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.

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.

The Semester that Sucked

(This sort of relates to the escalations that I mentioned; more on those soon.)

The first semester of my sophomore year in college (Fall 1998 ) was one of the hardest times in my life. It really began the summer before that semester and continued through the holidays.

During the summer of 1998, I dated a girl who dumped me after a few weeks. While I had kissed girls prior to that, this was the first real physical relationship I had ever had (we didn’t have intercourse, but we did just about everything else). I became attached rather quickly. When she dumped me, I was devastated. I cried a lot. I drank a lot. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what followed the breakup was a very long porn-binge, for lack of a better term. It wasn’t just about the girl dumping me, of course, as it is now easy for me to see.

My best friend was also dumped by his long-time girlfriend that summer (they weren’t really together that long, maybe a year, but much longer than that girl and I were) as well, so the two of us often commiserated. I wanted to be there for him, but given our emotional states, it probably didn’t help either one of us. Hanging out with him often brought me down, so I would go home and use porn to bring myself back up. I didn’t realize that was what I was doing, but it is pretty clear now. To be honest, hanging out with him sometimes made me feel better, too, but just in the “he’s got it worse than me” sense. I’m ashamed to say that, but it’s true. Other friends of ours were happy in their relationships, and having just been dumped, that did not help my emotional state, either. That led to more self-medication with porn.

My mom was sick again, too; she found this out late in the summer if I remember correctly. I was worried that she would die (a constant worry for me for several years), so that added to the stress of my life. (This isn’t really the venue to talk about her illness, but I will say that she was sick off and on from the time I was 9. Looking at the various “flare-ups” of my porn addiction over the years, it’s obvious to me now that I often was trying to cope with my fears of losing her. I also feel the need to stress now that I was never abused in any way by either of my parents…at times I felt neglected given that they were both concerned with her illness, but they never abused me in any way.)

That summer, I worked two jobs and stayed out late with friends (often drinking) several nights a week. There were a lot of “parties” and “get togethers” that summer, as well as a lot of “come over and have a beer.” Often, after going to a friend’s house, I would then go home and use porn (either videos, magazines, online, or some combination thereof) until dawn. I tried to set time limits for usage, but that never worked — I would have to make myself go to sleep when I would see the sun coming up. I still lived with my parents at the time, and I had a TV (with VCR) and a computer in my room. I did not stay up until dawn every night, but that did happen many nights. I would then wake up, go to work, and then do it all again the next night.

It was weird; I had never before spent so many hours using it on such a regular basis. I do not understand how I didn’t know it was a problem when I started literally losing sleep over it, but I really didn’t.

During that time, almost every weekend, I went to a strip club with some friends. My non-work life pretty much revolved around sex, though I was oblivious to that fact. I did hang out with friends outside of a porn/strip club context, but I was definitely in the midst of a binge.

Despite the lack of sleep, I still felt like I was in control (clearly, looking back, I was far from it – not only was a full-blown porn addict, but I was a borderline alcoholic as well).

And then the fall semester started. I took some pretty difficult courses (13 credit hours, all fairly difficult) and I still worked both of my jobs (to be fair, I cut one of them back to four hours per week, but the other was about 25). That semester, my week was essentially as follows:

Sunday – Breakfast. Work 10am-3pm or so at job #1. Lunch. Homework/study. Dinner. More homework. Use porn. Sleep.
Monday – Breakfast. School from 9am to 2pm or so. Lunch. Work at job #2 for four hours. Dinner. Homework/study. Bar with coworkers until 1am or 2am (they served me, even though I was underage). Homework/study. Porn. Sleep.
Tuesday – Breakfast. School from 9am to 2pm or so. Lunch. Homework/study. Dinner. Work job #1 6pm-11pm or so. Homework/study. Porn. Sleep.
Wednesday – Breakfast. School from 9am to 2pm or so. Lunch. Homework/study. Dinner. Homework/study. Porn. Sleep.
Thursday – Breakfast. School from 9am to 2pm or so. Lunch. Homework/study. Dinner. Work job #1 6pm-11pm or so. “College Night” at dance club.* Go home after 1am, often followed by porn. Sleep.
Friday – Breakfast. School from 9am to 2pm or so. Lunch. Work job #1 3pm-12am (with dinner break, sometimes shift over at 10pm or 11pm). Strip club.
Saturday – Breakfast. Work job #1 10am-3pm. Lunch. “Leisure activity” (could be porn, but usually wasn’t; going to the movies, etc. Sometimes napping.). Dinner. Dance club.* Go home after 3am, often followed by porn. Sleep.

