Arctic's Journal

[arctic]

A Serious Entry

12th of May 2007

Well my wife returned from New York disappointed. Her interview went well and she had gotten on well with everybody, but for some reason the boss had not committed to employing my wife yet. Apparently they still had one more person to see in two weeks, and they would let me wife know after that. I really don’t think this is good news at all, because if I had been the employer, I wouldn’t have let a person I want to employ walk away just like that. I would at least tell them that look I am really interested in you but I still have to see this one more person since we’ve already agreed to do so. But there was nothing like that, which makes me worried that she is not going to be employed by the New York people.

Since my wife got home yesterday, she has been totally depressed. She is not loving or very responsive. She thinks that she has become unemployable. She thinks that nobody wants her. I have to say that I am also confused because she has good qualifications and is passionate about the field she has been trying to get into. Why all the trouble? So today she started crying and telling me that she is so stupid, and I say, ‘no you’re not stupid, what are you talking about?’ She then says that ‘yes she is stupid and that’s why nobody wants to take her on’. I think I then said that I was ‘baffled by the fact that she was not offered the job because we always have so nice discussions at home and she always comes across as someone who really knows her stuff’. Despite her having told me yesterday that everything went fine in the interview, I asked her how had she been with the interview people, just to get reassurance that everything had gone the way she had told me before, and that she hadn’t left anything out. I was only seeking to understand what could possibly have gone wrong, but my wife took this very badly. She said that my asking this showed that I doubted her and thought that she had in fact screwed up in the interview, which would explain why she didn’t get offered the job immediately. I then told her that she had misunderstood me and that I merely wanted to open up a conversation and to explore the situation to be able to analyse it a little better. Frankly, I had expected her to respond by saying that as far as she could tell, she had been her best, which makes her feel baffled. But instead she decided that I thought that she had been acting stupid in New York. She said that she was very disappointed in me because I am supposed to be the one person who always believes in her, but I had now shown that I didn’t believe in her. In fact, I doubted her, she told me. She said that I am just like everyone else in that I think that she is the problem whilst everyone else is doing the right things. I really don’t know how to respond anymore.

So this has continued all day today, and we haven’t really talked to each other. She is just lying in bed reading a book and being depressed. I am mainly in the living room because I think that she has already made up her mind about how I feel and my trying to convince her otherwise is just going to make me look like a liar. Nevertheless, I went to her some time ago and told her that I was really sorry that she had misunderstood me earlier. She gave me a fake smile and said that she understood. I told her that she did not understand and that I would like to put it right. But I didn’t manage to put it right and she was once again reinforced in her belief that I don’t believe in her and that I am embarrassed by her. She said that she missed her real friends from Scotland who would often listen to her troubles, and she cried when she said this. She said that she missed them and had married a guy who was embarrassed by her. Apparently I have not changed at all from how things used to be, which is nonsense, because back then I used to act out and not give a damn about anything, whereas now I try my very best, which I guess isn’t always enough.

I have also thought about the maxim that ‘whenever you think that the problem is out there, that thought itself is a problem’. I thought that perhaps we could try and put our heads together to examine the interview situation and see if there was something that we could change, because we sure as hell couldn’t change the rest of the world. We could either try to change ourselves or we could be trapped for ever in blaming others. But I really don’t think that my wife is open to any healthy self-examination, even if it shows that there really was nothing that she could have done better. I am being too idealistic here? Should I just have said that ‘don’t worry you’ve done your best but the employers were morons. Let’s just continue to do the exact same thing and hope that we’ll run across some sensible employers some time soon’. I guess I could have read the situation better and decided that it was not the right time to say anything that might be perceived as provocative. Isn’t it true though that the only way upwards goes inwards?

My wife also said that she was very disappointed that I had not expressed any outrage at the fact that she had not been offered the job instantly. Well, I had said several times that I was really sorry that it went the way it went and that I was really disappointed for her. I also said that I was totally baffled about the whole affair. However, my wife told me that I was not outraged at all, which just shows that I think that it was all her fault and that she was an embarrassment. The reason I haven’t been outraged, although I’ve been all those things I mentioned above, sorry, disappointed, and baffled, is that I simply don’t believe that being outraged about something you can’t affect is going to help anyone. Why be outraged if someone doesn’t want to employ someone else? What can we do about it? But had I known how she felt about my responses, and how a little outrage would have been the right thing to do in her books, I guess I would have behaved differently. It’s just that our communication has for a long time been so bad that I just didn’t know how best to respond to wife’s problems. Communication and empathy aren’t exactly the kind of things that you develop when you’re an active PA. It’s probably due to my being pretty low on them in the first place that drove me to become a PA, which brings me to the next point.

