Hey all, first time posting, long time lurking.
I'm an adult male in my 40's, been struggling with sexting and porn addiction since basically my teens when AOL chat rooms sparked a connection between my first porn exposure and chatting sexually with strangers. It's always been the most potent kick, far beyond simply looking at porn.
Since early September, I've managed to be free of sexting relapses. So roughly over a month now. Which, honestly, is massive for me because I couldn't go more than a couple days for the last few years. I might get a week tops, but then go right back to it. Chatting anonymously, edging myself, doing this during work hours. It felt deeply compulsive, and the urges would often feel impossible to ignore. The rush was truly high, but the lows that followed were just awful.
The last time I sexted, I had spent most of the day catfishing an older gentleman into believing I was a *very famous and obvious* female celebrity. I didn't use the celeb's name of course, just her pictures that have been widely circulated. He seemed to buy it without question (either that, or he was getting off on the fantasy regardless). It became almost a game for me, like how far can I push this guy before he goes, "Wait, aren't these pictures of [insert celebrity name]?"
After I was done, I was so ashamed and disgusted with myself for wasting my own time on such a foolish endeavor. I had felt shame before, massive shame at times, for sexting and chatting. But something about this particular session just sent me and I HAD to stop.
So I installed the Brick app on my phone and blocked all access to porn, apps/sites for sexting, and even social media. I even set the app to be un-deletable from the device alone, so when I was in the bathroom or certainly out of the house, I had zero ability to bypass the blocker.
I won't lie, I felt triggered during that first week. I'd sit in the bathroom, scrolling my phone without any sexual content whatsoever. It was so boring, like reading the back of shampoo bottles again (IYKYK).
But... I felt good. At least I wasn't acting out.
I'd feel almost proud of myself, for showing up and honoring a promise to myself when I'd normally break my own promises without question.
Each week, those urges became less and less. Now I don't always even have the Brick app active, and have even come tangentially close to the apps I used to use to act out.
But yet I feel... nothing.
I almost force myself to masturbate to porn sometimes, just to scratch that distant itch we all get for release now and then. But I have zero desire to chat while doing it.
Porn itself is almost boring. I've seen more naked bodies than legions of our ancestors combined at this point. It's very hard to get 'excited' by porn. Which, I guess, is good.
But it leaves me in this weird gray zone. Sometimes I feel that gap.. there are certain hours of the day (I work from home) where acting out was almost guaranteed. When those hours come, I don't feel the urge to act out, but I do feel... something. A longing, or an itch that I can't quite scratch.
I don't know what to make of it, but from my reading this is called flatlining? My sexual appetite is present, but it's not active in the same way that it was.
Sometimes I'll do the deed to very SFW images of celebrities or something. Very, very tame, not even partially naked. And somehow that becomes enough - and then I feel oddly proud, like my mind is adjusting to 'normal' content and behaviors again.
I don't know what I'm seeking here in this post. I guess I'm writing just to express that it DOES get better. The urges can subside. But you have to be honest with yourself about how YOU need help. You need to create distance between yourself and your acting out, first, before deeper recovery can begin.
I'm wondering what comes next for me.
I think therapy is the best option, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to share this part of myself with a counselor just yet. That feeling of saying it out loud making it fully real in my mind.
I still throw my phone on restricted mode when I'm not even feeling tempted most days, just as a fail safe. I hope one day I won't need to at all. But it's been over a month since I've acted out and that feels like so much. I'm proud to have honored that for myself.