[*I would often chug a 40oz. beer before going in to the club, as they were more strict about serving minors than the Monday night bar. It was at these dance clubs and due to my reduced inhibitions brought on by the drunkenness that my addiction began to escalate away from porn and towards frotteurism. Essentially, I’d find a girl who was dancing and start dancing with her, rubbing against her. Almost invariably, this resulted in the girl walking away, thankfully. The guys that I went to the clubs with would do the same thing; they had been doing it for a while and they actually introduced me to it. I always felt extraordinarily creepy about doing this, and gave up on it after a while. I am really glad that frotteurism was never an ongoing problem for me, as it could have led to a lot more issues (legal and otherwise). Even thinking about the fact that I ever did this makes me feel really creepy and gross. I continued to go to dance clubs after giving up on this sort of act, instead dancing by myself and “enjoying” my drunkenness.]

Wow, writing my routine out like that makes it look pretty pathetic. Which it was. The times weren’t always the same (ie., I didn’t always work the same shift at job #1), and sometimes days were switched (ie., sometimes strip club was Saturday, though if I recall correctly, it was never twice in a single weekend), but you get the idea.

I remember more than once that semester falling asleep in one of my classes in particular (the first class of Tuesday morning). I still have my notes from that class, and there are several instances where mid-word, the ink sort of trails off down the page. How did I not see that as a problem? That class wasn’t even boring!

By about the mid-semester point, I was not satisfied with my grades in most of my classes. I did not know what to do. I knew something needed to change, but it never really occurred to me to try cutting the porn out of my life.

One Monday night after going to the bar, I came home and got on my computer. I chatted online (nonsexually) with a friend of mine who went to college in a different city. He asked me what I was up to, and I told him that I was about to start doing my homework (it was after 2am). He told me that I was crazy for staying out so late on a school night if I hadn’t done the work I needed to do (coming from him, that really hit home, as he is one of my oldest friends and was somewhat of a partier himself), and that I needed to be careful to not lose my academic scholarship. I said something along the lines of “yeah, sure,” but I did logoff and do my homework, then I went to bed. After that, I decided to cut back on the late nights with porn and to cut out the weekly Monday trip to the bar (I kept going to the dance clubs and the strip club, though I’d usually just go to one dance club per week). Additionally, I stopped studying in my bedroom because of the temptation of the computer and the VCR. Of course, I fell asleep on the couch in the living room a few times because of this, but my grades improved slightly over where they were at the mid-semester point.

My GPA that semester was the worst of any semester in my academic career. As a result, I decided to cut back on everything I was doing aside from school. I asked for fewer hours at job #1. I stopped the Monday trips to the bar altogether. I even cut back on the strip club visits (I still went, just not weekly). Additionally, I “quit” using porn. I put “quit” in quotes because that didn’t last. When I did start back up, I instituted a “no porn on school nights” policy that I was somehow able to uphold (most — but definitely not all — of the time) during subsequent semesters. Of course, that meant that weekends were often porn-filled as a result. Still, my GPA improved after that semester, and I felt better. (I didn’t see the correlation between porn reduction and feeling better, but now it’s clear as glass.)

I wish I would have told me friend about what all I’d been doing (I told him about working and drinking and clubbing, but not about the porn-filled nights); maybe he could have helped me. I wish I would have told my parents, too; they knew about my grades, but they thought that it was all because I was working too much (which I probably was, but that was hardly the major issue).

I am so glad I am finally working through this. And I am also very glad that I was able to stop the frotteurism before it became an ongoing problem for me. I wish I would have gotten through this 10 years ago, but better late than never.

For a long time, I didn’t understand why that semester was so bad academically (even after I made some changes to my routine). I thought that it was just all about the combination of difficult classes. They were hard, definitely, but they were not unmanageable. It was my life that was becoming that way.

I never want to have a “porn binge” again. Writing about this really helps. More soon.