Congrats on 1 yr. TH

[manonmission]

Congratulations on one full year of being porn free and in active recovery! Way to go bud!

[TH]

Thank you so much M.O.M! You have been a big reason for me hitting the 1 year mark. Your friendship and support will never be forgotten.

I feel a little emotional today after shedding some tears when I received a beautiful card from my wife telling me how proud she is of me. I then got emotional after re-reading my first post on this board and remembering how bad I felt at that time and what a journey it's been to this point. I feel emotional for being blessed with the right set of cirucmstances to get me through to this point. Those circumstances were, this board, my accountability partner manonmission, my loving, understanding and supportive wife and the will to want to be better.

Exactly one year ago today I was acting out with P in a hotel room. I felt the usual shame and guilt. I had tried so many times to quit and I tried so many techniques and failed over and over. For some reason, I never thought to do a search for links related to quitting P until a year ago. This was probably due to the fact that after acting out I would be so disgusted that i would push myself away from the computer and not return til I was feeling a bit better and then the cycle would start again at a later time. Well, I didn't realize how close I was to support because when I finally did google porn addiction the very first link was this place and that's when I signed up and made my very first post as TH (which stands for trying hard). That's the best name I could come up with in my state of desperation. You can read my first post here:

lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=addicts&action=display&thread=1120644404&page=1

As you can see I was greeted by some excellent people with some great advice. And this was the start of my recovery.

19 days after I joined I PM-ed manonmission because I noticed that he joined the board 1 week before me and that our sobriety time was similar. I asked if he wanted to become accountability partners and we've been PM-ing each other since. This really helped both of us get through our withdrawal periods. My body was like "whoa what's going on here".

I joined the 100 day thread and managed to get through 28 days purple and then I slipped on MB but not with P. When I first joined here I was most concerned with my P addiction and didn't think I had a problem with MB so I just converted my color to green so as to not lose momentum on the list. I had a few more MB slips along the way as I got to know my triggers and started to realize that MB really was my addiction or as Geoff puts it "sexual release addiction".

At my 2 month sobriety anniversary I faced my biggest fear in all of this. How to tell my wife. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do as my wife has very strong opinions about P. You can read my post about it here :

lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=1127497550&page=1

All I can say is that it was the single best thing I did for my recovery. Telling somebody in your real life smacks you in the face and says "this isn't your little secret fantasy world anymore it's for real!" What's weird is that I felt worse about keeping my recovery a secret from her than I did about hiding the P use.

Now I had a new ally in my fight against this addiction and it came at a great time as the novelty of the board was starting to wear off on me. Telling my wife gave me a fresh start on what was already a 2 month head start. I love her so much!

I had a lot of demons to face on my journey because my work takes me on the road for much of the year. So I was alone in hotel rooms a lot. During these times I would try to go blue and somewhere along the line an unidentified trigger would appear and I would have another slip with MB. I learned so much from these slips. I never had a slip from the same trigger. Staying away from P became quite easy actually but I was learning about my MB addiction.

On the thread called "Why are we PAs?" someguy challenged me to really sit and think about some traumatic experience that caused me to become a sex addict. It was the first time that I actually made a connection to how I ended up this way. The link is here and is an interesting thread.

lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=1136414790&page=1

Around Christmas time I MB-ed for what I hope is the last time. I feel like I've got things sorted out and I put myself to the test when I went blue for 44 days alone in hotel rooms. At the end of those 44 days I felt like I could have gone indefinitely. I wasn't jonesin for a fix. Since then I've had another 23 day blue streak alone in a hotel room and no problem again. Reading Gandhi's autobiography helped me immensely as he was celibate for over 30 years while being married.

Today I am in a hotel room again on another blue run (day 19 so far). I'm in a completely different state of mind and am a completely different person than 1 year ago. I have a long way to go on this journey but I'm liking who I am more and more. I'm leaving my dark past behind and walking towards the light with each day.

I couldn't have done any of this without the grace of God, my wife, my board buddy and the support of the members of this board. Don't think for a second that I will be complacent after hitting this milestone. This is a lifelong struggle. There will be easy times and there will be hard times, I know that. I'm ready. And if I should falter, God forbid, I'm just gonna get up and keep going because it is so worth it.

Looking towards the light

TH

[toft]

One year and almost 800 posts later, just lookatcha!!

Congratulations, TH!!!!

[1Cor10]

TH, odd, I always wondered what that stood for. You've been an inspiration since I got here and always a voice of reason and wisdom. Thank you for what you've provided to us and congratulations.

[thims]

Congratulations, TH. I am proud to labor along side you in the battle against PA/SA!

Keep up the good work!

T

[newbie]

TH,

You have already helped me immensely. We share many things in common, my first experience was when i was five, with my uncle's massager. I was just playing with it, when i discovered the good spot. That led to addiction, and feelings of guilt even then. Reading this post has truely showed me it can be done, I am on either day eight or nine, i will have to check. With no P and no MB, I too had an awesome childhood. Loving parents, everything cool. But i have always had MB, and P since like age 8, now i am 27, and the rationalization has run out. I too have a SO who is out of town. My goal is to tell her about it when she comes back. I want to be sober the entire time from both P and MB, even though for "normal" people, i dont see MB as a particular problem. Me, I am addicted to it. It is definitely harder for me to quit that than P. But as you said, MB leads to P, and to more P. Anyway. Reading your story has givin me so much strength. Our parallels are amazing. I only hope my SO is as supportive as yours, I think she will be, we arent married yet, but I am planning on it eventually. Thanks again. Congrats. and I hope you will be there to congratulate me when I hit my one year P free.

-newbie

[geoff]

TH,
I'm really happy for you. You're stringing together an awesome accomplishment.

Take care,

geoff

[MJ]

Congratulations, TH! You're a fine example for us all to look up to. Keep up the good work!

[Stillhopeful]

Well done! What a wonderful journey, TH, and thanks for sharing it with everyone here. I'm sure you've inspired many in this community.

Keep up the good work!

Still

[MrOuch]

Thanks for the links. They were particularly helpfuf for me today.

Oh, and congrats on making it 24/7/365!

[TH]

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate your words. The support here is incredible.

I had to laugh thinking about July 4th that just passed. My independence day will always be July 6th now :-)

Peace

[Ian06]

Hey TH

Just got the chance to catch up with some support board reading -- and I found your success story.

Congratulations on your amazing accomplishment! Congrats on your one year!!!

Thank you for being here, reaching out to us, taking care of your recovery, showing us that it does get better, that life gets better. And that it is possible to stay clean & sober.

I'm really glad you are here on this path with me.

Take care. Keep up the awesome work!

Ian06