two years of abstinence

two years of abstinence
B

bec

Registrant
hello men:

today makes two years since the last time i rented pornography to masturbate to. what else does one do with porn?

i am a 40 year old heterosexual male survivor who suspects he suffers from sexual anorexia. i have never been able to love a partner so that makes me a virgin. i am uncomfortable writing about this here at this public pc but i need to share badly.

two years ago i decided to stop renting porn 3 weeks prior to my 39th birthday. why? a psychologist i was seeing recomended i give it up. but there was more to it than that.

i believe i felt afraid that my continued use of it would somehow prevent me from ever being a partner to a woman. that is a foolish thought.

certainly there are many men with partners who use porn. so why did i stop? it was due to fear. yes. but fear of what? the deep sadness and pain i often felt after using it and realizing that once i again i was alone with noone to be close to.

the porn fantasy/numbing of pain would only last so long. once it wore off i had to face the fact that i was alone and hurt and no closer to having a real partner in my life.

wow. that is the truth. and it is this pain and awareness that has kept me from renting porn over the last 104 weeks.

i may desire it as much as before but i just won't let myself rent it.

over the past 2 years there have been dozens and dozens of times i have stopped in a porn shop and browsed porn images but i have not taken any porn home with me. so my "abstinence" has been limited. and, i have some old porn on videotape that i have viewed and masturbated to many times in the last 2 years. what kind of abstinence is this?

i am a creature with needs including one for sex and intimacy. it is amazing i have survived so long with such a large unmet need.

there is a porn shop just blocks away from me now. one i have been in many, many times. but, i can't make myself go in it.

my last orgasm was 24 days ago. i masturbated to my old porn. i don't know when i'll orgasm again. i miss it. the last time i browsed new porn was more than a month ago.

i almost went into a pornshop last night. i drove past a shop and had a hard time not going in.

am i punishing myself as someone once asked? maybe. am i trying to be more of a man/being? i do not know. am i trying to be more than human? yes. 24 days without orgasm. 40 years old and never had a partner or sex. ya, i am definitely trying to be more than human.

i am not well. this is a fact. (dear Lord please help us. please help us.) i do not know what else to say men. i pray that our Gods will help us all, through the good times and the bad. sincerely,


bec
 
bec,

Done that too but cold turkey and no quite 2 years. It is tough but in many ways my life has gotten better. I focus on other things at the moment and sports help with the unused energy.

You have figured out most of it on your own. Perhaps you could reach out to people, even in small ways, to help with the loneliness. You do not say anything about reletionships other than sexual.

There is nothing wrong with being a virgin, if that is what you want to do.

Take gentle care.
 
Bec, can't say I can really relate to your situation. I am kind of baffled as to why you wouldn't go out on a Friday nite and make yourself available. Do you choose to be a virgin? If not, give yourself a chance. Practice makes perfect! ;) Peace, Andrew
 
Bec,

Thanks for opening up and being so honest about what you are feeling and how you are doing.

Sharing the truth about ourselves with individuals who understand is one of the best ways to give God some space to work in. In order to share a thing I have to let go of it, even if it is for just a minute or one posting on a board like this.

When I am willing to let go, then God, usually working through others has some space to come in and do for me what I cannot do for myself.

That's how it continues to work for me and I'm sure it will for you too.

Congratulations on your courage and honesty.

After a couple of years of no sexual activity for me, I have once again had the opportunity to experience intimacy with another person.

It's still not always easy, but it is always very rewarding.

Please keep sharing and opening up. And please don't despair. You are undoubtedly changing more than you realize, in ways that seem unrelated even to what is perceived to be the problem.

There is recovery, Bec and there is hope. You're in the right place and doing the right things. Hang in there with yourself and please, please be gentle with yourself. You've been through more than enough to last several lifetimes.

Take it easy on yourself. No matter how your efforts seem to turn out, you are a success because you are willing to try and keep trying and talking about what's happening and how you feel. That's the essential. The results will come as long as I keep doing those things.

