It may sound ridiculous that you could lose your home to online porn addiction. But successful people know how these things work. You may sacrifice an important meeting to rearrange your schedule so that you can access porn that day. Or, you might put off making an important business or banking phone call because you want to be online a little longer while you dig for new porn – and then the person you need to contact is up until it’s time for you to meet up. Can go around to call. Maybe you can’t call the next day, maybe the person is out the next day, then suddenly you see that a whole week has passed. These things happen, and they happen in very small mistakes and stupidities. But then they derail your life.
So, let’s say your job is not as secure as before, and thus your ability to pay your mortgage may be uncertain, and on top of that you are on porn sites whenever possible for 1, 2, like to log on. Or even 3 hours per session. Your porn habit is essentially driving you to failure, even though it may be helping you feel better day by day, hour by hour (as all addictions do). So how can you stop it and turn things around before it’s too late?
First of all, don’t try to stop masturbating online cold turkey. That’s a waste of time. You need to start small, and expect many, many failures. Quickly assess how much time you’re currently wasting online. An hour or two online every day may seem reasonable enough, and chances are you can still work for most of the world. But think about it: even just an hour a day, five days a week is at least 5 hours a week, or about 20 hours a month. That’s half the time at work every month you’re spending staring at pixels on a screen, lowering your self-esteem, when you could have spent those 20 hours building your self-esteem and improving your standing in the world. Can Over the course of a year, 20 hours a week adds up to at least 240 hours a year. That’s six full work weeks’ time, wasted, thrown away. That’s a whole six weeks you spent holding yourself down instead of lifting yourself up. At the very least, you could have spent that time on some sustainable recreation like taking a vacation, or taking a class, or even writing a book, or going out and meeting real people.
Make a list of things you wish you were doing instead of getting online to watch porn. Plug that wish list into the time you’ve been wasting online (say, six weeks of each year). Then, work to avoid masturbation instead of lining up opportunities to masturbate day after day. Put yourself in a position where you have to be in a location where you know you will have access to a porn-ready computer. Go out and see people. Get involved with groups that volunteer, or play sports, or hunt, or do artwork, or whatever else interests you. Try to get out and see others. When you slip, you slip. Leave it and move on to the next day. When you replace the harmful behavior of masturbating for hours online with the stronger behavior of interacting with people and pursuing things that actually make you happy and strong, the urge to dig for new porn will gradually subside. Will go You will become stronger. It will make you look less attractive. And before you know it, you’ll find that you’ve turned your life around in a positive direction, slowly, over time, instead of plunging headlong into failure.