There’s one thing that I must take into account though, which is that I used to be quite insensitive and say pretty thoughtless things in the past when I was still acting out. I also used to think that the problem was with her and not anyone else, and that’s why she still perceives me as the kind of person who would do those things. As they say, ‘you can’t talk yourself out of problems you behave yourself into’. I suppose it will take a long time before she can change her perceptions of me. But what if these misinterpretations keep cropping up? Don’t they just reinforce her old view of me? I think that it’s this interpretation that also made her think that I had been embarrassed by her yesterday when we went to the theatre with our friends. I had apparently been trying to stand with our friends avoiding her, because I was embarrassed by her. This simply is not true and must therefore stem from the way she interprets my behaviour. But she is not at all open to the possibility that her way of looking at things might not be correct, and telling her so doesn’t help either. She just says ‘I understand’, which basically means that she hasn’t understood at all.

So, I don’t know what to do now. She is in the bedroom, probably lying in bed, and I am in the living room typing this entry. I feel withdrawn and a little hard done by for being misunderstood. I also feel that it is totally unfair and unbalanced of her to say that I am this and that, completely disregarding all the stuff that I have constantly been doing after sobering up to make her feel loved. I guess I must be getting right the unimportant things, and then failing at the stuff that really matters. Perhaps it’s the past perceptions that make her disregard all the good stuff and focus on the bad stuff that supports the view that holds of me anyway.

I also feel utterly unable to go into the bedroom and work at getting myself understood. I’d rather just stay here and let the situation defuse itself, and return back to normal again, as if nothing ever happened. But I also know that something did happen and that she is now going to bottle it up, and add it to the collection of bad perceptions she already has of me. You know, so often I think that what we have has been destroyed beyond repair by our past. My wife is not a person who easily forgives, and in fact, I wonder if she ever really forgives. It’s just little things that crop in from time to time that lead me to think this way. If she gets angry she often pulls a thing out of the past and gets really annoyed by it and it is clear that she has not forgiven it. I don’t know if she even wants to forgive anything, or perhaps some things are just too painful to forgive. Anyway, I just wonder what the future holds for us. Am I going to be able to become such a healthy and complete a person that I will be able to mend everything, or has our future been tainted for ever? Would my wife be better off just forgetting about me and starting with someone new with no nasty history? Should we go to therapy and even if we did, would she want things to change? Would I dare to go to therapy and face all the crap that I’ve done in our relationship? Would I have the courage to be honest?

--------
So, I guess I now ought to think what I could have done differently today and what I can do differently in the future. What perceptions should I work at changing? After all, it can’t be just my wife who’s got funny perceptions in this family, right? Well, I haven’t been in the best of moods since she came back yesterday. I was expecting a happy reunion, but instead she has been really withdrawn, not showing any love at all. Last night she very firmly occupied her own side in bed and I felt rather unjustly rejected. This whole thing has made me feel quite annoyed and resentful, although I have tried to tell myself that she is in a lot of pain just now and that if she could feel happy, she would. I knew that she was feeling disappointed and rejected, but on some level, I still thought that she should have been a little more loving towards me. So perhaps this resentment that I felt caused me to respond a little insensitively today, or in a way that came across as being judgemental. If I had felt really centred myself, I probably would have responded with much more empathy.

I guess I also feel that my wife is always looking at this world through very negative glasses and is seeing unfairness and nastiness in a lot of stuff, which kind of gets to me when I try to be positive myself. Now, I don’t know whether her ‘glasses’ are showing the correct view or not, but I nevertheless have felt really put down by the way she views the world. And also by the way that she views herself. I always think that she should feel a little more positive and focussed on the things that she can do something about, and it gets to me when she gets depressed instead. I know this is crazy and it actually hurts me this very second to realise that she must be in a lot of pain, and that I am such an emotional incompetent that she is pretty much left to cope on her own. Oh, how I wish that she would have some good friends here who would really get her so that she wouldn’t have to rely on me for all the emotional support and advice. I feel that I am still pretty confused myself and I tend to get dragged into negative emotions if she starts to talk about them, which makes it very difficult to be supportive. I think that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in the relationship between me and my wife.

