So thankful for finding this

I don't know where to start with this. I'm 25 now and I saw my first porn video at 12 after finding a tape in my Dads room. The feeling of pure excitement, that dopamine hit..well I've pretty much been chasing it ever since. I would wait until he went to work and then I would dig through the vast amount of coverless videos until, Jackpot! I would bring it to my room and watch it countless times, M/Oing countless times also. I'd pretty quickly moved onto shoplifting Playboys, robbing new tapes from my Dad, sometimes never returning them they were that important to me at the time. It was all so exciting and looking back pretty harmless; not much novelty, using imagination more with magazines etc..

I had my first sexual relationship at 16, before I had my first access to internet porn. For 5 years I had exciting, youthful, experimental sex, with little to no complaints about my libido or performance. By 19-20 I had gotten my first laptop with internet. It was exciting and came at a time when my relationship was ending. I started using it daily as my sexual release/replacement for my girlfriend and never thought twice about the consequences. About 7 months later I began my second relationship, but continued using porn. She had a real problem with it and considered it almost cheating, and I was made to feel ashamed for using porn. I always hid it from her and so began this ''me and porn'' against her plot. i would use it when she wasn't there. We had sex, pretty regularly, but nothing like the stuff I was watching. I was uncovering new and exciting parts of my sexuality but i had to remember: to hide it all from my girlfriend. I began to notice that I was less and less interested in having sex with her due to this. One thing that has always stuck with me from that relationship was one night I was in the living room playing FIFA, she went to bed. So I took the laptop out to get my porn hit, with FIFA being my excuse..I then got a message from her. It was a picture message..she was in bed with sexy underwear on, and candles..waiting for me. i pretended I never heard it. I, to this day feel awful for doing that to the girl.

We broke up a few months later over other things, but our sex life was dead, a lot down to me. i tried one night stands but found it difficult and didn't like them.. . I just felt I had performance anxiety. Then I met a girl out one night, a friend from years ago. We were both really drunk, and so happy to see each other, and both had feelings for each other straight away. We went back to her friends house, kissed a bit, talked a lot, and slept on the couch together, no sex. I knew the next day that I would be seeing more of this girl, I wanted to.. Two weeks later she came to my house, a second date kind of.. We were in my room watching a movie. Within 15 mins of the start we were kissing and trying to be the porn star I had been observing for years, began undressing her and going down her, way before i was mentally ready to. I couldn't get it up, and again I blamed it on performance anxiety. I got some Cialis online and no doubt I was working fine. In her own words, after a few weeks she was having the best sex she's ever had, so was I..but I was using Cialis, what do I do? Admit it to her and break the illusion? Keep hiding it until she finds it, i can't afford it anymore or I get dependent on it? After a few months I told her. By then we had told each other far deeper and darker secrets about ourselves and so this was nothing to her. We've been going out 6 months now, and went off the Cialis for a few weeks but all the time I was still using porn. Sex was good, natural, but wasn't mind-blowing like we were used to. This played on my mind a lot and so went on a lower dose to try and wean myself off it.

I truly had myself believing that, after 6 months with this gorgeous woman who had shared so much with me and made me feel so comfortable, that I was still too nervous to perform with her. I had began counseling, CBT, life skills classes.. but then I found yourbrainonporn..and after watching the videos and hearing some of the testimonials, it all just became so clear..

My porn habit had been ruining my sexual confidence, desire for women, my libido..it heightened both my expectations of myself and my sexual partner, which always set me up for failure in some shape or form..If I couldn't have sex it's because I wasn't feeling confident. If I was having regular sex, it was boring and nothing like I was watching on the internet..I never thought porn was damaging me. I thought if anything I was strengthening my sexuality, but how I was wrong! So 17 days ago I started no PMO.. My gf and I have been trying our best to abstain from any sexual contact, but I have had two orgasms in the last 17 days, which came strictly from PIV, and Cialis free!! At 17 days I know I have a long way to go, but then again what do I mean by that? After watching the videos on how destructive porn can be for you, and after what it has done to me, I have NO desire to EVER watch it again. I have no cravings, nothing. Not watching porn, not thinking about porn, I feel great, and I'm very excited about the future with this.

As i'm in the early days I'm aware that flatline is a huge possibility and almost expected, but I will continue to keep you all updated with my progress. Basically, porn, never again. Masturbation, I'm not allowing myself, never would be a stretch, but 90 days definitely. But orgasm, I know it's not recommended in the early days, but if it's coming strictly from PIV, i'm surely fighting evil with good there, right? Anyway if you read this, thank you very much, it might be reaalllyy long, but I'm just so happy and optimistic about this!! Thanks for reading :)