Urges starting up here at day 9 on the counter. When I am focussing on dealing with tasks a, b, and c, and suddenly highly urgent tasks x, y, and z land on my lap, I've trained myself that an MO is the way to deal with it. Not so. Pre-emptive entry for the imminent urge: Rudolf, you're going to feel the urge pretty strong in the next short while. Get ready. It may be some spontaneous arousal when you're alone in the office, or taking a nap, or late at night with your awesome wife right there in the bed next to you, sound asleep. Remember what you have confirmed a thousand times over - an MO which relies on P, or Psubs, or F, is not worth it. It's not worth it for the low feelings that it is going to bring for an extended period of time, much longer than the quick release of an MO. It's not worth it for the wedge it will drive between you and your amazing wife. It's not worth it for what it does to your self-esteem and your integrity. It's not worth it for the imagery and narrative that it muddies your mind with. It's not worth it for how it will kill productivity. P/FMO is not your friend, man, it wants to kill you! Don't go there! Rather roll over and sleep - get the rest you need! Hold on to your wife. Put on some outstanding music on your headphones rather. If it's time to crush it at work, then do that. Get ahead and then reward yourself with some legitimate downtime and great coffee or a whiskey, which you haven't had for weeks. You got this. Let's go.
Had a GREAT intimate time with my wife early this morning. Cons: erection didn't perform all the way to a happy ending for me (although she had a happy ending). Pros: We both see at this point in our lives that sexual fulfilment isn't necessarily just about the O part, or about maintaining a constant erection. I am very keen to see what will happen though, if I can go 21-90 days with NO peeking or F. If I am re-trained on my wife's awesome parts and not sensitised to the solo MO experience, will my performance improve? More reasons to keep 100% clean and build a lifelong clean streak.
Fantastic news, Rudolf! And I know that the answer to your question about your performance improving if you focus on your wife and stop the PMFO stuff is definitely YES!
Oh, man. Today I am VERY tempted to go down a rabbit hole. (Chaser effect? Also from not having O'd yesterday, is there a neurological craving now?) If I didn't have deadlines today, I already know what wrong and damaging things I would do/try to look at. This is the upshot of having the tension of deadlines, gives me something more positive to focus on, even if it's a drag sometimes. There's no way I can make time for smut today, and I don't want to string along the idea that I'm going to (as much as I feel like doing that). If I let it, it will be on my mind all day, I would be living half my life, all day, and then I'd blow a whole bunch of time, energy and focus on that this evening, not getting the proper rest I need. No, I need to abandon that idea now. P is not freedom, it's total destructive, degrading, harmful enslavement. P is suicide.
I reached my goal of 2 weeks on the counter without reporting Psubs or F. I'm going to try resetting the counter, I want to experiment with hitting a shorter burst of 3 weeks rather than trying to rack up higher and higher numbers. I suspect that might help me psychologically. The counter is essentially a small part of what we're trying to do here, I think what's more important is total number of days absolutely clean, and the need to see changes in behaviour over the short, medium and long terms. Things I know for certain 14/28: I don't want to permit a pattern in my life of looking at P, or Psubs, or spending time on F, any more. This is a principle of which I'm convinced. And it applies as much when I am strong as when I am weak. Next time I am urging, I don't want to go along with it. That is settled. (Now to default my thinking to that, when the urges strike!) Pre-emptive entry for next urge: It's coming, the urge is on the way. You may think in the moment it's a good escape - It's not, it only makes your stress worse through avoidance and continuance of unhelpful patterns. You may want to look at something hot - well, put that energy into pursuing your wife, so you can look at, and touch, and enjoy something hot, which is far better. Remember this principle - you don't want to peek anymore, peeking is violent harm to yourself and all your dreams. And spending time on F is worse than spending time thinking about the most repulsive, nauseating thing you can imagine.
