Day 2 (98 days to go)

The number one factor in successfully quitting pornography is desire. Do I really want to quit?

I think it's important to continually summarize what I'm doing and why to keep my motivation to quit fresh.

I am choosing to re-direct my sexual energy towards women in place of media. I have to make it clear that although I'm doing this to have my sexual needs met in a different way, more importantly I'm trying to increase my desire to create relationships with women.

Why?

Relationships bring a kind of lasting happiness that pornography and masturbation can't touch. Relationships also have the potential to hurt a great deal more than pornography but if it wasn't worth it, human beings would never have built cities, governments, and communities (all things that require people to form all sorts of relationships). Relationships wouldn't exist if they were not worth it.

Masturbation and pornography are not evil. In fact, I don't believe anything is inherently evil.

However, masturbation and pornography can be used as an unsatisfying substitute for relationships. So can books, television, movies or just about anything that's distracting.

In this case, I believe it's best to remove this distraction in order to look at the issues that lie beneath. Once aware of them, you can attempt change.


The following is what's true for me and probably not entirely relatable to you.

I have issues with women and I have issues with friendship. It would benefit me enormously to be able to move through these issues and find a more satisfying set of thoughts and beliefs around these issues and that's what I'm in the process of doing.

I know I have a problem with self-esteem. I don't feel like anybody would like the real me. So I put on a different face for people.

I know I have a problem with seeking approval. This is related to self-esteem. Because I don't feel like I have any worth, I seek approval from women in order to feel like I have worth. However, by not being myself, the sense of worse feels empty, I feel like an imposter, and often times when I'm not feeling down I get anxiety. I get worried that I won't be able to pretend to be cool, smart, strong or whatever and in turn the real me will come out and people will lose interest in me.

I know I have a problem with being a caretaker. Someone who feels responsible for how everyone else feels. If someone is bored, tired, or feeling bad in anyway, I feel like it's because I did something wrong. This has a lot to do with growing up with a depressed mother. Taking care of mom became an important task when I realized that every time she got upset and depressed my life was at stake. She would start fights with my dad and threaten to leave. Divorce, having my dad lose his job because of the drama at home, or having my mom leave would threaten my friendships and the general stability of my life because we would have to move or I would lose one of my parents and the support they offered.

I moved a lot when I was younger and drifting from place to place scared me enormously. Now, I realize that it has become an unconscious habit. Moving started out as a destabilizing tragedy, a loss of friendships and relationships and in the end it has become an escape from the same friendships and relationships that it once threatened.