If you’ve tried to keep your porn habits in check in the past, what happened?

I have tried what feels like everything with varying amounts of effort and enthusiasm: abstinence, therapy, journaling, christian-based programme to work on underlying roots (unchained leader - good for anyone already a Christian, but I’m not religious).

The goal of all the above has been to completely remove porn from my life, but no matter how long I can stay away from it the cycle to fall back into it is generally always the same: social media puts proactive content into my algorithm, I spend too long looking at it which reinforces more content, then I beginning searching for it in social media, when that doesn’t give me the dopamine hit then I’m using apps like Reddit to find short porn easily, and once I’ve crossed that line I’m straight back into pornhub going down the same dark rabbit holes.

I’ve tried multiple times to go cold turkey with content blockers, which never works. I always find a workaround. The best I’ve managed is when I’m travelling and spending time with my wife and my friends. As soon as I’m on my own or undergoing some stress, I will have a memory of a video, or be triggered by something I’ve seen and then I will escalate back to watching porn and feeling bad. I don’t feel bad watching long form porn that fits my values, but I tend to go back to watching short form porn on reddit and I feel pretty bad afterwards, like its infecting my brain. When I ‘relapse’ I feel like I’m always thinking about porn, way more than I’d like to.

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most often irs something to do when bored and horny, It has become a habbit for stress relief and if I were to stop thd urges come on stronger

I tried cold turkeying so many times and everytime a bad day would come and I’d say just this once I’ll treat myself and next thing I know I have binged it 3 days straight.

Even when I just try reducing certain porn that I watch. I find myself on a bad day just relapsing to stuff I said I’d never watch again. All the time I relapse it just makes me feel worse but I still do it because the pleasure feels good but the void it fills is never worth it after.

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I have tried to stay away from porn like total abstinence it works well for few days or 2-3 weeks but after that I feel something in me the urge to watch again I control myself hold on yet after some time I slip into watching porn searching for the best videos I have watched and then it’s kinda porn streak I feel like keep watching and consuming porn with masturbation

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I’ve been trying to quit porn for years. It’s ruined most if not all of my relationships because the only thing that would arouse me are what I see in porn and could never reach an orgasm with partners.

At times I’m able to go 2-3 weeks without watching, but then i get so extremely horny and end up watching porn. At the time i tell myself its just a release for today and i will go back to staying away from it as of tomorrow. But once i go back, it always ends up with watching it again the next day, and then the next day. I seem to go in a constant cycle of watching it to masturbate for a few days, and then a few days without any porn or masturbation, and then back to it once i feel a little stressed or overwhelmed. I just don’t think its a good thing to be seeing this stuff through a screen on a regular basis. I would love to have these sexual experiences in real life and feel that seeing it all through a screen all the time reduces my chances of that, and also even if i did have more real life sex i feel that it would not be as fulfilling if i’m still seeing porn content all the time.

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It’s a combo of stress and isolation for me. I’ve worked from home for a long time and by the late afternoon I sometimes haven’t spoken to any one, I’m tired, and I’m stressed. Porn feels like a great escape and it’s exciting to see what new things are there.

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Im interested in learning new sexual moves and want to also please partners. It is also a great stress release and I use it at night to fall asleep quicker

Typically I go a few days without it. I then have good sex with my partner, and then I get complacent about it and relapse almost immediately

My porn use increases in times of high stress and self negativity. I have twice now badly damaged a relationship due to my porn habits, and both times my partner is the one that suffers the most. The last time it happened I managed to quit cold turkey for a few weeks, then if have a relapse and not talk about it with anyone, then I’d get better, then it would happen again, and again, and soon I’m watching porn for hours again. The shame of the porn I watch makes me want to hide it more, which makes it forbidden, which makes me want to watch more.