Thanks for the great reminder and for caring enough to keep coming here.

Your brother,
 
Well, again, this is topic that is most uncomfortable at me. But the fact that you write so openly of it, that you take such strong risk as that, I felt I did need to answer you.

First, it is the positive steps that you deserve to be proud of yourself for. You have not been perfect? well, shame on you! I am kidding, of course. As far as my knowledge, one perfect person has walked this earth, and he sure as hell is not here at this site right now.

Please try to be easier at yourself of this. You maybe set your goals, your standards to yourself, too high. Maybe you set yourself up to fail, I know I have done that many times in many things. BUT, you have made progress, you have made positive steps toward your goal, you have have made positive progress. Please try to credit yourself for that, without taking away of it again, by saying 'but' this or that. The positive things that you have done, they ARE positive, nothing will take that away of you.

You feel you are less then human? or more then human? I have not done sex with anyone, including myself, never. I am 23 years age. What am I?

Be more kind at yourself.

leosha
 
Hi everyone--

I was thinking about this thread, so thought I should respond. I suppose most guys use porn at some time or other. To me it was a way to engage in sexual activity without having to be present. I never seem to be able to include myself in my own fantasies, so porn became an easy way to go through the motions without having to include myself in any way at all.

Pretty serious disassociation, I guess.

But I also think it's a way of avoiding two kinds of threatening intimacy, with oneself and with someone else. I suppose the solution is to let go of whatever fears are at the root of the problem.

For me this has begun with allowing myself to play with my own body without any fantasy entering into the picture. To simply be present with myself and enjoy the feelings I can create in my own body. At first this was a weird thing to try to do, probably because it meant pulling down some protective shielding I no longer needed. I think I had somehow internalized the idea that my body was somehow responsible for my abuse, that if I hadn't been such a good looking little kid, I wouldn't have been abused, so my body, including my basic sexual needs, should be shunned.

As with most problems, I try to go to the root of the thing and see what I find. I realized that porn meant not being with myself while playing with myself, and that it always made me feel disgusted with myself afterwards, so I thought to myself, "is there any time when it was just fun?" and I remembered all the hours I spent in the bathroom as a little, pre-pubescent boy just reveling in the fact that my body could make such amazing sensations. I realized that at that time I didn't need anything but myself for the purest kind of pleasure.

So I decided to return to that mode of sexual joy. No stories, no images, just me. And this has been really nice. Very comfortable after a while, after all the issues it brings up get set aside. After all, playing with my body without fantasy or porn means looking at it, too, and really seeing it in a way that porn avoids. I mean, when you're staring at the computer screen or a video you can avoid yourself entirely. It's like you're barely there at all. I found my new approach led to questions about what I was doing, and sort of facing the fact that I had a body that had physical needs and that I was enjoying myself by taking care of myself. That the activity wasn't dirty, just a necessary part of being a man.

For me, this was a revelation. That the dirt was involved only in the way I had approached the needs rather than in the needs themselves, which are totally fine.

I wonder why us abused guys so often go back to uncomfortable situations with sex rather than to the clean and simple activity itself. I know for me this has been a difficult thing to do. It means facing myself at a very basic level, and taking down the protective shield of absence. But once the shield starts coming down, there's a lot of freedom in not having to falsely include anyone else in my private, sexual life. It is more like playing a very easy going game. No issues, because there's no pretense or lies.

And porn is all about pretense and lies. There's a lie that the people are really there for my pleasure, that it's OK for me to be watching them, that I have a part in their activity, that I'm not a voyeur, etc. And all these lies just make me feel dirty inside. I think this is because the lies that are OK (maybe) for unabused guys are not really OK for me. The fact of lying reminds me of all the abuse related lies that I've internalized over the years (so many of which are in the thread about lies on this site).

