Growing up

Today marks two years since I started this blog. A lot has changed for me, mentally and emotionally, in that time.

I wrote a while ago about 12 steps and how, while the groups are not for me, I was working through the steps themselves. I have continued to do so, and lately I have been really thoroughly doing step 4, so I have been making a real inventory of the things I have done (including the cybersex that I only recently acknowledged to Ann). I am sharing this inventory with Ann, which is part of step 5 (sharing with another person). The sharing is hard, but it’s been good and freeing, even though it hurts at times. Even though it can be painful, hurting like this is better than the numbness that I used to feel.

I feel like crap about the things that I have done. The lies are the worst, which I suppose makes sense. I am sorry for the actions and the acting out, I truly am, but I am more sorry for having not confessed sooner and for having worked so hard to cover things up. I wonder what I could have accomplished in my life and my relationships (friendships, family relationships, marriage) if I hadn’t spent so much effort and time trying to hide what was really going on underneath the surface. I don’t want to be like that anymore, and I’m trying not to. Sometimes, that’s easier than others.

I have lied to Ann; both lies of omission (not telling her about my addiction and how I was so scared and was trying to numb myself to the world) and lies of commission (telling her that I was okay when I wasn’t, telling her I hadn’t said or done things that I had). The lies grew and grew with time, escalating with the addiction. I felt the need to control my situation all the time, even though I know Ann (and others; I have done this my whole life) can handle the truth and should have a complete picture of me and my situation.

I grew up thinking that lying was the worst thing a person could do. I still feel that way, at least to an extent. I hate that I was so scared of “upsetting the balance” that I allowed myself to do just that by holding back from myself, from my parents, from my friends, and from Ann (who I really do love more than I can describe).

I sometimes feel like the lies, which I have now come clean about, have negated what she recently posted about still trusting me, though she has told me otherwise. I trust her, though, so I am doing my best to accept what she has told me while continuing to work through my issues. I have decided that I am going to be a man and step up and take responsibility for my actions, even if there are consequences. It’s hard to do this sometimes, but it’s the right thing to do. That’s all I have ever wanted to do: the right thing. I am tired of trying to control things because it doesn’t work anyway.

It’s time to finish growing up. I know I have grown so much in the last two years (which I have sometimes had to remind myself about in recent weeks, since it at times feels like I’m starting from scratch), and I know that I still have work to do. I’m doing my best to be courageous and not live in fear anymore. Living in fear sucks, and I’m tired of doing it.

I feel like these past two years have been the best of my life (and it’s not like the rest of my life was really bad), because they are the two years during which I have been the closest to being a “grown up” in the maturity sense. That’s what I want to continue. I don’t want to dwell on the past; instead, I want to learn from it and continue my journey forward. Basically, I just want to be the best Matt that I can be.

Thanks to Ann helping me open the door, I have been able to make steps in that direction during these past two years (and these past two months, since I finally came clean about the rest of the facets of my sexual addiction). It has taken a lot of soul-searching and a lot of hard work (and I know the work isn’t over yet; it seems like most days I encounter something that brings an old memory to the surface that I need to discuss), but I feel better than I’ve ever felt. Feeling better is actually scary sometimes, but I refuse to stand in my own way any longer.

Thank you, Ann, for helping me realize that I needed to make changes and for being here for me when I’ve needed to talk things through. I love you. Thank you for not giving up on me. I am not going to give up on myself, either.

So the Little Got More and More (escalations part 2, aka “On Trust”)

I have had a lot on my mind lately, as you’ll soon see. I’m sorry that this is somewhat poorly organized; I just felt the need to get it out.

Last week when I read Ann’s post about how she still trusts me despite the things I’ve done, some things became clear in my head, though admittedly it took a little while for them to do so. I have been struggling with guilt related to the things I’ve done for a long time now, and it has been very difficult for me at times. Reading her post made me very happy on the one hand, because I know that I have made great strides toward “sobriety” in terms of my addiction, but on the other hand, it made me really want to live up to her sentiments – I want to earn the trust that she has placed in me and be the trustworthy man that she seems to know I am (even though I can’t always see it).

