep, falling asleep or waking up, I can still struggle with replaying memories and images. Sometimes it's like I'm fantasising about what it would be like to be someone who still did PMO, imagining doing it at a step-removed.

It's different once I'm up and awake, that's when it's just the lingering sense of 'there's something I'm missing out on that I need to find', but dealing with it in the night--it's hard. So sleep interrupted and presured right now. But that's an excuse.

God, please help me to continue to make progress, to eliminate that secret internal night lust and memory replaying. It's so subtle, so fast, invisible, so easy to do, so hard not to do, such an ingrained habit, but you have the power to free me. You have the power. Take me on further, please LORD, take me to the next level of freedom, for your glory, please help me to do my part and take the steps I need to take.

This post is an incoherent mess of reportage. But that's me right now!

 

Thank you for the prayers. Quick check-in. Still alive. Still sober. Been doing a digital detox foe August with no internet and it is WONDERFUL but back home with internet till Saturday, between road trips. I thoroughly recommend it. Sometimes it feels like living with the internet is like living with all these semi-naked and naked women in a nearby room, and all you have to do to get to them is go through a few doors. Grateful for all you guys. Peace.

 

I don't post here so much anymore. I think that's because the first 6 months or so of my latest period of recovery-in-sobriety were really intense, especially with my wife getting cancer, and posting here was a really useful extra pressure valve and source of support in addition to friends (APs) and SA.

I think I will continue not to post here so much, as God has brought about quite a lot of progress in me over the last few months and I don't feel like I need this forum so much. Face to face, or on the phone when face to face is not possible, is where the best recovery action is, I find.

However, I am so so grateful to anyone who has read my posts and responded, and especially prayed for me and my wife. Thank you. Also, I imagine I will still post here from time to time when I feel I need that extra pressure valve.

As now. An update: My wife's end-of-treatment scan was all clear. Thank you God. There is a small but not insignificant chance of relapse which now hangs over her mind like a shadow, however if she does not relpase within two years then the chances become very small indeed. There are some weird parallels here with addiction recovery.

I'm struggling a bit at the moment. My Summer was wonderfully and blissfully very low on PMO-fantasy temptations, sometimes completely free for many days, which was fantastic. However, back at work, with no night nurse, back getting up every day at ~6am with my son (I find not having a bit of quiet time by myself in the morning quite difficult), with some mental health problems (OCD) flaring up, with my wife still recovering, physical intimacy not as frequent as I would selfishly like, and various other pressures and challenges from wider family, things are a bit tough.

So probably related, this week I got hit by a PMO craving wave for the first time in a long time, and it almost swept me off my feet. But I reached out to SA, my sponsor, and now here, and God and others are enough to help me stay free.

I am noticing at the moment how the addiction always tries to find a way in and can shift depending on what is available. In the holidays when I had no computer, PMO temptation was basically non-existent. Back home now and with a computer with internet and sometimes working at home or home alone for brief stretches, temptation pops up. Sometimes I find the most helpful thing is just to use Cold Turkey to block even opening my internet browser, and then I can get on with stuff.

Also, I am still in two minds about fantasising about my wife. Sometimes in the holidays I was doing that in the mornings before getting out of bed, and sometimes I still do it (though harder when I have to get up for baby every day!). I think it is probably not a good practice. It can wind me up, and fantasy and reality are usually different (reality tends to be both worse, and then way better, in different ways). I need to speak to my sponsor about this but I haven't yet. Anyway I think this is the next area to start making more progress.

 

Helping others is definitely a good reason to be here, and would help me stay free. It's just a time consideration at this point. I may be put to better use helping others in person via my recovery group.

 

Thanks CPilot. You are extremely faithful in your e-ministry here. It's all God. Soli potentia deo. All I had to do was keep holding on, keep depending, keep crying out in my powerlessness--and he did the hard work. And continues to do so.

 

I finally had that conversation with my sponsor about fantasising about my wife in the mornings for a bit.

He said it's got to go.

I'm not sure why I expected anything else!

Of course it makes sense. I think there was still some residue from reading misguided Christian sex advice books early in my marriage that made me think it could in any way serve or help me

I guess not.

I learned during my wife's cancer treatment, when there was no 'outlet', that it only brought me pain. I could actually directly correlate doing it with 'blue balls'.

Now that there is a sometime healthy 'outlet' again, I had thought that maybe I could resume, but I can see more and more why it is fruitless and unhelpful.

I've got a new standard to progress to with God's help.

That's different from actually stopping though! Stopping ain't going to be easy.

I'm going to need the help.