Things I know for certain 15/28: This could be the streak that lasts a lifetime! It will take constant attention to urges, keeping my head so I can "show up" in the moment and not get caught up in automatic behaviours which are still the default. I need to break out of those behaviours with clean streaks... they say it takes 18-66 days to form a habit. I have heard guys talking about the 3-week mark, and the 90-day mark as milestones. I have heard guys say even when they've been clean for years they still need to watch themselves. Well, let's make a start and keep it totally clean for 16, 21, 40 days. I need to journal when the urge is surging, even twice or three times a day if necessary, until I get out of the abstain-relapse-repeat cycle every 2-3 weeks, and beyond. Let's go. Pre-emptive entry for the next urge: I'm turning 41. The urge is going to present with the same old crap: a. "You deserve this", b. "Have a peek or you'll be missing out", c. "This will make you feel better." There is no rationalisation in support of PMO that comes close to making its case. a. I deserve to follow patterns that will wreck my life? b. What about missing out on legitimate joys and rest? c. I listened to the urges a zillion times before, and I only feel a zillion times worse for it today. I'm sick, tired, impatient and angry with these behaviours. 41 is going to be a year free of addiction for me.
Well, congrats on that. 41 seems like a long time ago for me and I guess it was. I would love to go back to 41 with the skills and knowledge I possess now. You are positioned well to have a most amazing life!
Yes, congrats and thanks to you for your great realizations and articulating them so well here. And for being so young! As Saville (my age-equal brother) said, you are very well positioned indeed, Rudolf. Keep posting. You are inspiring me and many others.
Ditto Saville and Moz. Congrats on so lucidly articulating your insightful realisations! And Happy Birthday!
Thanks gents @Saville @Mozenjo @path-forward . What great feedback and support. I'm having reminders of the fallout from stringing along this addiction for so many years. There is a client I have, and one of my partners says to me we are in danger of losing the client. He is concerned that we can't meet the client targets on our current schedule. I had two thoughts about it: One is that I need to re-look at my financial and time budgets and see what is realistic in meeting client expectations, and make sure we haven't taken on too much. But the second thing is, I know there was time I could have been previously giving to this client which I spent instead on smut! The quicker I get my time back from P, F, etc the better! I can't go back and fix it but I can use this as motivation for doing better with my time, energy and attention from right now.
I thought about the posts shared above by gents more advanced in years, and it is really significant to hear from you how "I'm young" and have potential for a great life ahead. The world seems to be geared up for the 18's-35's so it is really refreshing and encouraging to hear from the older generation. Your encouragement is meaningful. And I agree with you, why not have two or three or four or five great decades ahead? Thanks again all. This is why I always see if I can make a connection with the younger age categories and pay that forward... I wish we could reach every kid from their teens and show them that P has NOTHING good for them. Went for a quick nap, thought about a quick nap beforehand as the "old me" would do... then thought... forget that! Put a playlist on instead and drifted off almost immediately. Thirty minutes later and I'm up and can be productive for the rest of the day, and into the evening. No peeking or F required!
Yes! However, I think that we can reach a lot of young men by the way we carry ourselves. Staying away from P and focusing on being a good human is infectious. The status-quo goose steps us toward conformity of which P is a huge part. By refusing to be thus imprisoned we are acting as dissidents and this is why it is so hard to live a life without bad habits/addictions. Being a true dissident is infectious to others. It subverts the notion that we can't change, that we are stuck.
Urges are there but talking to myself with the right stuff. It's not worth it, I don't want to go back to square one, I can cope and sleep fine without an O, there are better things I can enjoy right now.