You see, for the past two years, I had still been lying to her by keeping things from her; even though almost two years have passed since we first began to talk about my addiction to pornography and we both feel that we have become a lot closer during those two years, there were still some things that I was afraid to tell her because I was afraid to admit them to myself. I was afraid of her reaction, too, but I was more worried about how knowing these things would make her look at me. I was afraid that she would leave me, which is entirely selfish. Reading her post made me think that not only do I want her to trust me, but I want to trust her with a complete picture of me and just how far my addiction escalated before two years ago. I love her and I want what is best for her. The best thing for her is to know the truth.

I am sure you are wondering what I’m talking about, so here it is. It wasn’t just porn and strip clubs for me (though both of those were definitely prevalent); I was also involved in cybersex (starting around the semester that sucked) and phone sex (which I only did a few times with a single person). I am glad that my addiction did not escalate further, and it truly scares me to think of how far it might have gone if I hadn’t been forced to take a hard look at it two years ago.

All of this was before Ann discovered my porn addiction, and all of it stopped along with the porn usage at that time. The timing of when these happened (before Ann discovered the porn and I was forced to confront my addiction and the feelings behind it) does not excuse or justify these actions in any way. I did all of them while I was involved with Ann, though the cybersex started before that. I feel terrible about having done these things during my involvement with Ann, especially since we have been married. I also feel terrible about having done these things to myself. I feel like I cheated on both of us. I am so sorry, Ann and Matt. I didn’t want to hurt either of you.

In my head, these disparate ways of acting out were all aspects of the same thing (my addiction) and I had done them for the same reasons (loneliness, fear of abandonment, fear of being alone, grief, etc.). I do believe this, but using the shared reasoning as justification for not talking about them or acknowledging the extent of how far my sex addiction had escalated was wrong. [Ann, I know I have apologized for this and you have accepted and forgiven me, but I am still sorry.] Ann deserved to know about all of the ways that I acted out; they should never have happened, but I should have at the very least told her about them when I came clean about the rest two years ago. I didn’t tell her then because I was afraid. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to be afraid anymore and that I’m willing to accept the consequences for my actions. I want to be a man and live up to my ideals and my values. I don’t want to cheat on my wife in any way, and I don’t want to lie to her. I want to do the morally correct thing, and that is to be honest with her and with myself.

When we started talking about this the other day, it took me a while to get to it. Ann and I first discussed other things from my past and I silently debated with myself about whether or not to tell her. Finally, I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer, so I told her about the cybersex. I told her about the phone sex the next morning. I hate it that I have held things back and that they are so jumbled up and layered inside my head that even when they start to come out, they don’t all come out at once. I am glad that I got these out, though.

I also told her about the slips I’ve had in the past two years (though, to be honest, she asked me if there had been any after I had confessed to the cybersex because she had thought that was what I was going to tell her). There have not been many, but sometimes when I have felt very tempted, I have given in and looked at some porn. I have not masturbated to pornography, but I have looked at it. Thankfully, though I have felt tempted to do so, I have not engaged in cybersex or phone sex during that time. I guess I haven’t really “fallen off the wagon,” but I have definitely stood on the edge of wagon, looked down at the ground moving quickly beneath the wheels, and felt like I was losing my grip on the wagon and/or losing my balance, like I was going to fall at any second and it was going to really, really hurt. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened, but I’m still scared that it will. I don’t want it to, and I think that being honest with Ann and myself about my feelings and what’s gone on will help me keep that from happening in the future. I now know, truly know, that I can talk to Ann about anything. I don’t know why I ever doubted it. She is my best friend, and I love her. Why would I keep things from her?

On the one hand, I am proud of myself for telling her these things on my own, rather than her having to find them out the way she discovered the porn. On the other hand, I am extremely ashamed of myself for having kept this inside for the past two years. I do not think that this negates the positive steps I have taken in the past two years, but I know that it was wrong to keep this from her. I am extremely glad that I will not have to carry anymore secrets for another two years (or even another two days!).