[ferdberfil]

Hey arctic-

I can tell you and your wife are really in love with each other.

Myself and my wifey do couples therapy every few weeks on a "tune-up" basis. I think it's been really helpful for both my recovery and hers.

Hope you're feeling better sir.

-FB

[manic]

Hi Arctic,

Job interviews can be really difficult to cope with, so I'm not surprised that your wife may take the rejection a bit too personal. Perhaps she just needs some time to get her thoughts together and get over the initial disappointment.

Take care,

Manic

[arctic]

Hi guys,

Thanks again for your input. Things have already been a little better since yesterday, just as you predicted Manic. Today I've actually pursued a couple of leads to create more opportunities for her, just to keep the ball rolling. FB, I believe that couple's councelling might actually help, but I am still not feeling courageous enough to suggest this idea. If there's one thing that my wife dislikes, it's psychologists (sorry mate...). But who knows, maybe in the future when she feels a little bit more at peace with the world, she might consider going to a therapist with me and working at those deep and painful issues that still remain unforgiven in our relationship. But just now, I'm not sure if she's ready. I don't know if I'm ready. I feel so ashamed and guilty of all the sh!t that I used to put her through...

Yesterday and today I've felt pretty triggered, but I've just told myself that it's just one of those days. They come and they go, and you just have to live put up with them. On days like this, it is slightly more difficult to refrain from looking at women and my body feels a little bit funny, and I'm not 100% focussed. I also feel a little anxious, but I can work my way around it. I guess this is something to do with the unpleasantness with my wife, which on some level causes me to lose some of the strong motivation that I normally have to stay sober. So I just have to stop and remind myself that I am not staying sober for her, but for myself. I have to remind myself what I become if I choose acting out. I've been listening to Pink Floyd's 'One slip' whose chorus goes:

One slip, and down the hole we fall
It seems to take no time at all
A momentary lapse of reason
That binds a life for life
A small regret, you won't forget,
There'll be no sleep in here tonight

...listening to this kind of brings me comfort.

(Guys can you read this.) I also have to admit that I often search for completely unrelated things on google images and recently I find myself wondering whether one of the images that pop up might be stimulating in some way. It hasn't really happened except for a bra advert when I was looking for an image of genetic 'enhancers', but I feel a sense of curiosity when I hit the search button. Today I was searching for a a drug compound called 244a, and I didn't even want to find an image of it, just some info, but I still hit the image search button just to see what would pop up. Well what did pop up was pictures of wall lamps, which isn't exactly alarming, but still, I didn't have to search for images in the first place. When I then searched for article on 244a, one of them referred to women's swimwear, I noticed the link, didn't click on it, but it captured my attention neverteless, which bugs me. Why do I do this. The other day I searched for images using the term 'old horse' because I actually needed a picture of an old horse, but I was yet again curious what else might pop up. Well nothing did, but I'm worried. I would never search for images using a 'dangerous' search term, but I do this with terms that are unlikely to return anything stimulating. What am I playing at? I'm really concerned that my thinking is somehow so impaired that I can't really get a hold of it, and it's going to deceive me. I know I am not going to do anything stupid, but I don't want to play these silly games either.

Cheers,
Arctic

[ferdberfil]

Hey arctic-

I love Google image search but one of the practices I've put into place now (and have not wavered on, thankfully, for months now) is to only search with the "moderate" filter on. Anything less restrictive is very close to so-called "inner circle" behavior for me.