So getting away from the whole need for fantasy (which involves other lies) has allowed me to open some doors and rediscover some simple pleasure in the body that the abuse was on the verge of ruining. I have found the touching involved in this other way of responding to my body's signals very freeing and open...totally non-judgemental and OK. I come away from the fun totally relaxed and free of recriminations. And most important, I've become fully aware of the fact that it's OK for me to want sex. And that my wanting sex doesn't mean I want more abuse. And that I am still totally clean and OK when most full of that need.

Life is so complicated, isn't it!

Danny
 
oh, fellow men:

thanks so very much for your thoughts, kind words and encouragement. i really appreciate them and i really needed to read them. i wrote down some thoughts as i read your replies. here they are:

-yes, i can be too hard on myself, too rigid and even self abusive. this has been pointed out to me before. it is dificult for us to do better since we were abused as a boy by both our parents. difficult, but NOT imposible. we need to keep this tendency for self abuse in our mind.

-we feel afraid of what we shared here since we have no idea how long we can continue pushing porn away, old porn or fresh/new porn. we could use it tonight. we do not know when we will use again.

-we feel that orgasm/fantasy/porn and food are our two self-medications of choice. or, what we turn to when the pain/hurt overwhelms us. some turn to alcohol, cocaine, work, etc. we turn to food and porn. we believe obsesive/compulsive behavior is something we have practiced since our childhood. our father is an addict. perhaps we learned o/c behavior from him.

-we believe our overwhelming fear of intimacy is a part of our sexual anorexia/aversion disorder.

-what are we so afraid of? we believe we fear that our partner will abuse us as our mother did. she was also very abusive of my father right in front of our own eyes. she didn't care that i was in the room. she would abuse him in various ways and he would not hold her responsible. did either of them even think about how it could harm me. we believe neither of them really cared. because if they did they would not have showed me such sick behavior.

-my mother emotionally incested me for 30+ years. by God's grace we were finally able to put a stop to it. but, she refuses to let go. she would continue the incest if i allowed it. we have no memory of any physical incest from her but according to what i have learned our wounds are the same as one whose incest was physical.

ok, men. that is what was on our mind as we read your replies. thanks again for your kind words. they really did help my spirit. sincerely,


bec :)
 
DannyT
I read your reply with great interest, and I think you have a very valid point to make.

Why the hell should we be afraid - ashamed - the word of your choice - of sex ?
It doesn't matter if it's with a partner or on our own, it feels good dammit !

But I've come to a point, which I think you summed up nicely, where porn, or the fantasy I'm used to ( my old faithfull one that's been around for years :rolleyes: ) don't work properly any more.
If I'm doing it myself, I can thrash away for ever ! :o Where's the pleasure in that ?

There isn't any, none whatsoever. But my mind tells me to do it anyway. Why ?
I suspect it goes back to the old problem of "feeling unworthy" - I still feel that making love to my wife could be mistaken for "aggressive / abusive behaviour" so I crank one off instead.

I know how much pleasure we can have during sex, and the pleasure comes from within us. Our senses, touch and smell, all give us pleasure. Our minds can revel in the closeness and intimacy of making love. And as you say, we can achieve a lot of that on our own.

Why ? because porn and fantasy doesn't give us ALL the pleasures. Porn's purely audio - visual, fantasy is purely in our minds.
Neither of them can create the full set of sensations and emotions.

Dave
 
Hi Dave--

I'm in sync with so much of what you have to say. It's terrible, isn't it, that such simple human pleasure was tainted by abuse.

And not only was it tainted, but there's the sad fact that the body can't do without sex, so one can't avoid the taint. And then porn seems like an easy solution. Sex without presence. At least for me it's all about not being there while still having the release. And that's just another kind of abuse (not to mention the dirty ramifications of voyeurism).