Ann has told me that circumstances might be different if I had slept with someone else, but that never happened. She believed me, though I totally understand her initial skepticism. After all, I’d still been keeping some secrets; how many more could I be keeping? I know that the answer is none, and I am glad that she wants trusts me on that. Ann now knows all I have done (not all of the details, though many of those have come out in the past week as well, but all of the general types of things), and that feels good. It also feels good that she accepted these revelations calmly and without judging me. I had feared that she would become quite upset and that she would leave me, but she is still here and she tells me that she doesn’t plan to go anywhere as long as I remain honest with myself and with her and as long as I continue to work through my issues. It’s scary to me to have to take that on faith, but I really do trust her and I believe that she is committed to me and to us. Trusting her is the least I can do after all she’s done for me. I love her more than anything in the world, and I am so fortunate that I don’t have to make it through life without her. Thank you, Ann! I know you don’t see it this way, but I really do think that you have saved me from myself.

I am sorry to my readers, too, for having held things back from you, too. I am sorry for lying to you, and I hope that you still get something out of my blog. Please know that everything that I have written about has been the truth, though it was not always the whole truth. Thank you for reading, and I hope you will continue to do so. To those of you who have contacted me for encouragement (either to encourage me or to seek encouragement for yourself), I hope you do not feel that I have let you down.

Trust

I’d like to write a little about trust, since I’ve been asked how and why I’ve been able to trust Matt again, after everything that’s happened between us.

Well, when I first found out that Matt was still looking at porn (almost two years ago now – it’s crazy to think that it’s been that long!), I felt really stupid for trusting him when he’d told me he’d stopped.  I felt that I shouldn’t have let my guard down and that I should have been more vigilant. My first instinct was to become more cautious and alert in the future.

But eventually I asked myself if trusting him had really been so wrong. He’s my husband, after all – I’m supposed to trust him! And I had reason to believe that I could, so why wouldn’t I have?

Then I asked myself: if I HAD watched Matt more closely in the years leading up to my discovery, would it have guaranteed that he’d never have lied to me? No, of course not! It would, however, have guaranteed that I’d have spent a lot of time and energy being suspicious and watching him like a hawk. My suspicion wouldn’t have softened the blow when I finally discovered the truth; I still would have been lied to and hurt in the end. So the vigilance would have all been for nothing, and the time and energy would have been wasted. I might have felt even worse, thinking that I’d tried but not hard enough.

And then I realized that the same thing could happen again: I could vow to watch him more closely from now on and to not let myself trust him too much — but he could still lie to me if he really wanted to. After all, I’m not with him 24 hours a day, every day. He’ll always have opportunities. So the question then became: how did I want to spend my time and energy? Worrying about what he was doing and watching over his shoulder, even if it wouldn’t guarantee my security? No.

I don’t want him to keep from looking at porn because he’s afraid of being caught. I want him to “act right” because it’s what he believes in and it’s what he wants to do. Otherwise the change in his behavior won’t be worth anything (IMO) and probably won’t last.

I want to be with a man who’s capable of watching over himself and of controlling his own behavior. If I tried to take over Matt’s addiction for him, it wouldn’t do either of us any good. While I can be there for him and help him, ultimately he is the only one who can work through his issues, and I need to let him do that.

When I made the decision to trust Matt again, I thought about our whole history together, and evaluated how he had treated me (and others) the majority of the time. What it came down to was this: I honestly believe he’s a great guy, that he loves me, and that he didn’t do any of this stuff because he intended to hurt me. More importantly, I still felt he was a generally trustworthy person. That didn’t excuse the lies he had told, or make the lying right, but it meant I could move past it and give him another chance. I’m aware that this puts me in a vulnerable position, but it’s a decision I’ve consciously made. If it turns out to have been the wrong decision, I trust that I’ll be able to deal with the consequences.

Obviously each person has to examine the circumstances of their own relationship, and decide whether or not they think it’s a smart idea to trust their partner again. Even if you feel that the other person is inherently well-meaning, you may recognize that they’re not willing or able to change at this point in time, and if that’s the case, maybe it’s not a good idea to trust them right now. No one knows your relationship, or the person you’re involved with, better than you! So look at your relationship from every angle and then trust yourself to know what you should do next. More importantly, trust in your own strength and resilience to get you through whatever ends up happening. Best of luck!

Guilt

I really don’t write often enough; I haven’t written since July. I’m going to try to be better about that, since it really does help. This post is kind of rambling, but it helped me to write it. I actually wrote it yesterday and, though I’m feeling much better today (thanks to having written this and having a good talk with Ann), I’m posting it now.

