Story time (long one)

I used porn since i was 11 years old. Im 27 now which works out to damn near 16 years, over half my life. It didnt start out horrible as im sure was the case for most of us, i was a curious kid experiencing puberty and exploring. My relationship with porn wasnt a concern for a long time, my use was moderate throughout my school years as i was busy all the time with either school work or sports or a part time job. After graduation i went right to full time work and started to party a little more frequently and when i would get home drunk and strung out that would be the time to give er a tug. Because i was going out for drinks with such frequency this habit became very regular and still i thought it was fine. I changed jobs a few times and settled into one that i stayed at for 6 years. I worked every shift they had: mornings, afternoons, evening, overnights, quite literally whatever they wanted me to do. There would be times i would be in the office all by myself and i would be so damn bored that i would absentmindedly stroke it at the desk, not to completion but to where i thought to myself hm i guess im kind of horny now and then i would wander off to the bathroom and finish what i started. It was around this time that i started to think what i was doing was pretty abnormal. I stayed at that job until 2023 at which point things took a sharp nose dive. Because i was laid off i was allowed a lot of government benefits for close to 10 months where the federal government paid me even though i wasnt working. I stayed home a lot and was completely unsupervised so of course, i was beatin my meat multiple times a day, multiple days a week. This is when i noticed that my social wellbeing was deteriorating, i wasnt spending as much time with friends, i rarely went out to do the things i enjoyed and i was so content to just stay home and stroke it. Push ahead to march 2024 and im just getting myself back to the job market when my mom passed away, i was and still am devastated because it was very abrupt and out of the blue without warning. If i thought i was shutting down socially before i basically turned off my brain now and had no sense of being, i was a shell of myself. My government social security had run out by now and i was really not making any money at all and just living off of my dad’s generosity. I ended up starting working a trade which helped cut back my porn use naturally by making myself busy during the day and too tired to do much at home during the evening. After a few months though i got used to the work and started using with debilitating frequency. By december i had basically given myself erectile dysfunction. This went on a number of months more until february when the girl im seeing caught me paying for onlyfans content. She felt my dick not working and was pissed about it. She told me to quit porn or she was done with the relationship so i deleted my onlyfans account and stopped for a bit, but i couldnt stop myself fully. I was still on reddit, still on the hub, twitter (x, whatever), instagram, you name it i was using it to get off. Luckily she has a huge heart and wanted to help me kick the habit, in march she was helping me brainstorm ways to actually make progress, we came up with deleting all socials on my phone and locking adult content on my phone browser with a passcode she came up with. I still had my computer though and THAT continued until about 2 weeks ago when she tried to sleep with me and my mini me would not come up. I have been accountable for my actions for the past 12 days and have felt like genuine shit, like real physical withdrawal symptoms making me sick and causing my body aching pain. Im happy to continue this journey and become a worthy partner for her if she lasts that long and if you stayed and read this entire fucking essay, i believe in you too, whether youre months into this or on your very first day. Everyone has to start somewhere, the important thing is to start