How to Stop Watching Pornography: My Personal Journey

Do you watch porn? I know you do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have clicked on this article. If you wouldn’t watch movies in which girls get humiliated and exploited, you wouldn’t search for an answer, an answer to a problem that about 70% of men all over the world have.

The internet is an amazing phenomenon. It allows Sean and me to run an online business, it allows you to read this article right now and it allows millions of men to connect with beautiful women on Facebook and on countless online dating sites.

The internet has the power to inform, entertain, and educate. Unfortunately, not all that glitters is gold. The internet has its dark side. This dark side is a multi-billion dollar business for the ones who produce it and a dangerous drug for the ones who consume it.

I am talking about pornography. I haven’t met one guy who hasn’t watched at least a few porn movies in his life. While it is definitely not alarming if you watch one short clip in June and another one in August, most guys can’t resist the temptation to consume it every single day.

About three years ago I wasn’t able to resist the temptation. I started every day with a porn movie and I ended every day with a porn movie. I spent countless hours scrolling through dozens of websites and clicking on even more videos.  It was my drug, the only thing that made me happy. Today I am clean.

It would be a lie to say that I don’t feel tempted to just visit one of those dirty sites to get an instant relief that I was once dependent on. The temptation will always be there. Everyone who claims the opposite is lying. However, the following step-by-step plan helped me to deal with this temptation, to overcome my addiction, to improve my life, and to find true happiness in activities that didn’t trigger any emotions in me during my addiction.

My way of beating porn addiction might differ from what scientists and so-called experts tell you. I am not a scientist. I am just a regular guy like you who wanted to end his addiction to enjoy his life with real women and real emotions. The following steps helped me to achieve this goal.

Stop Lying to Yourself About Your Addiction

How do you stop watching porn? Stop lying to yourself! Stop pretending that you could quit any day if you just wanted. Stop telling yourself that you just watch one more video before you close your laptop. Stop telling yourself that you don’t need porn to get it up.

Before you haven’t stopped telling yourself all those dirty little lies, you are not ready to overcome your addiction. It is really that simple. I lied to myself a lot. I even denied that I have a problem when I didn’t go to parties, just because I wanted to stay home to watch porn all night long.

Unless you accept that you have a problem, you won’t allow yourself to work on it. The day I realized that I had to make a change was when I was jerking off to porn movies at about 2 o’clock in the night, even though I had an important exam the next day. That was the day when I instinctively knew that I would destroy myself if I wouldn’t end this vicious cycle.

Think about What Made and What Makes You Happy

What if you don’t have the courage to admit that you have a problem, even though you even click on porn sites during work while knowing that your boss could fire you for that? Think about what makes you happy and what made you happy before you became a porn addict.

When I asked myself this question, I nearly started to cry. Before I began to watch an excessive and definitely unhealthy amount of porn movies I loved to go to the gym, I enjoyed long and deep conversations with friends and I went to every part that I was invited to. Now that I was dependent on my daily dose of naked tits and asses, I couldn’t enjoy these activities.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I went to the gym. I suddenly thought about all the days I told my friends that “I don’t have time”, even though I wasted my time in front of my laptop. I thought about the last time I had a really long conversation with someone without constantly thinking about the next dose of this destructive drug.

For the first time in my life, I realized how much those damn movies changed my personality and my behavior. I was shocked by what I did and scared of who I was. Suddenly, overcoming my addiction was not just an option. It was an absolute must.

Set Clear Goals and Work with Deadlines

Now that you have the motivation to change, how do you quit porn?

There are two things you can do. You can either tell yourself that you will never watch another porn movie again without setting any goals or deadlines, or you can set clear goals and clear deadlines. When I tried the first tactic I failed horribly.

I went from watching over a dozen porn movies a day to zero the next day. It shouldn’t surprise you that I relapsed. I went through the same crisis that an alcohol addict goes through when you take away all his alcohol from one day to another. I had withdrawal symptoms that were anything but funny.

Maybe you are stronger than me and you can go from 100% porn addict to 100% clean within one day. However, if you want to make sure that you don’t relapse, again and again, I suggest that you try a slow rehab process with clear goals and deadlines. What do I mean by that?

Have a look at the following rehab schedule that I followed through:

Day 1-10: Watch one porn movie a day.

Day 10-20: Watch one movie’s sex scene (soft porn) a day (no hardcore pornography).

Day 20-30: Look at one naked image a day.

From Day 30: Live without porn.

This tactic might differ from what you read in science books and the rebooting process might take a bit longer, but it definitely works when you’re trying to stop masturbating to porn. You gradually adapt your brain to life without hardcore pornography. Thanks to this technique I didn’t relapse once.

