My story
No one will trust me if I don't share a little about myself first. My story has left me with a limp, like many of you. And the ideas I'm going to share here are generally theories, which I derived after a few years of counselling.
I am the first-born grandchild on my mother's side, and my family is closest with hers. For three years I was the center of attention. Grandparents, aunts and uncles were lined up to me like I was a gas station during a fuel crisis. I am also the first-born of three boys. When my middle brother came along, zoop, the line, naturally, moved to him. A need for attention that I had developed was no longer met in the way I had grown accustomed to, and I had to find a way, even though, of course, I don't remember consciously thinking this, to remedy that situation.
I don't remember my introduction to pornography, but my mother does. She found me one day flipping through one of my dad's Playboys when I was barely crawling. It's a pretty common story. But I am convinced that the impression those images made on my fast-developing mind closed the first chains on it. I don't remember a time when I didn't masturbate. As long as I can remember I have hunted ways to look at pictures of adult women, whether it was a JC Penny underwear catalog or on scrambled TV, or hardcore magazines and web sites. Again, this is not all that uncommon, from what I understand.
The pivotal moment in my struggle arrived as I approached puberty. A boy at school, whom I knew from church, had a copius library of smut he had gotten from his father. He brought it to school and would pass it out. So I got some of that action and took it home with me. Like every other 12-year-old boy known to man, I hid them under my mattress. Mom found them when she was changing my sheets one day. She thought it was funny, and half-teased me about it at first. She gave it to my dad and my dad. I had to face him, thinking I was in deep trouble. I was scared, but my dad, from the way I took it at them time, handled it in a very compassionate, yet disciplinary way. He said to me, "Take this back where you got it, and don't let me find this in my house again."
I was actually excited about this. Dad had made his message clear, but said it in a way of understanding that I didn't expect. It was great, and I obeyed.
A few years later, however, I was home with a couple of friends during "conference week," when middle school let out early to allow parents and teachers to have conferences in the afternoon about the students. My friend David said his father had a stash in his closet, hidden in the midst of a bunch of other magazines, like Sports Illustrated, and stuff like that. He wanted to see if my dad had one, too, and would not relent. Finally, I said let's go look thinking I was going to prove him wrong. No way my dad would say what he had to me earlier on the subject and have a stash like that. But apparently, hiding smut in a stack of mainstream magazines is about as common as 12-year-olds hiding it under a mattress.
I was crushed. And I was hooked. Every chance I got, I would sneak into my parents' room and get my fix.
There came a point early in high school when I confronted my parents about it. I asked them why they had it. I asked them to get rid of it for my sake. I felt like it was wrong, although I wasn't really sure why at the time. And I knew I couldn't resist looking at it if I knew it was in the house. Their position was that it was their business (rightly so, to an extent), and I needed to respect their privacy and stay out of their bedrooms. I gladly would have obeyed if I could have.
My folks moved the stuff around in the room to try to hide it better from me, but I would find it and more. The fued got so bad that one day my mother loaded it all into a manilla envelope and tossed it on my bed. She said, "You want it so bad, just take it." So I took it, out the door, down the street, and threw it in the sewer. That really pissed her off.
But my struggle didn't end. I discovered the XXX world of the Internet shortly after and that is where I found my easiest score. I could do it in privacy. It belonged to no one else. It was free. And as I grew up and earned more independence, i.e., going to college with my own dorm or appartment bedroom, it became easier and more embedded in my survival instinct. I needed it to feel OK sometimes. It was an escape when I felt bad about myself. It was a high. It was an addiction. But it also was part of a taxing cycle that did several things: 1.) Affected how I approached the relationship-side of sex; 2.) affected the way I viewed women; and 3.) affected my self esteem negatively to the extent that I would turn to it to make myself feel better, then feel like shit the next day. It was the catch-22 of addiction.
And so I have been fighting ever since. I will always fight it. I have had moments of victory. I was engaged to be married as I approached college graduation and I gave up porn for a year because she and I had a deal. But when the engagement ended (which is part of my story I'll discuss later), I lost my most important reason for staying clean and relapsed.
I run in cycles now. A few months clean, then I'll binge for about a week. I don't miss work or anything. I'm a functioning pornaholic. I have means of protection and help. I had a net of support from friends, other men in the church I attended in my last home, Athens, Ga. I have recently moved to Jackson and I am developing those critical relationships now and hope to facilitate that for other guys. Believe me, having someone you can call at 2 a.m. when you are struggling and need someone to talk you off the ledge is really helpful.
Today I am more than a month "sober." And I hope to stay that way the rest of my life. And I hope to have a place here where guys can talk and learn about ways they can find that kind of freedom as well.