I'm in a great space. Loving life. I need to somehow cut expenses and find some extra income which is stressful. I don't have a plan yet but I have a plan to get a plan, haha, so I'm getting there. Other than that, P is a non-issue at the moment. But I have to watch myself, I've been here before. The cycle goes something like: relapse, struggle, relapse, struggle, do a deep dive into why I keep returning to P, make quality decisions, abstain for a couple of weeks, feel like I've got it beaten, allow some peeking or fantasy, spiral, relapse, repeat. So I have to keep checking in throughout the "3 weeks to 90 days" period, until bad habits are replaced - for starters. The progress I can see is that I started out with the above cycle applied to trying to avoid the old fetish and full-blown P, but fantasy was still allowed. Where I am now, I can see that peeking, P subs, and F are all going to keep me as enslaved as full-blown P/erotica etc. Definite progress away from harder stuff, and now I am trying to cut all peeking and F. This is progress. What's helping is I keep thinking about real sex with my wife and how that is far more worthwhile than all of the above (which give me nothing but enslavement). This is helping me to shut down urges as they arise and put my attention on my wife. There has also been huge progress in other areas: I have focussed on getting up on time every day cos I hated feeling like a teenager trying to roll out of bed every morning. I've got this one waxed, I'm now up consistently on time. Also I have seen improvement in my work and use of time. Rather than being hooked on P, the old fetish and video games, I'm trying to be hooked on solving problems. It's a very helpful headspace for me. I remembered a sketchy amount of time spent on peeking about a week ago which actually constitutes a relapse. I have adjusted the day counter to cut the crap. I want the counter to reflect an accurate, 100% clean streak. We're getting there. Keep up the good fight everybody, let's go!
Thanks for that @Libertad and @path-forward . Some urges. It's a combination of my wife's ongoing health struggles (booked to see a specialist next week), which puts limitations on how much I can press her for sex, and life's stresses and strains. Reactive entry: Yes, I'd like to enjoy the momentary release of an orgasm. I'd like to feast my eyes on something relating to my old fetish and preferences. But that's all bull$#!+. Solo MO just perpetuates the low feelings of missing out, without solving anything. "Feasting my eyes" on smut = taking in large amounts of poison. Poison to my life, my happiness and my goals. I am on the verge of gaining something I have been lacking for maybe 20 years or more: mastery of myself and my urges. This is worth far more than a release which costs many hours and lasts only seconds. To go along with the urge will be throwing my life in the crapper all over again. Not interested. It may take some more time, but when I get to the next intimate moment with my wife, THAT will be awesome. Meanwhile I'll welcome the discomfort of engaging with life rather than trying to escape it. This is "good pain". It means I am progressing as I should. Every task completed takes me in the direction of a preferred future with less stress and more income. This is exciting, man! Further motivation: I've divided my week into 21 blocks - mornings, afternoons, evenings. I did this in order to track work and rest blocks and make sure I'm hitting a good balance. After much soul searching and pondering, I've recognised that one of my highest goals is that each block would be worshipful service to the God to whom I owe everything. Every good thing is from Him and He can give me nothing greater than Himself. These are profound truths. If I think about the next hours as an opportunity for that, I don't want to serve lesser masters who just take and take but don't give any benefit. Let's go! I'll keep checking in if I'm still battling.
Was in a real battle last night, but made good choices. I had means and opportunity for peeking and F, but remained convinced that there is no motive for it that makes its case. In many success stories I've read, since way back, there are these moments, when the person really has to dig deep to ride out the urges without acting on them. I'm hoping that this and any future moments of real, pretty intense struggle will be the turning points that mean I'm leaving behind the addiction. Imagine living free of the urges for 99% of the time? Awesome. Or as Paul puts it, "he who has suffered in the flesh is done with sin." It requires riding out the discomfort of resistance without caving in to it. If all of us could deal with discomfort we would never consider looking at P again.
Urges again. Unfortunately I've trained my brain on going down the rabbit hole for so long, that even innocuous images that I see on message groups or irl can set the wheels spinning in negative directions. So glad for 9 days 100% clean though, it is awesome and what I want. Halfway to this goal of 100% clean 18 days, and each day I don't act out & keep bringing back each errant thought, is a win. So I'll stick to it. Keep going eveybody
