Sex addiction ruined my mental health and my life

Hi! i’ve been struggling with a porn addiction since i was younger (around 12-13, im 18 now) and recently within the last two years it has developed into a sex addiction. It started out with just sending photos of myself to people online but once i lost my virginity it all went downhill from there.

i’ve been dating this girl for nearly 2 years now , she is perfect in my eyes. She doesn’t treat me bad and is an incredibly gorgeous girl. We were only dating a month before we had sex for the first time and i feel that’s where we went wrong . about 2-3 months pass and we are still together and i’m still doing risky things like watching porn and sending pictures of myself to others, but it started to get worse after i lost my virginity. i don’t know what came over me but i started to look for people near me to talk to them and i would end up sending them pictures and ***. This eventually led to me wanting to hookup with people in my town. I’m still dating that girl at the time and i knew i was cheating on her but i felt like i couldn’t stop, nor did i want to at the time. i ended up hooking up with someone one night and this would be the first time i cheated on her. i’ve cheated (watched porn, sexted, hookups, etc) multiple times almost the whole time we’ve been together.

The thing that makes everything harder now is that we now have a kid together, a beautiful baby girl born just last month. She’s all i have left through all of this. everything was going fine just up until this week.

just recently, I relapsed again just a few days ago. I got caught watching porn on my girlfriend’s phone while my daughter was sleeping beside us. I knew i shouldnt have done it but the urge is so uncontrollable sometimes. This started a lot of trouble between me and my girlfriend obviously, shes not living with me anymore and is threatening to take my daughter away as what i was watching wasnt so good . I don’t want these things to happen anymore. i don’t want to keep ruining all the good things i have, but it’s so hard to stop these urges.

I haven’t seen my daughter since thursday afternoon and it’s ruining me. I don’t know how much longer i can continue this. I want to be good for both my girlfriend and my daughter but i’m scared i won’t be in either of their lives any more due to my stupid decisions. I love them both so much but i know my actions show otherwise. I’ve given my gf so much betrayal and trust issues over the past year i feel so guilty for hurting her so much. i love her so much, but i know we can’t be together again until i figure this all out.

i’ve been trying to research more about sex addiction by reading articles and listening to books to try to find out what made me into this person. I’m trying to find a sex addiction therapist to talk to and i’m trying to get into SAA and SA meetings. I’m just so lost. I’ve could’ve been doing this so many different times but i didnt yet understand the severity of my addiction. I’ve tried seeking help before, i had a therapist for a while, i tried to get rid of all outlets but that failed, and i just tried to be open with my gf about when i get those feelings but i never did. I failed at doing all the attempts at getting better and now im back at step 1 but now my life is being torn apart.

Imnsorry this post was super long, i have a lot on my mind and i really need support through this. Thank you for reading i feel really good getting this off my chest.