Lately, I’ve felt a lot of guilt about my addiction (specifically about what I’ve done). It’s odd, I think, since I haven’t “acted out” for quite a while now and I’ve done my best to apologize to my wife, Ann, and to various friends that my addiction affected in less direct ways. I’ve also tried (and am continuing to work on) making amends with these people, particularly my wife. Sometimes I still get tempted to act out, particularly after anything that I’ve built up in my head, such as the holidays (my post-holiday stress-level this year was about the same as last year, but it didn’t seem to last as long, which is good), but I seem to have gotten better at getting through the times when I’m tempted by talking to Ann and by simply realizing that I’ve been through this before (that really helps). Sometimes that’s easier than others, but so far so good.

I think my guilt stems from the fact that I hurt the person that I love the most: my wife. It hurts me to know that I am capable of causing her so much pain. All I want to do is make her life easier, and I feel like I’ve done nothing but make it harder. I know that isn’t true (and she has reassured me of that), but it’s how I feel sometimes. She is the most amazing person; I truly believe that she is my soul mate.

I know that I really am a good person (though I sometimes feel otherwise – admittedly less often than I once did), but I also know that I have cheated (not in the “actual sex with another person” sense, since I thankfully never did that, but in the emotional sense). It’s just hard for me to reconcile that with who I know I am. I imagine that’s kind of the same reconciliation that Ann had difficulty with at first. She has forgiven me, but I can’t seem to forgive myself. I don’t know if I ever can, but I hope that someday I will be able to. I want to. Most of the time, I feel okay about myself, but sometimes I get really down on myself. I wonder sometimes if I even should be able to forgive myself. I’m not talking about excusing my actions, as there is no excuse; I’m talking about forgiveness. I don’t know if I deserve it. Most of the time, I think that I do and that it will come, but sometimes I don’t know.

Something interesting is that I think these feelings of guilt are, in some ways, replacing acting out as my coping mechanism for stress. I’ve found that these feelings tend to come up when I’m worried or concerned about something else. Lately, I’ve been thinking about a lot of the choices I’ve made, not directly related to my addiction or to Ann — things like my career, what I studied in school, etc., and I’ve been feeling guilty as a means of avoiding dealing with these real issues. I’ve recognized that my feelings of guilt intensify when I’m thinking about other things, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction. That’s definitely a difference from what I used to do.

I read something recently which said that actions can (and often do) define beliefs. For instance, one can begin to think of oneself as “bad” if one engages in actions that are contrary to one’s morals/values; conversely, one can begin to think of oneself as “good” if one consistently acts in accordance with those morals/values, even if there is no conscious choice to live act that way. It seems like beliefs should define actions (and that can happen too), but I had never thought of it this way before. This is definitely something that I have done (my actions did not reflect my morals, and I felt like I was bad because of it…this became a self-perpetuating cycle). Maybe if I live in accordance with my morals and values for long enough, I might just start to believe that I’m a good person. I hope so. It might be easier to forgive a good person who has made some mistakes than to forgive someone that I still think of as bad.

I love you, Ann. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for being in my life and for not giving up on me.

Not about me

Hi, I’m Matt’s wife, Ann and this is my first (but not last!) post on the site. It’s taken me a while to figure out what to say and how to say it, but I’ve decided that a good place to start would be with a confession, of sorts, of my own. Several people have asked me (through the site) what helps me to cope with Matt’s situation. First and foremost, it helps me to know (and see) that Matt’s firmly committed to tackling this problem, and that he cares about what it’s done to both of us. I don’t think I would still be here if I didn’t believe he was trying. However, I have to admit that I have another coping “advantage” of sorts: I identify with what he’s going through, and therefore I find it easier to not personalize what’s gone on over the years.

In the beginning, I did personalize it and had a lot of difficulty trying to separate Matt’s use of porn from his relationship with me. Matt assured me over and over again that his porn use had nothing to do with me or us, and on one level I felt that this was true: I knew that he found me attractive, and I didn’t feel rejected by him. Nevertheless, I felt inadequate and often thought to myself that “if I were enough for him, he wouldn’t need to look at porn.”