-FB

[arctic]

Yo,

Today…now, what can I say about today, or the many days that have passed since my last journal entry. Well, for one thing me and my wife are back on track again, her having recovered from the most recent disappointments in the job market, and me feeling very positive again. I’ve started reading my self-development literature again, still working my way through the 7 habits of highly effective people, plus I’ve also started re-reading ‘First Things First’, also a great book by the same author, Steven Covey. Oh did I ever tell you that I actually look quite a lot like Steven Covey, what with me not having any hear and everything. I was pretty shocked to realise this one day when visiting his web site. I’m of course a fair bit younger, 32 right now, and for those of you who did not notice it was my birthday 3 days ago. Manic would now that I had a nice time with my wife: we started our evening with a nice 3 course Chinese meal in our favourite Chinese restaurant. Duck for starters, and then 3 steaming hot courses of chicken, pork, and prawns. Yummy. Following this, we practically rolled our by this time spherical bodies into the nearby cinema and watched Spiderman 3 get up to no good in his swanky new black suite. I thought the movie was totally awesome, which were my sentiments exactly regarding the previous Spiderman movies too. It’s amazing how these days it seems possible to make sequels that are actually just as good as the original, if not even better. It’s also amazing how the directors seem to evolve and change the category of movies that they direct. Sam Raimi, as you would know directed my all time favourite horror flick Evil Dead, and is now directing the Spidermans. Peter Jackson, in turn, started by directing movies like Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Braindead, which are all pretty different from Lord of the Rings, most would argue. By the way, I’m not recommending these movies to anyone, because if your taste is anything like my wife’s you will hate them, and me for mentioning them in the first place.

Sobriety…how is it going? Well I’m still sober and I have no immediate plans to act out either. I feel triggered from time to time but I think that I have very much gained control of my mental state again. I wake up early every morning (well, what’s early for me, is probably pretty late for most people) and I review my goals and clarify my values, and I write down a few thoughts about what is important to me. I may also read a little bit of wisdom literature and find a few new things that I could learn and perhaps apply during the day. All of this I, of course, do over a nice cup of strong black coffee, except that it’s not black because I put lots of milk in it. But fundamentally it is black, and that‘s what I’m getting at, if you catch my drift. I have also tried to be a little bit more supportive on this board by replying threads on the discussion boards, and I have to admit that I quite like this. I may not give the best advice in the world, but trying to give the best advice in the world really makes me think about the issue. And that in itself helps. There has been a little of temptation to ogle on the streets, but I’m not overly worried about it. That will always be my biggest temptation, and I just have to accept it. I do what ever it takes not to engage in it though.

Ok, time to go home now and have a jolly good weekend. I’ve been working reasonably hard this week, and I feel satisfied. Back in the days I would at this point be kicking myself for having wasted an entire week watching porn whilst I was being paid to do research. But not now. No way Jose. And with this silly expression, I leave you to enjoy the rest of your day.

Arctic

[arctic]

Today it has been 130 days since I've viewed porn or MBd. It has been a good day and I started it my reading a little bit of medical physiology as I sipped my white black coffee. I have decided that I really need to get my science basics honed to perfection again to avoid becoming a specialist who no longer knows the stuff that first year students are learning. There's a real danger of that in the business that I'm in.

Despite most things going really well and me feeling very positive and switched on, there's something that I'm quite worried about. It's to do with voyeurism and how fighting it seems to be such a task on some days. I know that to feel clean and committed to sobriety I must not try to catch sneak peeks of women, especially not up their dresses if an opportunity presents itself, but the temptation to sneak a peek seems to be there quite often when I go outside. Yesterday, I actually found myself in a voyeur’s trance for about 3 seconds when a girl in a short skirt cycled towards me when I was in the car, and I found myself wondering if I could catch an upskirt. Perhaps for the first time since the start of my sobriety, I couldn't or wouldn't turn my eyes away for the 3 seconds that it took for her to cycle past. I didn’t see an upskirt, but the point is that I tried to see one. This was really scary and I felt very confused and disappointed afterwards. And the thing is that this is not the kind of stuff that I want to tell my wife, from whom I would otherwise seek support, so that's why I'm writing it here instead.

Overall it has been more difficult not to look at girls in cafes, just a half a second's look, nothing more, but looking nevertheless, and the addict has been telling me that I am totally missing out by not looking. And I am telling back that it's not true, I am not missing out, but rather gaining in personal integrity. Oh, but the psychic pain of not yielding is so strong, and on an emotional level, I do want to look. But then I think, what if I look, then what? Do I just go back to walking the streets looking for a voyeuristic score? Is that what I want? Definitely not. What happens if I don't look then? Well, I'll probably feel a little uncomfortable at first having to fight the addict off, but I'll get used to it again. Besides, when I had just started my sobriety, it was never too difficult not to sneak peeks at girls, because I felt 100% committed then. This level of commitment is what I now need to reacquire. Despite all of these struggles with voyeurism, I haven't had any temptations to view porn or MB though, for which I am very pleased. Still, what I really want is to be 100% pure in all ways, not just in terms of P or MB. I want to acquire a state of mind in which I don’t WANT to look at girls and sneak peaks at them and what have you. How do I acquire this? Are there some specific thoughts I have to think? Are there some things that I should remind myself of? Could I solve the problem by consciously directing my focus at healthy and productive things? Clearly this is something I need to think about very seriously.

