Relapsed
Fri, 07/09/2010 - 22:43
Hi,
I posted here about a year ago and found the site helpful in my struggle against porn and masterbation. I was able to live porn free for close to 6 months but have since fallen back into it and want the same victory i had the last time. I felt so much better about myself and the joy of christian faith was returning. I think maybe other christians saw my post and prayed which is why things went well for a while. I will pray for others on this site who want to overcome lust and basically i just want to encourage everyone to pray for each other because i really believe God is very merciful with us and answers these prayers even if we are caught in the same sin.
Comments
I understand what you are feeling. I had been saved 6 months I think when I fell. Before my conversion I was heavily and willingly addicted. I did what I call binging. I would spend 25-30 hours in a 48 hour period on porn. After conversion I thought I was finally free. Wrong! I fell. That taught me something though. It taught me that I didn't enjoy it any more. I actually tried to enjoy it but God would not let me. Your greatest weapon against lust is a greater love for God and fear of sin. Here are a few vids that may help:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDlrBQbWaoQ - This first vid is about 6-7 minutes long and deals with the core problem. This battle won't be won by abstaining from this or that. That is just legalism. Watch this video!!!
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6kmFuCYRfE - This second vid just provide some strategies to help you in your war against lust. This second vid is useless unless you watch the first one.
3. http://www.challies.com/christian-living/sexual-detox-the-e-book - Just click on the download. This little booklet is very good.
I hope that helps. Something else you can do is cultivate a greater understanding of what sin is. Why is lust evil? Also cultivate a greater understanding of who God is. I'll be praying for you.
Thanks again for your post Freedom-thru. The sexual detox e-book is excellent and i highly recommend it to anyone following these posts and who sincerely want to be free from porn addiction or at least want to have your mind altered to some degree regarding what you are really dealing with. It is very very good at helping us see sex from God's point of view which is incomparably more beautiful and mysterious and sweeter than the degraded and diminished version of sex that porn offers. It has really given me hope that i can get to the point were the allure of porn no longer has any power in my life. I now want to read the books recommended at the end, especially False Intimacy.
Hey dude, how are you doing in this? I know for myself, any time I screwed up, it would send me in a tail spin. Praying for you man.
Hi zkonz,
Yeah i've been in massive tailspins because you get to a point where you think you're on top and in control and have done a great job resisting the porn/lust/masturbation temptations and then somehow the devil and the flesh up the anti and get you rolling in the mud again, and its so dissappointing that you end up binging out of self pity and despair i suppose. But one thing i've learnt is that even if you mess up one night get back to your prayers and bible studies next morning or even sooner. What i used to do was tailspin so badly that i completely neglected feeding my faith for weeks because i thought i needed to put that kind of time between the act and repentance. I would have felt too much like a hypocrite to binge on porn from 8pm to 10pm and then ask God for forgiveness and try to get in a state of sincere repentance at 11pm. But that is a mistake that i believe God has showed me. Try very hard not abuse God's mercy and forgivemess but if you fall go to him as soon as possible.
Hi Sickofit,
If it helps, something that's helped me a lot has been to change my outlook on porn. When I used to look at porn, I partly justified it using the reasoning that porn actresses choose their career, and if they choose the best job among those that are available to them, then their choosing to do porn makes them better off than whatever their next best option is.
One of the main reasons I decided to try and change my outlook on porn is that I'd always realized the negative toll watching and downloading porn was taking on my life, but the thing is, in the moment I was watching porn, I still enjoyed/liked watching it. And so a key thing for me in getting me off porn was to make watching porn unenjoyable or less enjoyable for myself in the moment.
The first thing I did to make watching and downloading porn less enjoyable in the moment was to realize that I could construct an argument in my head that porn is fine or that porn is bad. Before, without making any conscious decision on which argument I'd wanted to make, I had made the argument in my head that porn was fine. So a step I took was to realize that I could make an argument against porn for myself. I took the information on The Pink Cross' website and their youtube videos to construct this argument. Now, when I get as far as the websites I used to visit, things will pop into my head like wondering if STDs were transmitted in the scene I'm watching or about to watch, was the girl manipulated into doing the scene, did the girl do drugs or alcohol to get herself in a frame of mind where she could do the scene, did the girl get pregnant in the process of doing the scene, etc... stuff like that. Getting myself in a state of mind where these thoughts come into my head when I go to watch porn make watching porn a much less enjoyable experience for me if not completely unenjoyable.
