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This is I guess my new and first thread here on 7cups and my journey through addiction. I am a straight 22 year old man and I have a problem with porn, currently consider myself spiritual but in the past was more catholic than today. My goal in writing today is to get my story out on paper, to identify the paper trail of how I got to this addiction. I would then keep track here after this thread of how many days I go without it until i feel like I can go without porn and without the posts. I'd also like to get my emotions out while maybe connecting to others with similar stories and paths in trying to quit porn once and for all.
it all started when I was in about 5th or 6th grade when I got my first phone. Before that time I want to say I didn't have this kind of addiction but looking back now, I think this may have been a problem way sooner with things I did as a kid and a lack of self control. I say this because before my phone I would master bate to characters in either movies or shows without my family knowing and really only that, never really master bating real people I met or interacted with because to me it didn't feel right. when I got to 5th/6th grade I was introduced into the world of anime, specifically Oran High school host club, which in general didn't spark anything by itself but did spark my interest in anime. After watching that show I wanted more funny similar-esk kind of shows that made me laugh and just feel excited (not sexually excited just excited about the cool stories and comedy). So instead of seeking guidance from the someone older or who knew anime better in order to show me age appropriate shows, I started looking up and finding my own shows which led me down the path of finding more echi shows and shows that weren't per say hentai put might as well have been. The shows at first scared me because of the sudden appearance of nudity but noticed how it also made me feel arousal wise giving me the chance to explore my body more but from here I think I associated master bating and exploring my body with strictly media instead of imagination and just personal necessity in a healthy manner.
This was I think the tipping scale for me, the tipping point of which I found out I can look up these kinds of shows/topics/images that have these more explicit scenes then why can't I find some pictures/shows/videos of full on nudity and sexual acts that were heavily implied real women? After taking the dip into the pictures of real women in skimpier outfits, anime shows meant for older audiences, I eventually craved for more and realness, just something new that would itch something inside of me like a hunger, porn and hentai. From here after the 6th grade it just became a very regular routine for me to get turned on for whatever reason (boredom, loneliness, natural errection needing taking care of etc..) and immediately go to porn to get relief. This then became a regular occurrence to watch and relief myself about 3 to 4 times a day practically every day I could until about collage. throughout my time before college I found myself not really considering porn as an addiction but did feel deep down that it was bad because there was that distinction of not doing these things to people around me since it felt wrong to look at women that way but also because at the time I was more catholic and felt god and my family looking down on me if they ever found out. At some point during the time I started watching porn, I struggled and hurt myself mentally asking why I was returning to it if it gave me this much of a hard mental conflict until I sort of gave up and just went with the flow and stopped caring about porn being a problem for me since I kept hearing that its natural to take care of oneself. This of course wasn't talking about using porn but in the end took it that way and never asked others for clarification or help so I just kept falling deeper into the hole.
Time skip now to about 4 years ago from today, I started college, this is about the time (including a little bit of the end of highschool) of which I started to realize that watching porn and the like was not good because there were actual issues with it. hearing things about how it damages one's brain chemistry, already noticing sub continuously and at times consciously how I thought about women and how others were towards women made me feel uncomfortable and like an ***. I looked back and saw how it affected my first relationship in highschool which I also believe led me down the path of sex addict but didn't tackle it more until later in my second relationship in college. Where I attempted more to stop my porn addiction and at the time on one of my longer breaks got into my second relationship. during this time I knew more of the affects and the reason for wanting to stop it was for myself and later for my ex. about half a year into the relationship I started again, feeling guilty and not like my ex's problem to worry i didn't tell her until the one year mark which seriously hurt our relationship and trust she had for me. from there we communicated more about my issue and she helped me and felt like I would never touch it again, but then in the relationship communication became harder between us because of the trust, increasing resentment she had towards me, and my inability to communicate with her my feelings of her actions towards me hurting me also causing pain and resentment to never being able to speak up because I felt the need to stay quiet because who was I to say anything because I did the bigger wrong. there were also other things happening in the relationship that I am trying to grow and be better at but thats apart from the whole porn situation. throughout the rest of our relationship I never returned to porn until the end of our relationship where I broke down and fell back into porn depression in order to numb myself. which brings me to the present, where I am still trying to brake the cycle of falling back into porn and healing from the break up even if it was now about half a year ago. will say healing from the breakup is slow but is getting better now but the porn is just getting harder to get through again because of how hard I fell at the end of the relationship. And that is about it for now, this is the beginning of my thread and want to combat this as much as possible, grow as a person, and just be better for my future, and hopefully so I can be a better to my future partner.