Arctic

[arctic]

Greetings,

Well, my wife has travelled to Africa for the next 9 days and I’m left here in the UK all alone. I am ok with it, because I know that I will stay sober, but it still makes me feel a little uneasy to know that it will be just me and my decision to stay sober. But I guess that’s what it always comes down to: a decision. I’m also a little worried about my wife because the place she’s gone to is potentially quite violent, and half the time the phones don’t work either, so getting it touch with her can sometimes be a real problem. Add to this is the fact that 2 years ago she was brutally beaten up by the secret services of that country, just for kicks it would appear, which doesn’t make me feel any more relaxed about her being there. I can only sit tight and hope that this time around everything will be ok. I’ll try to call her this evening, just to give myself some momentary peace of mind. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t worry about her all the time, because I just can’t bring myself to think about it. If she is going to be in danger, there’s nothing I can do about, so why worry? I’d rather just hope and pretend that there’s no danger and let time elapse, and sooner or later she’ll be back. Anyways, it’d be so much nicer if she was visiting Edinburgh or some other perfectly harmless place.

On the sobriety front, the quest still continues. I am trying to keep as busy as possible and focus my mind on all the exciting and challenging stuff that goes on around me. I am also actively controlling my thoughts, not letting them run this way and that, but actually telling them exactly which paths to take. Reading Black Spiral’s journal yesterday reminded me of how important it is to actively control your thoughts, which is something that I had come to do as a part of devising ways of keeping focussed and barricading porn out of my mind, but had not paid so much attention to recently. So reading what he had to say about the issue, which was pretty a lot, kind of hammered it into my head that I *can* decide exactly what I focus on at any one moment. He also wrote about a thought control technique called STOP, which basically means that every time an unwanted thought, be it then a piece of porn or a negative thought about yourself, you just stop it. You can either shout ‘stop’ in your mind, or even out loud if you don’t mind people looking, or you can visualise a bright red stop sign. Funny that I should read about this technique just yesterday, because I had started employing it again of my own initiative the day before to keep thoughts of porn and acting out from getting back into my mind. I didn’t know that it was called ‘stop’ and in fact I didn’t even shout ‘stop’, but instead, I bit my teeth and clenched my fists and I squeezed the unwanted thoughts out. But basically the technique was exactly the same. Black Spiral also mentioned elsewhere in his journal that he got some of the techniques from Anthony Robbins, which makes me think that I should probably get back to reading ‘Awaken the Giant Within’ because it has quite a lot of this kind of practical mind control stuff. I used to have this book in my bookshelf but I was optimistic enough to lend to a boneheaded friend of mine who I though would actually read it and benefit from it. Instead he just read a little bit of it and said he didn’t like it because the writer was trying to tell him how to think. Duh, that’s the whole point, unless you think that your thinking is already perfect, which was clearly the precise delusion he was under. Anyway, the point is that he still has my book and I don’t think that I’m getting it back, so I have to buy a new one. I definitely want to focus more on the practical techniques of mind control to be able to run my brain in the optimum way, and to keep all the unwanted thought processes in check. It must be possible to do this, it’s only that in the past, I would think that the way I though was an ‘irreducible primary’, which I was just prescribed to me and which I could not affect. But after starting my sobriety I have come to question this belief and I have already shown myself that it is possible to change my thinking for better. Now I will continue on this road to improve my mind control because I believe that the rewards of this will be enormous.

I better stop here for today and head to the shop to get some bread and stuff. I hope that I’ll get in touch with my wife later on today.

See ya,
Arctic

[ferdberfil]

Hey arctic-

Just checking in good sir. I'm sure your wife will be fine. I hope you're doing well.

I've been making some progress on my "no second looks" and "three second rule" myself.... it's funny, but I'm surprised how much better I get at this with practice!