But the fact that sex is a simple bodily requirement (as well as an enormously powerful kind of pleasure) means reclaiming it is a vital part of the healing process. If we disgust ourselves over our basic bodily functions we're on a pretty dark path (I feel like the guy in Dr. Strangelove muttering about courruption of the precious bodily fluids...). Maybe the perpetrators are really communists, and this is all a gigantic plot to destroy American Manhood! ;)

But anyway, the reclaiming seems totally vital to me. Thinking of sex as "thrashing away" as you so well put it...makes it sound scary and like trying to escape. Instead of escaping, we should be able to just enjoy the luck of our species that allows us so much daily pleasure and deep communication.

There's no way the act of making love can ever be abusive or agressive. There's no badness inherent in it. The only danger comes from dark interpretations and motivations behind the act. Darkness causes people to transform the simple and joyous into a shadow of itself. That's the real perversion of sex abuse, that something so nice and basic gets twisted out of shape and turned into a monster that lives in dark shadows and feeds on our basic needs, corrupting our outlook on the world. And because it is so basic and necessary, we can't help but return and return. So as a simple survival response, we have to find a way back to the proper perspective on it. That it is like eating and drinking...just a natural part of the body's motion through time. Not in itself something to be afraid of. And it's also totally and freeingly unavoidable...part of the very fabric of the human animal, like our hair and our skin. Wanting it and needing it are not only normal but proper, totally right for us as human beings. Once we see that this truth is actually comforting and right, then maybe we can get to the point where the other facts become understandable: that it can also be a joyous, liberating experience of life, as well as a profound means of communicating with someone we love.

There's so much darkness there. But when we leave the darkness behind, the scars that cause that darkness begin to heal.

And porn needs to go to let that healing begin. So, at least for me, do most of the fantasies. My mind has been too clouded by wrong thinking about sex. The slate needs to be cleaned entirely and a new state of mind developed. One that grows into new and healthy habits of thinking about my self in my body and my relationship to its sexual past. In other words, I want to replace the fears with joy.

Danny
 
Dichotomous thinking. It is the way I view the world and unless I pause and really consider what I am thinking, I do it without even realizing. I read through the posts in this thread and I identify with so many of the things said. I too battle with pornography and the effect I allow it to have in my life. But then I re-read this thread and I start to spot the dichotomies. Please don't think even for an instant that I am judging anyone's thinking. I won't fall in the trap of dichotomizing dichotomy!

But I do have a point. I carry around two bins, "good" and "bad", and I try to put everything in one of these two bins. It can be more subtle sometimes... abuse for example is something easy to throw in the bad bin. Love is something easy to throw in the good bin. Lately though, I am not sure they belong in those bins. I am not suggesting I should reverse the binnage, but rather that very few things lend themselves to labeling.

In my own case, my primary abuser also met a need for companionship. He was cruel, but when he was not abusing me, he was actually a pretty good friend. Calling him "bad" tends to invalidate that friendship. It doesn't seem possible that someone so vile could actually be someone's friend. Trying to label love "good" has some problems too. It casts love as a cure all. If only I was loved...

Then come the much more ambiguous things, like pornography. For years I have held it in the "bad" bin. My first effort at forgiving myself, at de-shaming the activity, was to put porn in the "good" bin. Only now do I even consider that it won't be labeled. It is an action and it has consequences. That is really all I can say about it. Sometimes those consequences have yucky feelings attached, sometimes not.

Re-reading the thread, I see words like none, never, all, always. And I see statements like "love is..." and "porn is...". In my first pass these ideas seemed so natural to me. I had to look very carefully to see what I was really doing. I need to know how to regard people, things, activities. Porn is a way for me to protect myself, isolate myself from the dangers of intimacy. Okay. That may be true, but when I start talking or thinking like that I want to believe that is *all* that porn is. Sex is a gentle expression of love. Again, I want to think that is *all* sex should be.

It is much easier for me to react to the world around me if I can compartmentalize things. In the beginning recovery was nothing more than an attempt to refine my categorization of the world. I thought I merely needed to hone my binning skills. But I am gradually starting to understand that recovery is about losing the need to bin. Losing the need to label.