It wasn’t until Matt admitted to himself and me that he was probably addicted, or at least compulsive, and we started talking about what actually went through his head when he used porn, that I began to understand how his porn use could be completely removed from the sexual relationship that he and I shared. This is because, surprisingly, his description reminded me of the way I used to feel whenever I would binge or starve myself.

I’d dealt with disordered eating throughout most of my life and I was amazed, listening to Matt talk about his experiences with porn, to note a lot of similarities between his problem and mine. I’d never explained my issues to him in much detail and he’d never read anything about addiction or psychology, so he didn’t realize how similar our situations were, either. If he had, I think he probably would have confided in me sooner.

Since then, through reading about other compulsions and addictions, I’ve noticed that the cycle of “acting out,” as it’s often called, is similar across the board. Take, for instance, this information about self-injury (also known as “cutting”) that I’ve seen in numerous places on the web:

How does self-injury become addictive?

A person who becomes a habitual self-injurer usually follows a common
progression:

* The first incident may occur by accident, or after seeing or
hearing of others who engage in self-injury
* The person has strong feelings such as anger, fear, anxiety, or
dread before an injuring event
* These feelings build, and the person has no way to express or
address them directly
* Cutting or other self-injury provides a sense of relief, a
release of the mounting tension
* A feeling of guilt and shame usually follows the event
* The person hides the tools used to injure, and covers up the
evidence, often by wearing long sleeves
* The next time a similar strong feeling arises, the person has
been “conditioned” to seek relief in the same way
* The feelings of shame paradoxically lead to continued
self-injurious behavior
* The person feels compelled to repeat self-harm, which is likely
to increase in frequency and degree

Why do people engage in self-injury?

Even though there is the possibility that a self-inflicted injury may
result in life-threatening damage, self injury is not suicidal
behavior. Although the person may not recognize the connection, SI
usually occurs when facing what seems like overwhelming or distressing
feelings. The reasons self-injurers give for this behavior vary:

* Self-injury temporarily relieves intense feelings, pressure or anxiety
* Self-injury provides a sense of being real, being alive – of
feeling something
* Injuring oneself is a way to externalize emotional internal pain
– to feel pain on the outside instead of the inside
* Self-injury is a way to control and manage pain – unlike the
pain experienced through physical or sexual abuse
* Self-injury is a way to break emotional numbness (the
self-anesthesia that allows someone to cut without feeling pain)
* Self-abuse is self-soothing behavior for someone who does not
have other means to calm intense emotions
* Self-loathing – some self-injurers are punishing themselves for
having strong feelings (which they were usually not allowed to express
as children), or for a sense that somehow they are bad and undeserving
(an outgrowth of abuse or neglect and a belief that it was deserved)
* Self-injury followed by tending to wounds is a way to express
self-care, to be self-nurturing, for someone who never learned how to
do that in a more direct way
* Harming oneself can be a way to draw attention to the need for
help, to ask for assistance in an indirect way
* Sometimes self-injury is an attempt to affect others – to
manipulate them, make them feel guilty or bad, make them care, or make
them go away

Years ago, substituting “bingeing and/or starving” for “self-injury” would have made any of the above statements accurate for me. Listening to Matt talk about his compulsion, I thought that he could probably substitute “using porn” for “self-injury” and the same would be true. Suddenly, I saw what he was doing and going through in a completely different light. I identified very strongly with him.

Matt has told me (and I think he’s written it on this blog as well) that after a while, for him, porn wasn’t about sex anymore. This made sense to me because my obsession with food eventually got to the point where it no longer had anything to do with food or eating. If I binged, it wasn’t because I was hungry, or loved the foods I was eating. If I starved it wasn’t because I thought I looked fat. Food had been my crutch for so long (what I turned to no matter what was going on in my life) that I just didn’t know how else to behave, how else to keep myself from thinking or dealing. I used food, or the denial of it, like a drug. But when I would try to talk to people about my issues with food, they would usually tell me I should “just stop” worrying about it because I didn’t have a weight problem. I realized, from listening to Matt, that this was the equivalent of my having told him all those times that he should “just stop” looking at porn because he didn’t need it. Such statements did neither of us any good, because they ignored the root causes for our compulsive behaviors, the issues we were running from. Even worse, these types of statements reinforced our feelings that our respective problems were things we should easily be able to switch off. I know that I, personally, felt so ashamed that I could not control myself that after a while, I hid my food issue completely and stopped trying to talk to anyone about it.