I'm interested in how you speak about "controlling your mind." In a way I guess I'm trying to think slightly differently about this issue - while I, like you, probably pretty much see eye to eye on this whole addiction-sobriety thing, as a matter of serious values clarification and careful decisionmaking, I have trouble with this business of controlling my thoughts. My brain is a pretty mercurial organ. The sucker just thinks when it wants, when it wants, and the more control I (or others, for that matter) try to exert over it, the more rebellious and slippery it gets. So, taking a page from the 12-step people (which I do from time to time), I try to give up control over my thoughts, at least to a certain degree. I'm a real big frigging beginner at this. I'm not an expert, not at all. But it's what I try to get to.

Easy for me to say right now, with my thoughts racing and my anxiety waaay up (you'll know why if you read my journal), but I just had those thoughts in terms of reading your next to last entry.

Anyways, I'm sending good thoughts in the direction of you and your wife. Do some fun stuff while she's gone. Eat some ice cream in your underwear. Go see an action flick matinee. Play some video games. Take care of yourself, of course.

CYA Arctic!

-FB

[arctic]

FB, thanks for visiting. Let me get back to you on the mind control issue later, because I now need to write something about my personal recovery issues whilst I still have them clear in my mind.
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I have finally pinpointed the cause of me feeling so triggered recently, as I’ve pointed out from time to time in my earlier journal entries. I have come to conclude that the problem has been that I have listened to the *voice* as they call it on the general discussion board. How did I listen to the voice? Well, as I would watch TV, which in my case means a movie, the news, or martial arts fights, I would NOT turn my eyes away 100% of the time if something triggering popped up. In fact, it was worse than this. I would sit there watching and half hoping that something triggering would appear on the screen, and as I did this, I felt a strange anxiety come over me and suck away my peace of mind.

I have two words for myself regarding this: middle circle. And when I stopped watching what ever it was I had been watching, I would feel bad, having betrayed myself and entered the middle circle, and this would pretty much ruin the rest of my evening. It would also steal my focus making harder to read and to learn. But most importantly, I found it more difficult to connect with my wife and express and feel love towards her. In a word, I felt a little disconnected. Not as disconnected as I would when acting out, but disconnected nevertheless, which is in stark contrast to the strong emotional bond I felt with her during, let’s say, the first 120 days of my recovery. I think this goes to show how dangerously close to addiction middle circle is. It creates some of the same sensations as acting out does, and with those sensations come the whole package of addiction including loss of intimacy. Scary, but enlightening.

I was also experiencing the same middle circle problem on the streets, as I’ve explained in my previous entries, stealing looks and coming up with all sorts of excuses to look, just a little look, nothing more. There are many ways to rationaLIEs looking. I can tell myself that I need to check whether I did in fact see what I thought I saw. Surely she could not be wearing that! Oh, so I was right. Now quick! Look away you’re in recovery for crying out loud! Or perhaps I just need to check what I am refraining from. I mean what’s there to proud about if you don’t look at someone who is not attractive? But if you first confirm with a quick glance that the person is very attractive, and then don’t look, well then you’re a true master of self-control. But you’ve already looked you butthead! Or sometimes I just need to confirm that the person I half saw really was of the ethnicity I thought she was. Come on, just to confirm! To what end, for what purpose is what I want to know? RationaLIESations is the word.

Well, I have now identified my problems and began to address them. As regards the TV watching middle circle behaviour, I have banned TV completely. Not even the news. Nothing. In fact, I have now covered the TV set with a blanket and placed a pot of flowers on top, just to seal the damn thing underneath. Doing this, and not watching any TV for past 3 days has already brought me enormous peace of mind and granted me a feeling of being completely in control and back on track. It’s amazing how such a seemingly small thing had been undermining my recovery efforts so substantially. But now the negative impact it was having on me has become glaringly obvious.

In case anyone is wondering why this dude is having such a huge issue with watching TV, I’ll tell you why. It’s to do with voyeurism, my biggest source of kicks of all time. Voyeurism is all about scoring a peek. It is about the unpredictable and the difficult to control. It is about being there and waiting for something to happen, but never knowing whether it will. Well, TV is the same. You have no way of knowing exactly what is going to happen and whether this or that person is going to take their clothes off, or whether something is going to flash during a sports match, and so on and so forth, so all you can do is to wait and see what happens. Therefore, for a fellow like me, TV comes dangerously close to full-blown voyeurism.