I hope going through this process would be helpful for others as well, but I really don't know. I just know that one problem I had before was that as much as I knew watching and downloading porn had a negative impact on my life, I still liked watching porn in the moment. So a crucial thing for me, was to make watching and downloading porn less enjoyable in the moment I was engaged in watching and downloading porn. I imagine there are a number of other ways to do this, like focusing on the sin of it, thinking of how each porn actress is someone's daughter, how it objectifies women, how it can be very degrading for women, etc... What I'm offering is just one route that in my ten days off of porn, despite having constant internet access and privacy, has been really helpful for me.
Good luck with your journey away from porn.
Sincerely,
An Internet Porn Addict
Hi Zipper,
Thanks for your reply. I hope your journey away from porn gets to the point where you are counting weeks, months or years and then stop counting because the idea of watching porn has become so disgusting that you would literally need to be forced to view it if you were ever going to watch it again. I will be praying that you can overcome it to that extent. Your reply reminded me that it is possible to dislike porn in the moment of seeing it and therefore be able to turn away or click out of the website more like it. When i first found the Pink Cross website and read all the porn star stories and the truth about porn articles and checked out various links to sites that are engaged in the fight against porn i had built up enough of a case in mind to be very convinced that porn is bad, horribly degrading and abusive to women. I think that as i gradually forgot a lot of what i'd read after a 6 month period of no porn i became less able to say no to it. I would occassionally watch clips of women solo or strip teases and convince myself that i was still free from all the nasty stuff and not slipping too badly but then as is the case with porn it has you craving for more variety which is why there is so much bizzare and gross stuff out there. I remember the first time i ever checked out a sex shop dvd section i was genuinely very disgusted by the pictures on the back of group scenes and many of the titles, there seemed to be a demand for the worst taste stuff. Somehow years later i was watching all that myself on the internet and liking it. I even found myself drifting towards male homosexual scenes which helped me to realize how much porn changes people. What once was repugnant becomes the new turn-on and where does it all end? Its frightening really.
Keep fighting and seeking God
Psalm 101:3
I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me.
truly
Sickofit
Hi Freedom.....,
I know all about the binges. The thought is usually 'oh, here i am again looking at porn and i was doing o.k for awhile at avoiding it but before i repent i may as well make the most of it' and then the hours pile up.
Thanks for the links. I've actually seen the first one before and downloaded some audio sermons by john piper last year. I'm currently reading the sexual detox book and finding it very good.
I don't enjoy the aftermath of porn and masterbation sessions. Sometimes its next day or two days later but afterwards there are usually feelings of guilt and anxiety and insecurity and disgust and self loathing. But i would by lying if i said i didn't enjoy porn while in the act of viewing it. I'm trying to work out how God might be providing the way out when temptation arises, i'm trying to figure out my states of mind before i give in, there isn't really any rational thinking going on because i've read some very good Christian literature and of course the scriptures that explain why lust is harmful and effects our relationship with God and our own sense of wellbeing and self worth and yet i still do it.
The best thing i have read is the chapter on sexuality in C.S Lewis's Mere Christianity. You should read it if you haven't already.
Thanks for your prayers, i will also pray for you. The Bible talks about perseverence, how it builds up a persons character. I'm sure as long as we keep getting up and trying again, trying harder each time and believing and praying that God will do a work in our innermost hearts as it says in psalm 51. We will be on the right track as long as we keep asking for Gods forgiveness and starting again and not giving up and saying to ourselves that its impossible at a time in history such as this with the internet for Christians to pure and live according to God's plans for sex and not the devil's.
about it but i was really hoping someone was gonna post something about relapse...i wanted to myself but had nothing positive to say about it.It seemed the longer i wasnt viewing porn,i was building up my mind just to go back to it.i know God is merciful but the way you put it helped me accept that more.Part of my conflict is i recognize His mercy in my life and the frusatration of me taking it for granted.Not that i asked for forgiveness after relapse ,but i got it anyway.I didnt pray for to read a post about relapse last night, but i got it anyway.I didnt pray for the strength to free myself of pornagraphy.I didnt want to overcome lust.I didnt make the connection that all these grotesque perverted sex acts that are beyond lust or just wanting to have sex with some one really boils down to just lust.Maybe other people praying for you was part of the reason for you not viewing porn for awhile,I would reason less and less people were praying so you relapsed.I really think it was becuase YOU wanted to stop and something in you snapped.I know that when i do find myself praying it wont be just.... blah blah blah "me" anymore but i now found i reason to even pray period for each other which to me is more powerful than to pray just for myself