So I’ve been clean for over 5 years and I’d like to be able to say that it’s been easy, and at first trauma kept me clean but as time has gone on that trauma has gotten further away and I’ve had to find other ways to keep myself clean. Luckily I suffer from aphantasia so I don’t visualise which I imagine (pun intended) helps no end as I’m not constantly reimagining all of the things I’ve already been exposed to.

I’ve had a good few years to examine my triggers and I had managed to get it to a point where I wasn’t being triggered much at all. I figured out that certain content would trigger me and others would not, for example taking and viewing photos of my wife or even the two of us doesn’t trigger me as in my mind it’s real whereas pictures of random people from the internet was a no-no. I can talk and flirt with other women (my wife and I are polyamorous) and so long as it didn’t end up a role play kind of thing I’d be fine. Masturbation is also associated with it in my mind so I don’t do that either and I’m a very sexual person so not always easy for me

And some things which used to bother me such as a video game called cyberpunk 2077 which previously I’d not played as it triggered me cause of a lot of nudity and sexual content in the game. I’ve now managed to come back to it and completed it without being triggered. This was encouraging to me and in fact I felt like I was getting to a point where maybe I was getting to the other end of my difficulties with porn and didn’t have to always be so careful.

Unfortunately it turns out recently that I was kidding myself, as I mentioned my wife and I are polyamorous and this might seem like a contradiction but for me it’s genuinely about finding connection with someone else not just shacking up with anyone vaguely attractive, unfortunately like the monogamous world, at times dating sucks and so I’ve really struggle to find any other partners. I tend to be quite open about my issues with porn addiction with new potential partners so that they don’t inadvertently trigger me.

Most people in the poly community are respectful about it but despite that the porn addiction does get in the way, some people think that I must be immoral and sometimes they get nasty with it, others just don’t want the hassle and many many are just after the sex and nothing else and there are a few who seemingly don’t hav a problem with it until you reject them, then it becomes a weapon to use against you. So it can be a minefield to navigate but till recently I’ve done so with little incident.

So for the last month I have been talking to someone and we seemed to be hitting it off, we talked for a couple of weeks before we even really started properly flirting, then once we did start I explained about the porn addiction and how I wouldn’t typically sext and I wouldn’t want to see nudes, that underwear/bikini shots was fine but no nudes. So we kept talking and we did start to push it close to the wire on the sexting side of things but it didn’t trigger me so I was happy with the situation until one day she asked me if she could share a cheeky pic. Given the conversation before I figured she meant a pic of her in some lingerie or something but then it pops up on my screen and it’s a nude. Now I figure that she wasn’t trying to trigger me on purpose or anything but I figured it was just a miscommunication.

Anyway while it was a shock to me, at first not an unpleasant one, I’m excited and turned on by it, telling her hot she is etc but then later in the day I find myself struggling emotionally and I feel like I want to keep looking at the photo, and it’s really brought up some bad feelings for me, so I delete the photo and the next day I asked her politely not to send any more in future and I made sure not to blame her or reject her in any way (though not sure I was successful)

Unfortunately since receiving that photo there have been a string of things since like having a work trip where I was in a hotel in my own for the first time in years (which I used to do all the time and was one of the places I’d view porn the most) so even though I’ve not actually relapsed I have been rather effected by it and it’s rather depressed me as I now realise that I may never be fully free of this addiction and I don’t like that even after all this time I still feel the draw of it.

That said I have to also try and see that there are some positives still, I haven’t yet succumbed to temptation and gone in search of more content, so that’s good, I just hope I can get back to where I was mentally before all this started