Hence, having watching TV has probably kept the voyeur in me alive, whilst the porn dude has been suffering from substantial fading. Perhaps for that reason, not looking at women on the street hasn’t been always so easy. I mean, I never stare. Never, ever. But what I want is to be 100% committed and not perhaps 86% or something like that. It’s all or nothing. But after I’ve sealed the TV, it’s been much easier to control where I look and where I don’t look, probably because I again feel the 100% commitment I used to, plus I have admitted to myself that I am behaving in an unacceptable manner and thus betraying myself.

So the day before yesterday I went running and I ran on this long sandy road lined on either side with student halls and I heard a lot of voices of girls coming from the direction of the halls. My instant thought was, oh let me just see what’s going on, whilst at some level I was hoping to see something, but then I recognised and identified the *voice* for what it was. Therefore, instead of looking to my sides, I kept looking ahead, and as I continued running, I smiled to myself and nodded a couple of times to acknowledge my private victory there and then. It felt really good. I have now repeated this many times in various settings over the past couple of days, and I feel very calm and centred again.

I now realise that it is absolutely fundamental to my recovery to remain 100% committed all the time. No excuses. No rationaLIESations. I remember saying this in one the threads long time ago: I occupy an extreme, because the middle ground is too close to where I don’t want to be. I still agree with this, perhaps more than ever before.

Arctic

[manic]

Hi Arctic,

Well done my friend! Your actions speak of the sort of integrity that will enable you to build up long-term sobriety. And it's amazingly simple as well, covering your TV - hope you've put a nice flower on top of your telly, that way you're even rewarding yourself! As you know, I read your journal closely and I've noticed that you talk a lot about ogling women in the streets. I even started checking myself for this behaviour to see how much I was still living in "pornified brain fog". It's getting better, but I'm not yet where I want to be in this department. The difference between you and me is probably the voyeurism thing, which I never tried to the extent that you describe in your journal. I was going to write that I never engaged in it, meaning that I had never climbed into my neighbour's garden etc. - but if you look at porn you are already a voyeur in some sense, right? Anyway sir, good to see you're making progress. My gym routine is in shambles at the moment, so can you send some good vibes in my direction again? Many thanks.

Take care,
Manic

[arctic]

Hi Manic,

Thanks for you reply. You made me laugh with that flower comment... Before I comment any further on that, not the flower thing, but what you said in general, there's one thing I need to write right now.

I just checked my wife's mailbox, which she wants me to do whilst she's away at a place where she can't access her email, and it turns out that she's being offered the research post in New York. Damn, I don't quite know how to react to this, because on one hand I am delighted that she finally has an exciting job offer, but on the other hand it's in bloody New York! What the heck am I going to do now? We had already pretty much buried the hope of the whole New York thing working out, and now she gets a freaking offer. She even told me that 'well, even if they did offer me the job, which I'm sure they won't, I don’t' think I'll be taking it because I want to stay here with you'. Gosh, we'll see whether she’ll still feel that way after she hears the news.

Therefore, the three words that best describe me right now are baffled, cob smacked, and ambivalent. But the bottom line still is this. I want my wife to feel valued and wanted by employers and I want her to have an opportunity to start building her career and her confidence. I am sick and tired of her being rejected all the time and seeing what it does to her persona. She has, in a word, become defeated in herself, so badly that she finds it even hard to continue trying. Her belief system has transformed into a hub of negativity, which continually pulls her down and reinforces the lingering feelings of internalized racism. So, therefore, if the New York thing can make her soar on wings of confidence, so be it. We will make it work between me and her. I can’t wait to tell her the news on the phone tonight.

Now, Manic, where were we? Oh, yes, you said that we all were something of a voyeur in that we watched porn, rather than participated in it. I agree. Perhaps I should therefore draw a distinction between being a voyeur and being a peeping tom, because there is difference to be made between these two specimens. Although both are ‘watchers’, peeping tomming has this huge element of unpredictability, uncontrollability and waiting associated with it, which isn’t necessarily part of the experience of a voyeur. The fact that I would get my kicks from peeping tomming at such a young age, which probably rewired my brain for life, is reflected in various things, such as the TV watching thing that I mentioned above. But also, curiously, I would always find P movies that were on TV, and thus live and beyond my control or ability to predict, much more interesting than the ones that I would rent or buy, and thus had complete control over. This probably also partly explained why internet P appealed to me so much, because it was all about chasing images of this and that actress, and you never knew if you would find them or not. So yet again, there is an element of unpredictability. I’ve arrived at this analysis recently, and I find it quite interesting and illuminating. I now know what the beast is after. I even know what its name is. It’s called Tom.

