Summary of My Blog on Quitting Pornography

THE BEGINNING
I started this blog to aid me in quitting porn. At the same time, I also installed a porn blocker and ran through a simple neuro-linguistic programming technique to help me learn how to quit. Exercising my brain to come up with strategies for dealing with the frustration and temptations involved also helped.

From day 2:
"'I'm never going to look at porn again.' I don't think this is a helpful thought. Anytime you use 'all or nothing' words you're headed for trouble. 'I'm not going to look at porn today' is a better thought to have."

I also claimed I would use the computer less but made little effort to ensure I would follow through with this. On that note, I also forgot to include textual pornography (sex forums) as off limits.


END of MONTH 1
I realized the connection between feeling lonely and my urges for pornography. I started to switch from perceiving porn as my sexual outlet to women being my primary sexual outlet. I began dealing with the heightened levels of testosterone in my body. I saw that my frustration became too great after 3 days without masturbating but that once I did masturbate I felt weak and tired in comparison.

END of MONTH 2
I felt my desire for pornography drop considerably this month. If I masturbated a lot, my desire for porn would be small but my desire for women would drop as well. This was kind of like withdrawing into a new comfort zone and I didn't like it. I stated my desire to stop being on the computer so much and I followed through with that for the most part. My frustrations with women surfaced when I tried to stop masturbating. That coupled with my heightened testosterone levels made for some pretty strong ... emotions. I realied the reason why I quit video games and TV... again... Porn was distracting me from a part of my life I wasn't happy with: dating and women... I realized that I was treating other people badly and I had never cared enough to change because I was perfectly comfortable being by myself. I began approaching girls and running into all sorts of mental blocks that had prevented me from doing so in the past. I found the results of quitting porn gave me an increased sex drive, level of emotions, and interest in women, and made me feel more lonely (or revealed how lonely I've been by taking away the distractions.) I had a dream about looking at porn and feeling disapointed in myself.

END of MONTH 3
I had a bad date early on which triggered the thought "I can't get laid." I began putting pressure on myself to pursue women and I cut off my ability to look at forums by swearing them off... All of this lead to me breaking down on Day 67. I wrote "It's just the knowledge that it won't make me feel good afterwards that's preventing me." I said the cause was stress and loneliness. I decided not to pursue women for a month in order to feel less stress. The amazing, brilliant thing is that the next day I committed to learning from this experience and pressing forward to keep trying to quit. I believe this decision was not merely a decision but the first step in learning a skill. That skill is persistance in the face of adversity. Some call it a characteristic or what have you but its just something that can be learned. I can't remember a time where I've felt so lost and down and been able to make the decision to move forward instead of retreating into whats comfortable. 5 days after quitting for the second time, I felt no urges for porn whatsoever. This surprised me and led me to believe that my desire for porn had a direct relationship to whether i was feeling bad or good. I began trying to understand how to prevent myself from feeling bad. I looked at all kinds of strategies and eventually forgot about it. I started pushing myself to pursue girls again. This time I realized some important things. There was no way for me to succede unless I stopped beating myself up. I committed to socializing more by taking up a bunch of exercises designed to push me out of my comfort zone. I followed through with the exercises and felt extremely proud of myself.

THIS MONTH
I followed through with an exercise to talk to 10 strangers. The exercise went extremely well and I felt I had experenced REAL changes for the better. I made 7 approaches the following week to women I was attracted to and though I didn't get the 10 required, I still felt like I succeded. I went about 2 weeks without masturbating and it felt great. I learned how to use my heighted sex drive to think about sex whenever I was feeling down in order to make myself feel better. I got sick and I have finals to study for so my focus hasn't been on quitting porn or pursuing chicks for the last few days. But I've gone 38 days without porn and I feel wonderful about it. As soon as I get better I'll be focusing on finishing up a few goals I had for this year as well as continuing to push myself out of my comfort zone and towards learning the skills to meet women. This blog has transformed from a tool to help me overcome a distraction (porn) to a tool to help me get what I really want (women).

I forsee myself being able to make it one year without pornography from this point on. I also see myself improving my skills in dealing with women throughout next year.