Since I'm in confession mode now, I guess I really need to share this.
Yesterday I came extremely close to acting out sexually. Some might say I did. There was a time I would have. Whatever, everyone's definition of acting out & sobriety is different anyway.
Our computer recently got a bad virus going around and we had to completely restore everything we could.
I was looking for something on my floppy discs that was no longer on my hard drive. In so doing I came across some documents that somehow got rescued (I had not saved them, never do).
They were pics of nude women I had copied from websites into my word program.
Of course, I just
had to check each one to make sure it wasn't the work I was looking for, which it could have been but I didn't think so (especially after I opened the first one).
:rolleyes:
Well, from there, it was way too damned easy to go ahead and look at them more, then click on their links to look for more and "better" pics.
Next thing I know I've got websites popping up all over the place, mostly uninvited, some the kind you can't get rid of.
So I told myself, "Look you're gonna have to shut down to get rid of these damn things anyway, so just do it now." And I did. Then, as I often have before, I restarted and cleaned everything off.
Yeah I did some ogling & some thinking. But I didn't get into a fantasy, and I didn't masturbate.
Highly unusual for me. So for me, at this point, that was not acting out. For me, it was a major victory.
At the same time, according to my feelings & my personal standards & beliefs, what I did was wrong, wrong for me.
It was disappointing (if not surprising) so soon after a major breakthrough. As my T said during that time on Monday, I now really can leave that crap behind and get on with really living. I fully intended to & still do. But that's not living!
Also I know how once I let things go a little in this area, like an alcoholic I have to drink more & more until I'm drunk & make an ass of myself. Its never just one drink, just a few pics, not for me anyway. And thats ok I don't want it.
Actually what happened was quite a metaphor for this. I looked at one pic. Then more. Then I clicked a link. Then more. Then sites started popping up I didn't click & didn't want. Until finally I had to shut the whole thing down.
One drink with this doc (drug of choice) and I've got all kinds of crap I didn't want or ask for: guilt, shame, self-hatred, feeling stupid, depression, despair, aching body, aching heart.
It's like trying to quench my thirst with salt water. Even tho its water, and water itself is good & necessary, it just makes me thirstier, and the more I drink the more I want. People have been known to die of thirst with their bellies full of water--salt water!
I know just from a few times going 30 to 60 days sexually sober that the withdrawal can be horrible, as with any other drug. And it is a drug: brain chemicals, and adrenaline.
I also know that the more I take even little & ocassional steps over my boundaries, the more I drink, the worse the withdrawal gets, the greater the thirst of temptation gets, until I act out.
But not yesterday!
And ironically, it was probably the fact that so much unwanted junk kept popping up I got disgusted and wiped the whole thing out. When the computer came back on, I had no desire to look at pics again.
Not that I haven't since. That's what's so insidious about this damned addiction! That's why I've got to stay clean, and practice healthy intimacy & lovemaking with my wife. Period.
But that's for me. And that's my confession.
Wuame
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