struggling

[bec]

hello men:

i am struggling with a number of things right now. i am an adult survivor of emotional incest. so far i recall no physical incest. perhaps such memories will come to me some day. time will tell.

i have used food and masturbation to pornography to try to ease my pain for decades. i am now 42 yrs old. it surprises me how i chat with men at this site and often find them having differing opinions on porn.

some men use it and are at peace with it. others will not allow themselves to use it. still others dont use it and recommend that others dont either cause they say that it is bad, harmful. i dont know what to think.

i have never been able to carry on a relationship with a partner. i have tried a number of times but i could not be in a relationship and feel safe.

let me say that i was raised by a woman, my mother, who was clearly abusive. one of her favorite targets was my father.

i believe i learned from her and him that women cant be trusted, that they will hurt a man as i saw my mother do to my father so many times.

when the abuse happened my father would be the apparent willing victim. never did i see him hold her responsible for her verbal, emotional, physical abuse. what i mean is that he never once called the police on her after she wounded him physically. he had the welts/bruises, the scratches, the broken skin, the blood to show. but he never called the police as far as i know.

as i said i think i learned from the both of them that if i got into a relationship then i would be abused as my father was.

i have used porn and fantasy to help me meet my need for sex and intimacy for decades now. but, i fear that i may be losing this once helpful tool, the porn i mean.

it is getting harder and harder for me to aquire porn and masturbate to it. 'why?', i ask myself. #1 money is really tight for me now and over time the cost of porn adds up. #2 the act of using porn is getting to be an empty and painful act for me. i am becoming more aware that every time i use porn it is a piece of my life that i am not choosing to spend with another. a period that i am choosing to isolate myself off from the rest of the world. and, at 42 yrs of age i am becoming fearful that if i dont let go of porn soon, or move beyond it, that i may live my entire life with only porn and not knowing true intimacy with a partner.

yes, i am a 42 yr old virgin. it truly saddens and shames me to admit it. it truly does.

sometimes i feel that i carry a well of sadness within me that i have never been able to feel, to access. i hope one day to be able to exerience it without it overwhelming me.

i have not cried in years. i am like my father in that respect. never in my life have i seen him cry. i feel that a man who is able to cry is healthier than one like i. hopefully one day i will cry.

i have not brought porn home in 79 days. during that time i have stopped in porn shops and browsed it many times, just brought none home.

at a porn shop yesterday i found several VHS movies for sale on a clearance rack at a very low price. i really struggled with it. 'do i buy them or not?' is what i battled with. i chose 'not'. but i dont know if i am satisfied with my choice.

i miss porn MUCH and i fear it too. it is funny. for decades porn, fantasy, masturbation were tools that helped me meet my needs. i never knew that the use of these tools would one day bring me trouble, confusion, pain. i never thought i would reach this place.

i would not be surprised if i browse porn again at a shop today. a part of me desires to go back to that shop and buy those clearance movies. but, i honestly dont know if i can spend the 30 dollars in that way. i tell myself that there are more important ways to spend that money.

i dont know what to do. i feel better now that i have shared this. thanks for reading about my struggles. may our higher powers help us all. sincerely,


bec

 

[FormerTexan]

hi bec.

I can certainly relate to the virgin thing. I'm 40 years old and still virgin. There was a point when I cared about this, mostly because I used to work around a bunch of guys who were really into the macho BS they considered manhood. I considered them a bunch of idiots. For me it isn't the virginity that's the issue, but what it means to me, which is that I have yet to find someone I can call my wife and have that intimacy with her. That hurts the most, and I'm not sure if I'll ever emotionally be in a position to love a woman that way, since I grew up with a terrible example of what a wife and mother is.

At times I have "dabbled" in pornography. I have never made regular use of it, but masturbation and fantasy have been big struggles with me over a couple decades. You're right about the expense of porn too. Also, the few times I used porn I felt dirty afterwards, having treated others as objects. I debased myself, and them at the same time. Yet, it hurts to give up what works, what's familiar.

For thirty bucks, you could get thirty of your favorite songs off of Napster, and they'll serve you better over a longer time.

FT

 

[Lloydy]

I use porn occassionaly, and I've changed my attitude towards using it.

The problem that I had a few years ago was the feelings of guilt and shame afterwards, it was exactly the same feelings that I had about my abuse for all those years.
I got rid of the guilt and shame over my abuse when I figured out that it wasn't my fault and I had nothing to feel guilt and shame over.
That was a good feeling for me, all those negative feelings ever did for me was drag me down, without them I could move on.

So I did the same over my use of porn and masturbation, I know that I can't remove guilt and shame from this totally because I still have the feelings that I should be having my sexual experiences with my wife, but the 'use' of porn in itself I don't worry about any more.

And as I've done this my use of porn has dropped dramatically, it's become a simple tool that I use sometimes for 'relief'.
And the truth is that millions of men across the world do the same, there wouldn't be the demand if it wasn't wanted. The ethics of porn and the abuse of so many people in the industry is another argument entirely, but people have used erotic images and writing since cave men painted on cave walls.

For me most of the guilt and shame that I used to attach to my use of porn was directly linked to the type of porn I looked at, it was gay porn that showed exactly the acts that my abusers did to me. I was using porn to re-live those sex acts in some kind of effort to understand what happened and regain my control over them - as I did when I acted out with other men.

The strange thing is I still look at that same kind of porn, but not exclusively. I will look at 'regular' porn as well, and I'm increasingly attracted to straight man / woman porn as time goes on.

I feel that removing the guilt and shame from the whole cycle that we find ourselves in does many things, but the main one has to be that we just feel better about ourselves, and my trigger for starting the "feelig bad, porn, masturbation, guilt & shame, feel even worse" cycle was always feeling bad about myself.

It was a self perpetuationg cycle, and like all these cycles we need to intervene somewhere to break them, the easiest place for me was the guilt and shame.

Dave