Leaving porn behind is a noble goal, one that I share with many of you. I try to motivate myself by saying "porn does this awful thing. Porn isolates me. Porn makes me feel bad about myself." The truth is that I do feel isolated or ashamed when I look at porn. But that doesn't make porn "bad", not even for me. It seems that I need to be able to label something "bad" before I will consider stopping that activity. Sometimes I try to soften the blow... "Porn is okay for some, but bad for me." That is the same thinking with more camouflage piled on.

I do feel better when I am not looking at porn so much. I do feel that I can relate better to the people around me. Those are respectable reasons to want to stop looking at it. But that is not enough. I feel a strong need to say that, because of those reasons, porn is bad, even if just for me.

Getting away from porn for a minute, I do this with so many things. Going out on the weekend is good. Sitting around the house all day for too many days in a row is bad. Working is good. Working too much overtime is bad. Fantasizing about men is bad. Sex with my wife is good. Eating healthy is good. Eating too much pizza is bad. My mother neglected me... bad. Church was condemning... bad. Therapy is good. I could go on all day, but I imagine you have the point now. Perhaps you agree with me about the above statements, but personally I am trying to shake free of that entire line of thinking.

Sometimes the labels are different, but it is a label all the same. Rather than trying to accept my feelings for what they are, I try to say I have these feelings because I did something good, or bad, or that something good, or bad, has just happened to me. The habit is so entrenched that I am doing it even as I right this. I can detach from it enough right now to share it with you, but I still believe that some things are "good" and some "bad".

I haven't really said anything about abstinence here, which seems to be the point of the thread. But the posts here really drive at the heart of my thinking about life, and porn. So I wanted to challenge myself (and you, if you are interested) to sit back and consider whether I am trying to divide things into categories. Attach labels. It is much easier to chart my course when things are clearly marked. But I seem to be trading freedom and depth for navigational ease.

I will consider it a major milestone in my journey when I realize I am not using my label set anymore.

...We distort things...because we are trained neither to voice both sides of an issue nor to listen with both ears...It is rooted in the fact that we look at the world through analytical lenses. We see everything as this or that, plus or minus, on or off, black or white; and we fragment reality into an endless series of either-ors. In a phrase, we think the world apart. -Parker Palmer
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Human brains naturally generate opposites. Someone says black and we think white. Someone says hot and we think cold. Binary thinking begins as the infant explores her world, playing with her fingers and toes and batting at brightly colored toys attached above her crib. She begins to recognize what is me and what is not me. In short, she begins to categorize.

Dichotomous thinking is an adaptive behavior that is part of human nature. The wonder of the human mind is that we can change it. We dont have to behave habitually. We can actively choose to think in a different way. Human minds are enormously adaptable. Establishing different patterns of thought will take some effort, but once established, those new patterns will become as natural as the old way of thinking.
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Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, new insights begin.~Herman Hesse
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Hi Wrangler--

I so agree with your points about labelling. Binary oppositions don't make much sense to me. Rather, I think of things as they relate to me and to my life, trying for openness. Things in themselves are rarely good or bad (in my opinion), they are just things. Then we bring interpretations of the things with us as we approach them. Our baggage turns them "good" or "bad" or "complex" or whatever the interpretive baggage does.

My abuse made this labelling a very problematic issue for me, as I tended to look at all guys as potential abusers, and hence locked myself out of friendship for years.

So I agree...love isn't good or bad, sex isn't good or bad. I even try not to think of my dad (the abuser) in those terms. It makes little sense to me to see him as anything but a terribly troubled, very complex person with lots of issues and good and bad sides. I can't totalize him into "Abuser." He was my dad and a drunk and a very smart engineer and a successful sculptor, very witty, etc, etc, etc.

Porn then becomes one of these complex things we have to deal with in going about our daily lives as guys with sex abuse in our past...but then it's also something that most other guys have to deal with as well.

Danny
 
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