When I finally admitted what I was doing to myself with food (years ago), I delved into a lot of my personal issues and dealt with them directly. Doing this greatly diminished my need to constantly medicate myself with food, or to distract myself with obsessive thoughts about it. Since we started talking about his compulsion, Matt’s confronted a lot of issues from his own past, too, and it has made a huge difference for him as well.

After a while, an alcoholic doesn’t drink because he thinks alcohol tastes good, or because he wants to get a little inebriated. He simply doesn’t know how NOT to be drunk anymore. It’s how he or she gets through the day. For me, it helped a lot to think of it this way, and to know that a person who considers himself addicted to porn doesn’t necessarily enjoy porn. Chances are, if he describes himself as an addict or compulsive, he no longer even likes it. He may hate it, but not know how to get it out of his life. The fact that porn addiction is a somewhat embarrassing and easily misunderstood problem only makes it harder for him to ask for help.

I’m not suggesting that addicts are not responsible for their behavior, or that they can’t change it. I believe that once addicts know a little more about what’s going on, they should take responsibility for it and turn it around, possibly with professional help.

I never would have thought that all the misery I’d put myself through with food would one day seem to me an “advantage” in life but now I do, and even feel that there was a reason I went through it. I think Matt and I were meant to help one another get through all this crap, grow up, and become the best versions of ourselves that we can. This attitude has sort of bonded Matt and I together and I think he sees me as an ally in the fight, someone who understands and doesn’t judge him. That’s helped us enormously, I think.

Even if you’ve never dealt with a compulsion of your own, if you are married or otherwise involved with someone with a problematic relationship to porn, it may help to think of it in terms of addiction or compulsion, to separate behaviors from the person acting them out, and to go about getting him/her the appropriate help, just as you would with an alcoholic or a drug addict (if you feel you need it). Remind yourself that his compulsion has nothing to do with you, or whether or not you are “enough.” It has to do with something personal in the addict’s life, that only he can solve.

Also, it’s important to remember that you, as the significant other, are NOT responsible for the addict’s recovery. Although you can be an invaluable source of support, only the addict can do the necessary recovery work.

Anxiety, yet again.

I’ve been feeling anxious for a little while now. That’s nothing new, really, but it seems to be fewer and farther between than it used to, so it’s annoying when it happens. I’m getting better at figuring out what causes it, but it still sucks. I’ve been thinking about the past and how I still feel guilty about the things I’ve done, and that has driven me to be tempted to do them again. That doesn’t make logical sense, but that’s how it works. It’s like part of my mind is saying “this always used to work,” though the rest of my mind is saying “no it didn’t; it just ended up costing me a lot in terms of time and pain.” It’s an annoying internal debate, especially since I’ve had it so many times before and I know the right answer. Anyway, I want to remain strong, but sometimes I’m really tempted. I really really don’t want to be that guy anymore; I don’t want to go back to that place ever again.

Part of what I’ve been thinking about lately that has driven some of this anxiety is anniversaries. It’s been a year since I started this blog and a little over a year since I started “recovery.” It has also been a year since a very bad time for me, emotionally, when I wasn’t sure what was going to happen in my life and I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d even be here now (a year later). It has also been 10 years since the summer before the semester that sucked; events that summer were really the impetus behind much of the suckage that semester (as mentioned in that post), though porn was already well-entrenched in my life at that time. I like happy anniversaries (e.g., wedding anniversaries, birthdays, etc.), not anniversaries of painful events. Unfortunately, I seem to remember them both even though I’d much rather only remember the happy ones.

Added to my thoughts about these anniversaries and the pain associated with them (both pain I caused myself and pain I caused my wife) are the usual work/family/etc. stresses. My job is good, but sometimes it stresses me out. Same thing with my family; my wife and I went to visit family recently, and it was good (a lot of fun, really), but it takes me a while to decompress and return to “normal” after any sort of trip/being around a lot of people (that’s the introvert in me). I also started school again recently, so there’s some stress due to that (which I anticipated, but that doesn’t make it any easier). With the anniversaries and these other (self-imposed) stresses at the same time, I’ve been pretty anxious. It’s annoying because I feel better sometimes and I think I’m coming out of the funk (and the temptation) and then nothing external changes (ie. there’s not a triggering event) and there’s the funk/temptation again. I know I’ll be okay; I just need to take it day-by-day and it’ll get better (as it has in the past and, I’m sure, as it will in the future).

