Rules to Follow on your journey
Here’s some ground rules to set yourselves up for success. 1. Delete all Dating Apps. You’re not in a place to try and date while you heal yourself 2. Don’t seek out sex. It’s more damaging to yourself than porn and masturbation. 3. Eliminate Distractions. Whether it be on Facebook, insta, Snapchat, or TikTok if you see things on there that provoke you to want to look at porn avoid them. Or when you see that first sexy woman on there close the app. 4. Find something productive to fill your free time. Doing this will help you feel successful and more confident in yourself. Ideas to fill the time are go for a walk or run, learn a new skill, pick up the thing you quit doing because you don’t have time, go to the gym, join a church group, clean and organize yourself, etc. 5. Don’t be afraid to reach out to friends. Once I became open about my problem I didn’t get bashed for the addiction I got support from my friends some might not think it’s as important as I did but they still supported me and the fear of failing not just me but them as well helped a lot.
So there’s this female I flirt with at work and there was at one time was brought up to hook up, I didn’t do it because I was conflicted with a lot of let’s do this and don’t do it and mainly I had Porn Induced ED. Ever since I started this journey I’ve been having lustful fantasies of this female at work, id wake up to thoughts of her and I and I would be able to brush it off but yesterday I couldn’t shake it! So I sent a risky text basically saying I’ve been thinking fantasies and want to make a reality. Nothing. No response. I’m feeling a bit down as I feel like I messed up, I don’t have much experience in voicing my desire/needs but at the same time I do feel free. Free of the unknown if she really wanted to have sex or not. I felt like I sent that text just to get the overwhelming thoughts away which it did but maybe at a cost of losing a friend. The nice guy in me wants to reach out and say, “hey whoops sorry lol” but then again just let it be, I said what was said and I’m not gonna chase. Usually I would be so distraught that the memory of what I did would replay over and over and I would have definitely masturbated and watched tons of porn just to not feel the embarrassment or shame. And I didn’t. I’m still sober from porn and i did feel dumb when i woke up, i know this is gonna be on my mind for a while, trying to not catastrophize or overthink fake scenarios to be even more stressed out. Well that’s what’s going on and I just want to say thank you if you read this and that’s so cool that you’re almost at 90 days! Keep going Colton 👍