Anyways I better run now. I mean literally. I am going running, although it is absolutely ‘pissing down’ as they so finely put it in this country. And FB, sorry I still didn’t get to answering you question, but I must warn you sir, that I’ve been reading Anthony Robbins again today, and I shall soon come up with an answer that will undoubtedly boggle your mind.

Take care,
Arctic

[arctic]

Hello,

In case anyone is interested I am doing great. I am no longer triggered, baffled, ambivalent, or any of those things. In fact, I've been so delighted for my wife on account of her getting the New York job, that I've been practically walking on air ever since I heard the news. She too was elated when I announced it on the phone, and she went ‘jeeeeeee, yippeee', and I was like 'whooohooo'.

As regards the blanket ban of TV watching, it still continues and it has improved my quality of life significantly. I feel 100% committed again and I am finding it very easy indeed not to look at women on the street. I've also noticed that in order not to look, it is best if you look, not at the women of course you crazy man, but at something else. It is so much easier to look at, for example, a car in the distance or a koala bear sitting in a tree than consciously not look at women. This trick essentially obviates the problem of trying not 'to think of a white elephant', which of course leads you to think of one. This method is a highly recommended addition to one's repertoire of anti-ogling tactics. ‘In order to not look, you must look.’

What else, oh yeah. I have made most out of my wife's being away and I have really gotten into studying again. It feels great! Everyday when I wake up, I have a research paper or a review waiting for me on the table, and I read it as I sip my coffee. I then put some music on, and boogie to it as I make my breakfast (the music can be dance music or something else, depending on the mood), and then I head to work, which is about 5 minutes away. When I come back home I usually nip to the gym or go running or something, just to get my energy levels up again, then I read some more. You know, I used to be so much into science before I became an addict, and I used to be pretty damn good at it too. But then it all kind of just died when I started to surf the internet for porn all day long, and the rest of the world pretty much zoomed past me as I stagnated. I now realize that I'm far behind in terms of what I know of my field, and what would be expected of someone in my position, and I really have to play catch up now. But I say ‘bring it on’! I will catch up and then some. As a matter of fact, the thought of me sky rocketing all the up there to the top again is exhilarating. Watch out science world here I come!

Anyway, I better get off my high horse before someone thinks that I'm on mushrooms or something. I'm going to the gym tonight with a friendly friend of mine and we'll confer at my place afterwards for some light refreshments. Tomorrow I've been invited for a dinner at another friend's place, which is most welcome because I've become quite dependent on my wife's cooking. And then, on Friday, voila!, my wife comes back. Alone time well spent!

See you later alligators,
Arctic

[manic]

Hey Arctic,

You know, I used to be so much into science before I became an addict, and I used to be pretty damn good at it too. But then it all kind of just died when I started to surf the internet for porn all day long, and the rest of the world pretty much zoomed past me as I stagnated. I now realize that I'm far behind in terms of what I know of my field, and what would be expected of someone in my position, and I really have to play catch up now.

This reads almost like another version of me - scary!

But I say ‘bring it on’! I will catch up and then some. As a matter of fact, the thought of me sky rocketing all the up there to the top again is exhilarating. Watch out science world here I come!

Unfortunately, I'm not yet that enthusiastic about reaching the sky. Maybe I should take some mushrooms? ;D Although, having said that, I got a paper published this month and I'm preparing the next one, and I prepared a talk as well, so I shouldn't complain ...

Nice to hear that your wife is happy with the job offer. Did she say she's going to accept or does she need some time to think about it. After all, you'd be separated for a while unless you can quickly find a job in the NY area as well...

Take care,

Manic

[ferdberfil]

Hey arctic-

Just wanted to balance out the heavy atmosphere around the boards and in my head by checking in an saying "howdy." Hope you and your wife are well, sir.

-FB