I really need to write in this more frequently. In the ten minutes it has taken me to write this, I’m feeling a little better.

One Year

A couple of weeks back, I completed my first year of recovery. I don’t like the word recovery, so I think I’ll just call it “the first year of the rest of my life.”

It was a good year that started off very badly, but ultimately was one of (if not the) best years of my life. I learned a lot about myself and why I’ve acted the ways I have (not just porn/sex-related, though certainly in those areas). I also learned a lot about my wife and our relationship. Parts of it were hard, parts of it weren’t. I was tempted to revert to my old ways, but I didn’t. I know that there will be other temptations in the future, but I now feel even more confident in my ability to overcome them as they come. I read a lot of books about porn addiction and sex addiction, and I plan to read even more.

It was a good year, and (I think) the good times are just beginning. I’m excited to see what the future has in store for me, and that (excitement about the future) is a feeling I haven’t had in a long time. I haven’t exactly dreaded the future, but I’ve been a lot more ambivalent about it in the past. At the same time, though, I’m not focusing on the future; I’m doing my best to live in the now because it seems that that’s the best way to deal with whatever happens. “One day at a time” and all that. I don’t participate in 12 step programs, but I really like that saying.

I hope all is well for any readers who are also in recovery.

I used to do a little / but a little wouldn’t do (escalations part 1)

(I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to post this; it was actually written about two months ago and sat as an unpublished draft all that time. I’ve just made a few minor tweaks today; it was pretty much ready to go all this time. At any rate, here it is.)

In my understanding, escalations are pretty common in addictions. It’s like the Guns N’ Roses lyric:

I used to do a little
but a little wouldn’t do
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin’ to get a little better
Said a little better than before

Sure, in “Mr. Brownstone” they’re talking about heroin, but the concept is definitely the same. That’s how it was for me, at any rate. My porn addiction escalated, both in the media I used (from magazines to videotapes to digital files) and the types of porn I perused (from softcore to harder and harder core).

When I first got into porn, it started out with magazines, specifically Playboy. Over the years, though, that changed. I got into more hardcore magazines (though, at the time, standard newsstand magazines didn’t show penetration), thanks to my brother. That was a habit I had for years, actually, buying porn magazines. In the late 1990s, the magazines themselves began to escalate and show more and more. That was fine with me at the time, though thinking about it now makes me feel gross.

I also got into movies. We (my brother and I) used to stay up late on weekends and watch whatever softcore movie was on HBO or Cinemax, always worried that my parents would wake up and find out what we were watching. When I was in high school, he introduced me to my first actual (hardcore) porno movie. He had a few videotapes (yes, this was the 1990s, so it wasn’t DVDs), and he’d let me borrow them sometimes. Eventually, I bought them from him. As soon as I was old enough to get a membership, I began renting them from the only place in town that had them. I dubbed copies for myself, too.

Around that time, the Internet began to take off in popularity and speed of connection. Almost concurrently, I was given a computer as a high school graduation present. I’d been online already, using bulletin boards, and I had seen some digitized porn images (primarily pictures from magazines and screenshots from videos). I never really got into picture collecting or trading in those days, though, as I was using the family computer and modem speeds at the time didn’t make it very convenient to transfer large files (image files, while considered small these days, were relatively slow to transfer with a mid-1990s modem over normal phone lines; additionally, most bulletin boards only allowed one download at a time). However, once I got my own computer and a relatively fast (still dial-up) modem, I discovered the nascent world of online porn. At that time, it was mostly still pictures, but they could be downloaded much faster and there were seemingly endless amounts all over the web. I began to collect them.

Additionally, also around this same time, I “branched out” from porn and began going to strip clubs with friends. That continued for years, along with my porn usage, but stopped several years ago, before my wife and I moved in together. Somehow I was able to stop going to strip clubs but was not able to stop using porn. I thought it had to do with willpower, but I am sad to say that I think it had to do more with money and the risk of getting caught. Still, though, over time I was able to not even have the desire to go to a strip club…I don’t know how I didn’t see the connection between that addiction (that I was beating) and my porn addiction, but I didn’t. I wish I would have thought “if I don’t need strip clubs, I don’t need porn, either.” Unfortunately, my thoughts didn’t follow that pattern.

