My experience with porn

[trenton]

I want to tell my story to see if someone can learn from it. I have found some useful insights along the way for people with this kind of behavior.

When I was young, I originally had no interest in porn. I didn't understand the purpose of looking at it or what it was supposed to do. My grandpa looked at porn and he was caught on multiple occasions because of the search history. My sisters, mother, and grandma freaked out while I just ignored it.

In fact I had developed a purity complex due to trauma. I learned to disown sexual pursuits as something of lower purpose and value. The values I imposed on myself were for me to justify my existence through achievement and leaving a legacy. For some time it seemed my integrity had become unbreakable because I had no desire to engage in the inappropriate sexual behaviors of other kids.

This purity complex started to fall apart when I hit puberty. I would have more sexual fantasies and started masturbating. I felt some level of guilt and feared being caught. Nevertheless the pleasure was too great for me to resist even with my trauma. At this time I still didn't understand the function of looking at porn.

One day, I was watching a show about police. In this episode there was a sexual predator who took trophies from his victims. He would take their hair and panties. He would also take pictures of them tied up and looking scared or while naked. As I watched the show I dismissed this behavior as just weird and wasn't interested in understanding it. However in the next scene a police officer started explaining the behavior. The police officer said that having trophies and pictures of his victims enhanced his sexual pleasure during masturbation.

This line stuck out to me. I never was interested in porn, but now I started thinking that if I look at pictures of naked ladies while masturbating, it would enhance my sexual pleasure. I decided that I wanted to try it. The officer inadvertently encouraged this behavior.

I started looking at porn and I discovered that the police officer was right. I felt more pleasure while looking at pictures compared to just using my imagination. However, I quickly discovered that I was leaving a trail of evidence behind in the search history. This is how grandpa was caught. I went through the history to delete the evidence while keeping the innocent pages. Deleting the entire history like grandpa did would be suspicious so I needed to learn from his mistakes. This is when I stopped looking at porn for fear of getting caught.

For several years I didn't look at porn. However, I one day discovered incognito mode when I was just messing around with internet settings. When I read about incognito mode my brain immediately became interested in looking at porn again. The description was basically an invitation to look at naked ladies.

I don't remember how old I was when I started looking at porn again. I looked at a lot of different kinds of porn. I noticed I had a fetish for situations involving an imbalance of power and control. I therefore gravitated toward situations with a group of men having sex with a single woman. It feels embarrassing to admit this, but I prefer to own up to these kind of things.

Once I got out of college I decided to pursue self education as I searched for my life purpose. My self education included researching various political issues. I thought through all of my positions carefully trying to be as objective as possible while setting aside my emotions and biases. I used politics as way to self reflect on how selfishness can manifest while trying to commit myself to being as unbiased as possible.

One day I started learning about sex trafficking and its relationship to porn. Human traffickers were forcing women and children into prostitution for money and sites like pornhub among others were not doing enough to stop the illegal porn because of the amount of content. Therefore people looking at porn were potentially financially supporting and aiding in human trafficking.

Despite being aware of human traffickers, I continued to look at porn anyway. However, I was different from most people looking at porn. I would carefully observe myself and commit to radical self honesty by admitting that I was prioritizing my own sexual pleasure over the victims of human trafficking. I looked at forums debating porn and noticed that most porn addicts were incapable of this level of self reflection. I showed an unusual level of honesty and self reflection by admitting that my behavior reflected negatively on my moral character. Meanwhile people who look at porn a ridiculous amount like multiple times everyday would make really stupid arguments to defend themselves. I was looking at porn about once a week.

As I continued to learn about sex trafficking, I increasingly doubted the content I was looking at. I noticed there was teen porn in which the girl looked too young for comfort. I also looked at those gang situations with multiple men and started wondering if that woman was actually being coerced. I realized that I was unable to tell if the porn depicted a legal situation or not. I therefore couldn't tell if I was helping human traffickers or not.

Overtime my guilt pushed me to force myself to stop looking at porn. However the temptation to look for sexual pleasure was still there. I had conflicted feelings about this. I haven't looked at porn in about 9 months.

I continued my self reflection process through Journaling and observing myself. I recently recognized the flaw in my behavior. I was using the suffering of others to attack my own feelings with guilt. This is a form of emotional self harm and self sabotage. I made this connection through all of my previous studies in psychology and emotional mastery. I realized that so long as I was operating under guilt I could not function optimally. I was still thinking about sex constantly throughout the day, especially in terms of pleasure. It was feeding into the continued temptation to look at porn even though I didn't actually look.

I started observing my guilt and shame recognizing I need to let it go. As I let go my mind became quieter. I knew the outcome could be that I go back to looking at porn, but I surrendered to that possibility as well as the alternative that I don't.

I paradoxically discovered that letting go of my guilt and shame allowed me to let go of temptation. This is one of the paradoxes of psychology when guilt can reinforce unwanted patterns rather than remove them. It leads to a cycle of distress and relief. It can be like guilting yourself over eating junk food or any other habit. In my case the guilt caused my mind to fixate on sex even more. It reinforced Patterns of shame like my ocd around sexually assaulting people randomly.

My mind now feels more peaceful and clear. All of the other self reflection I did makes me feel more capable of loving myself. I am continuing to let go of guilt and shame which is a habit that got drilled into me as a child due to trauma.

I hope someone out there learns from my story. What do you think?

[Buck Edwards]

I had similar experiences around sex where I used to guilt myself but it made my masturbation just more frequent and it created a guilt cycle. Then I broke my sexual repression and didn't feel the need to masturbate as frequently as I used to and I felt freer and better around the subject of sex. 

It's just social conditioning that reinforces shame and guilt around sex. 

So kudos to your development. 

[manuel bon]

Thank you for sharing your story

[M A J I]

To put it in the simplest terms, porn robs the spirit and drains the soul.