 

Some recent reflections:

Another way of parsing the first three of the 12 steps / my Daily Sobriety Renewal:

1. In the past, I have been able to stop myself from lusting, fantasising about porn, looking at porn and masturbating, with or without porn. While these activities are pleasurable in the moment, they violate my values and promises I have made to God, my wife and myself and afterwards cause me to be depressed, ashamed, anxious and guilty, and generally to fall apart so that my life becomes unmanageable. I also have a deep-set tendency to want to soothe or medicate unpleasant feelings with lust. These activities also trigger an addictive obsession with themselves, in my case. However, by myself I have been unable to stop doing them and left to myself I inevitably end up doing them again. Shorthand: I am powerless over lust; I am a recovering lustaholic.

2. With the help of God and others I can be free from lust and live a happy, joyous and free, manageable life, one day at a time.

3. Each day, just for that day, I need to decide whether I am going to live my own way by myself and move towards unmanageable lust, or whether I am going to be true to my values and the promises I have made to God, my wife and myself by choosing to depend on God and others for the help and power to live a happy, joyous and free, manageable life without lust.

Next, I find it helpful in stopping doing something if I can list reasons why it is not helpful to do it. I have done this for viewing porn and masturbation (see earlier in this journal). Now for fantasising. Obviously I was already resolved not to fantasise about porn, though the habit is hard to break. I was ambivalent about fantasising about my wife; now that is added too.

Reasons to not even fantasise about porn / porn memories (as far as I can with God’s help):

1. It is the first step on the path towards viewing porn. If I want to not view porn, I need to stop doing this.

2. It can arouse my body and wind me up, making temptation harder to resist, including the temptation to masturbate.

3. In the same vein, it can cause blue balls.

4. It is a disconnection from reality and takes me away from present physical reality.

5. It can put me out of sync with the arousal level of my wife, meaning that I pressurise her to have sex more than might be healthy and more than she might want.

6. It keeps the addiction alive by feeding it with the mind.

7. It is a form of acting out in miniature, or ‘acting in’, with all the same dynamics but to a lesser degree: a small amount of pleasure from thinking about the porn, then shame, and a desire to think about it again, cultivating obsession.

8. What you give attention to becomes your reality.

Reasons to not even fantasise about making love to my wife:

1. It can arouse my body and wind me up, making temptation harder to resist, including the temptation to masturbate.

2. In the same vein, it can cause blue balls.

3. It is a disconnection from reality and takes me away from present physical reality.

4. It can put me out of sync with the arousal level of my wife, meaning that I pressurise her to have sex more than might be healthy and more than she might want.

5. It is a form of acting out in miniature, or ‘acting in’, with all the same dynamics but to a lesser degree: a small amount of pleasure from thinking about sex, then shame, and a desire to think about it again, cultivating obsession.

6. My mental fantasy wife is not my real wife. There is no real human connection with a fantasy.

7. My wife may not do or want to do the things I fantasise about, creating a disjunction between fantasy and reality, potentially leading to disappointment and less present and mutually enjoyable lovemaking.

8. Thinking about wanting to do something, briefly, is different from creating a fantasy about it.

9. The very best sex seems to arise spontaneously from connection, as opposed to from a demand for a fantasy being artificially imposed on reality, with varying degrees of success.

I am open to more input here! Anyone else got any reasons to add, please?

Lastly. I am thinking about writing a short ebook about overcoming porn addiction sometime. I already have lots of material in this journal and in other private writing. It would just be my take—the experience of one guy, and how he accessed/accesses God’s help in his weakness, powerlessness and vulnerability. It would be called ‘CORPOREAL’ (Confessions Of one Recovering Porn and Electronic-lust Addict’s Life). I had a go at another one once, ‘NOFAP the LitRpg’ (google it) but ran out of steam (though I have more chapters on my hard-drive that I haven’t posted). Would anyone buy it lol?

 

Thanks CPilot. Those are two very good reasons not to PMO. I was looking more for specific reasons not to even fantasise about it (though the second one could apply there too), or about marital sex.

Anyone got any more of those?

It seems a bit quiet around here!

 

365 days no M.

Something like 1 year 7 months no P.

Progressive victory over lust.

Celebrating one year nofapiverssary.

I still get powerful urges to watch porn and to masturbate, either together or individually, which I am a bit sad about. Have experienced more freedom in the past, especially from MO cravings.

But. The difference from the last year is that I seem to have finally learned how to handle these one day at a time, rather than balking at doing it for the rest of my life. God and others have enough power to keep me sober, just for this present moment, just for today. If I think outside of that, I'm dead. Woe betide me if I forget this.

Praise be to God in King Jesus.

Had a massive craving wave last week, probably fed with a bit of indulging in acting-in mental fantasy about my wife and flirting with P temptation in my mind, and experienced lots of physical pressure, then had a nocturnal emission, which let the pressure out. Thank God for those too.