Peace,
Shep
I am the first-born grandchild on my mother's side, and my family is closest with hers. For three years I was the center of attention. Grandparents, aunts and uncles were lined up to me like I was a gas station during a fuel crisis. I am also the first-born of three boys. When my middle brother came along, zoop, the line, naturally, moved to him. A need for attention that I had developed was no longer met in the way I had grown accustomed to, and I had to find a way, even though, of course, I don't remember consciously thinking this, to remedy that situation.
I don't remember my introduction to pornography, but my mother does. She found me one day flipping through one of my dad's Playboys when I was barely crawling. It's a pretty common story. But I am convinced that the impression those images made on my fast-developing mind closed the first chains on it. I don't remember a time when I didn't masturbate. As long as I can remember I have hunted ways to look at pictures of adult women, whether it was a JC Penny underwear catalog or on scrambled TV, or hardcore magazines and web sites. Again, this is not all that uncommon, from what I understand.
The pivotal moment in my struggle arrived as I approached puberty. A boy at school, whom I knew from church, had a copius library of smut he had gotten from his father. He brought it to school and would pass it out. So I got some of that action and took it home with me. Like every other 12-year-old boy known to man, I hid them under my mattress. Mom found them when she was changing my sheets one day. She thought it was funny, and half-teased me about it at first. She gave it to my dad and my dad. I had to face him, thinking I was in deep trouble. I was scared, but my dad, from the way I took it at them time, handled it in a very compassionate, yet disciplinary way. He said to me, "Take this back where you got it, and don't let me find this in my house again."
I was actually excited about this. Dad had made his message clear, but said it in a way of understanding that I didn't expect. It was great, and I obeyed.
A few years later, however, I was home with a couple of friends during "conference week," when middle school let out early to allow parents and teachers to have conferences in the afternoon about the students. My friend David said his father had a stash in his closet, hidden in the midst of a bunch of other magazines, like Sports Illustrated, and stuff like that. He wanted to see if my dad had one, too, and would not relent. Finally, I said let's go look thinking I was going to prove him wrong. No way my dad would say what he had to me earlier on the subject and have a stash like that. But apparently, hiding smut in a stack of mainstream magazines is about as common as 12-year-olds hiding it under a mattress.
I was crushed. And I was hooked. Every chance I got, I would sneak into my parents' room and get my fix.
There came a point early in high school when I confronted my parents about it. I asked them why they had it. I asked them to get rid of it for my sake. I felt like it was wrong, although I wasn't really sure why at the time. And I knew I couldn't resist looking at it if I knew it was in the house. Their position was that it was their business (rightly so, to an extent), and I needed to respect their privacy and stay out of their bedrooms. I gladly would have obeyed if I could have.
My folks moved the stuff around in the room to try to hide it better from me, but I would find it and more. The fued got so bad that one day my mother loaded it all into a manilla envelope and tossed it on my bed. She said, "You want it so bad, just take it." So I took it, out the door, down the street, and threw it in the sewer. That really pissed her off.
But my struggle didn't end. I discovered the XXX world of the Internet shortly after and that is where I found my easiest score. I could do it in privacy. It belonged to no one else. It was free. And as I grew up and earned more independence, i.e., going to college with my own dorm or appartment bedroom, it became easier and more embedded in my survival instinct. I needed it to feel OK sometimes. It was an escape when I felt bad about myself. It was a high. It was an addiction. But it also was part of a taxing cycle that did several things: 1.) Affected how I approached the relationship-side of sex; 2.) affected the way I viewed women; and 3.) affected my self esteem negatively to the extent that I would turn to it to make myself feel better, then feel like shit the next day. It was the catch-22 of addiction.
And so I have been fighting ever since. I will always fight it. I have had moments of victory. I was engaged to be married as I approached college graduation and I gave up porn for a year because she and I had a deal. But when the engagement ended (which is part of my story I'll discuss later), I lost my most important reason for staying clean and relapsed.
I run in cycles now. A few months clean, then I'll binge for about a week. I don't miss work or anything. I'm a functioning pornaholic. I have means of protection and help. I had a net of support from friends, other men in the church I attended in my last home, Athens, Ga. I have recently moved to Jackson and I am developing those critical relationships now and hope to facilitate that for other guys. Believe me, having someone you can call at 2 a.m. when you are struggling and need someone to talk you off the ledge is really helpful.
Today I am more than a month "sober." And I hope to stay that way the rest of my life. And I hope to have a place here where guys can talk and learn about ways they can find that kind of freedom as well.
Peace,
Shep
posted by Pack Time at 5:40 PM
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