Find a Healthy Distraction

Do you know why I actually started consuming more and more pornography? I did it for the same reason that a lot of other men become addicted to these movies. I wanted to fill a void in my life.

I was frustrated because I couldn’t get laid, I was embittered because I was living a passionless life without any meaning and I was stressed because I studied a subject that I didn’t give a shit about. I lived the exact same life that so many other guys who use porn as a distraction live.

No meaning, no passion, no excitement, and no purpose. When you live such a life it is relatively tempting to use the exciting, disturbing, and sometimes shocking world of pornography to distract yourself from reality. First, it is a distraction, then it becomes a habit and eventually, you are addicted to it.

One thing I realized during my rebooting process was that I suddenly had more time than ever before. The realization that I used to waste countless hours every week searching for new porn movies was shocking and liberating at the same time.
I was happy that I had all this free time, but I had no idea what I should do with it. For the last couple of years, I did nothing else other than working, studying, and jerking off to porn movies. I felt like a child without toys.

This is a dangerous place to be in. Now that you don’t watch porn you are more bored than ever before. This can easily motivate you to relapse in order to avoid this boredom. That’s why it is absolutely crucial to replace porn with another distraction.
Replace it with a healthy distraction and your life will get even better.

I decided that going to the gym makes more sense than just training my right forearm. As a result of quitting porn and replacing the time I wasted watching it with quality time in the gym, my physique, my health, and my self-confidence increased more and more in the process.

Reconnect with Your Emotions

One crucial element of the recovery process that a lot of men tend to ignore is the relationship with your emotions. Yes, I am a man and I am going to talk about emotions. Unfortunately, a lot of men still believe that being open about their emotions is a sign of weakness and something unmanly to do.

Well, this is stupid and deep down you know that. If more men would realize that talking about their emotions is good and healthy, there would be a lot fewer male suicide victims. However, suicide is not the only thing that can be prevented by connecting with your emotions instead of suppressing them. This process can also heal your porn addiction.

Reconnecting with your emotions can be hard, but it is absolutely vital if you want to recover. Why is it so important? Because your porn addiction suppressed all your emotions and now that you don’t watch porn anymore they want to break free. The only problem is that you are not really prepared to deal with them, which can easily lead to aggression, frustration, and eventually relapse.

In order to fully recover you have to understand that porn buried your emotions. The search for happiness turned into the search for sexual stimulation. The search for purpose and meaning turned into the search for a quick relief. Now that you are free from the drug, your emotions want to break free too.

The best advice I can give you is to not suppress them again. Don’t ignore your emotions, embrace them. Spend time on your own, take long walks in the park and face your emotions during meditation.

It might be hard at the beginning, especially when you think about all the things you have missed out on and all the time you wasted watching porn, but eventually, this process of reconnecting with your emotions prevents a relapse.

Write a Diary about Your Progress

Another thing that helped me a lot during my reboot was writing a diary. Yes, writing diaries is something that is mainly done by teenage girls, but that doesn’t change the fact that it can be very helpful when you want to stop watching porn. Of course, I am not talking about a regular diary. Writing about what you ate and what TV show you watched won’t help you a lot. Writing about how it felt to go through the day without watching porn will help you.

During my recovery, I wrote at least one paragraph every night before I went to bed. I wrote down how I felt, when I thought about watching porn when the temptation was the highest, and what I did to get over the desire to ruin my life again. Writing everything down helped me to focus on the process of staying clean and it also helped me to pour out my heart. It might help you too.

Enjoy How the Temptation Turns into Dust

The goal to stop watching porn and to end your addiction might sound very hard at the beginning, especially when you have been addicted for a long time. I remember how it seemed impossible for me to live a life without porn. Today I live a happy, fulfilled, and passionate life without being dependent on porn.

My happiness and my fulfillment are real and I can’t emphasize enough how proud I am that I overcame my addiction. I don’t say this because I want to brag about what I have achieved.

I say this because I want you to know that you can achieve the same.
You can stop watching porn, you can live a life without being addicted to movies that ruin your life and you can live a life of freedom and choice.

Thank you for allowing me to share my personal journey with you. What you do now is up to you.

In Conclusion

If you really want to learn how to stop watching pornography you have to stop lying to yourself. Unless you admit that you are addicted, you won’t allow yourself to work on your problem. Try to remember all the things that used to make you happy and set clear goals with even clearer deadlines.

After you have found a healthy distraction that works as a replacement for your porn consumption, it is time to reconnect with your emotions. Time on your own, meditation, and a personal diary that documents your progress can be exactly what you need.

From here, you can reconnect to sex with your partner in a healthy way. Good luck on your journey brother, feel free to contact us if you need any help along the way.