Early in my college years, I would sometimes peruse pornography online. However, porno movies were my real addiction then. Video streaming was not nearly as advanced as it is today, so I pretty much relied on my growing collection of videotapes.

As time went by, though, I got rid of the videotapes. I got rid of several after my friends began to make fun of me for having so many. I began to download videos and save them on my computer; faster modem speeds and better quality streaming video facilitated this. I got rid of the rest of the tapes (as well as everything that was on the computer at the time) the first time my wife caught me (we were dating then). I showed her something on my computer one day and she saw some porn images that I had saved. I quit using pornography for about a year at that point. She and I were both eager to move past it, and we did (or so we thought). I really wanted to never start again after that, but I didn’t make it. Neither of us realized that it was as big a deal for me as it was, or I think we would have talked a lot more about it then and I could have begun to really recover. We could have possibly avoided some of what was to come. Of course, I think things happen when they should. I wanted to never start again, but unfortunately, I don’t think I was really ready for the work recovery entails. I wish I would have been, but I wasn’t.

We were living together when I started again (I started again due to the pressures in my life at the time, more on that in another post), I didn’t save anything on the computer; I would instead burn videos to CD. That way, whenever I felt the urge, I could simply watch whatever I had on CD and didn’t leave anything behind on the computer. That way I could pretend (even to myself, which I did) that I didn’t have any porn.

Many times, I destroyed the CDs I had made. Many, many times; I honestly don’t know the exact number. After using one of them, I would promise myself “this is it, this is the last time” and I’d smash that CD and any others, or simply throw them away. Before long, though, I would find myself having the same familiar feelings and I’d be downloading a new movie (or one of the same ones I’d had previously) and burning a new CD. “Just one CD this time.” That never worked, either. It never worked because I was focusing on the symptom (porn) and not the root causes, years worth of emotions and events that I had not properly dealt with.

I am so glad my wife found one of the CDs I had burned (I inadvertantly left it with the blank CDs at home, and she found it when she wanted to use one of them). I had known I had a problem for a long time, but I never knew how to quit. Thanks to her catching me, I was able to confront what was really going on and was able to really begin my long road to recovery. Finally, I was able to stop the escalation of my addiction. Who knows where it would have ended up.

To my wife: I love you; thank you for helping me with this. Thank you also for talking to me about so many of the things that I had put off for so long. Thank you for loving me even though I don’t always love myself or think I deserve it. Thank you. I’m sorry this hurt you (and I always will be), but I’m so glad that you are helping me through it.

Escalations part 2 coming soon.

I Won’t Back Down

I’ve been feeling anxious again lately; lots of things on my mind. None of them individually are enough to cause anxiety, but all together, I’m feeling anxious and I’ve felt how I used to feel. And I don’t want to feel that way. This sucks. I know I’ll be okay and I’ll get through this, but I want to skip to the part where I’m already through it.

On my walk just now, I heard this song (“I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), which is very fitting for me right now. The whole thing is one big affirmation, and the parts I’ve bolded are kind of “mini-affirmations:”

Well I wont back down, no I won’t back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I wont back down

Gonna stand my ground, won’t be turned around
And I’ll keep this world from dragging me down
Gonna stand my ground and I won’t back down

Hey baby, there aint no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
And I won’t back down.

Well I know what’s right, I’ve got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin me around
But I’ll stand my ground and I wont back down

Hey baby there ain’t no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
And I won’t back down
No, I won’t back down

Writing makes me feel better. I really should post more often, especially when I’m feeling like I have been.

Sitting in the Waiting Room

I just heard Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” (which originally appeared on the 7 Songs E.P.) for about the one millionth time, but somehow I never really noticed/paid attention to this lyric before:

I’m gonna fight for what I want to be
I won’t make the same mistakes
Because I know how much time that wastes

That’s pretty fitting for me, since I’ve wasted so much time with my porn addiction and I am fighting for what I want to be, which is the best me I can possibly be.

(Incidentally, Fugazi is amazing and worth checking out. You should do that now.)