Feed the Right Wolf

I learned through therapy sessions about my complete and utter lack of connection to myself and my feelings. I have never learned to express my feelings and I grew up in a family where feelings were never talked about, EVER. My parents separated and my mom moved out when i was a child. We NEVER talked about it - just woke up the next morning, had breakfast and carried on. I'm sure this contributed to my social anxiety and my inability to relate to people in an intimate way, especially with my wife, but with friends and family as well.

I had to learn, as a 34 year old man what feelings are and how to express them properly. I know - pretty pathetic that I am learning what most people learn as a child. Anyways, going through the process has helped me a lot in my addiction so I thought I would share.

For those of you who may be struggling as I did - for me, feelings are the little voice inside my head, that tells me what I want to be doing and saying to people. But I had bottled up that voice and it became a quiet whisper deep inside that was never expressed to people outside of my own head. I don't know why exactly, I know there was some emotional neglect from my parents. I was also heavily bullied and ignored by my only older brother and this made me feel like a loser. I guess I bottled up the feelings so that I would never have conflict with people and perhaps, in some pathetic way, hope that they would like me. I became very good at mimicking people and talking about what they were interested in. I married a very dominant person, who planned much of our lives together. I never expressed myself. Perhaps that was why porn was so appealing. It is always there for you and will help you release from the stress of everyday life and a lack of ever expressing myself in any meaningful way.

At 34 I am just learning how to express how I am feeling and have a balanced relationship with people - scary thought. It took the crisis of a divorce for me to finally get help and counselling. I knew something was wrong, but had no idea what it was.

I think men in general have a harder time expressing how they feel and that is one of the traps of porn. I hope this might help someone who may have been in a similar situation as me.

In healing,
JJ

Jimmyjama, you hit the nail on the head. I suspect that many of us have the same issues that you speak of.

I came to the realization recently that I never really matured into manhood. Emotionally, I am a boy in a man's body. One powerful thing that I also realized is that all of my problems are interrelated. I have 3 main issues that I am dealing with. First, fear and anxiety have a strong grip on my life. Second, I am not in touch with my emotions and as a result have a hard time making meaningful connections with people, especially women. The third problem is my porn addiction.

Until recently, I never understood the connection between these three things. Now I see how they work in concert. My anxiety and inability to connect emotionally to others helped drive me to porn. Porn, in turn, has numbed my feelings and kept me in isolation. It becomes a viscous cycle.

For me, one of the keys to breaking free form porn is to fight this battle on all fronts. That means dealing with my other issues while I work on my porn habit. At age 42, I am trying to teach myself how to become a man.

I won't hijack the thread with the things I am working on, but I wanted to second what you said and encourage people to work on the other issues in their life that are contributing to their porn addiction.

I agree 100%. I am 33, and i feel like a child in my inability to express my feelings with people.
I called it arrested development, since I had an emotionally abusive stepmom. I lack confidence to express my deep feelings.
I think "coming out of our shell" would go a long way to easing the anxiety that drives us to porn.

_________________
Breathe deeply. Turn off the tv and internet when home alone. Read and watch nature scenes or get out of the house.

Porn ruins marriages, wastes valuable time.

I will regain my self-respect if I walk away.

Get a life. Read, gym, hobby.

Hello:)

Can I ask you gentlemen a question?

Just how are you working through your feelings and expressing them? In what ways and actions are you using to improve in this area? What are your steps to try and overcome this? How do you think your partner would be able to help you in this area?

The reason I am asking is my husband has the same difficulties that I think you do. I think you all hit the nail on the head.

Thanks muchly:)

_________________
Good sex begins when your clothes are still on. --William Masters & Virginia Johnson

Cappy

This is very hard to deal with and for me took professional counseling. I'm not advocating that but it took some drive on my part to really get to the bottom of my an anxiety and intimacy issues. It takes time. For me the steps I took were just getting back in tune with myself and how I was feeling and the thoughts in my head. I had to be more real in my interactions with family friends and people I met. I just gained more insight into the fact that I was completely ignoring myself. My wife was my best friend but she was very dominant and I was very passive. I would never express my emotions. Unfortunately it took the crisis of my divorce to get me out of the rut I was in. I started to take a good hard look at myself and realized how passive I was. Intimacy was hard because I never knew how to express myself. I had to figure out why that might be (therapy, looking at childhood) and then figure out how I could be more genuine and real with people. I had to keep in tune with what I was feeling and be able to express that. It was hard because it changes your interaction with everybody and it can be stressful. I noticed now when I went out I was always talking about something someone else was interested in. I was a bad case! It was hard to believe how out of touch I was! The porn addiction was a crutch. It was a medication of a sort. It just took the willingness and the realization that something was wrong here. After that it's just a matter of time.

Things I would suggest if you are a partner of someone who has difficulty expressing themselves would be:

1. Ask them to plan a day or a weekend or a little vacation with the family. If your partner has difficulty expressing themselves (like I did) you may have found yourself as the one who does the planning. Maybe your situation is different and your partner does plan stuff for your family to do already but if not ask him to do that. And if he does, try to go along with it, without judging the activities ( unless it's something unsafe or something like that). And it shouldn't be the same old thing you have done a hundred times - it should be something new. And it doesn't have to cost a ton of money either. If he already plans stuff out all the time then ignore this one.

2. If you decide to continue on with your marriage, drop him a hint that you would like to "get away" with him and ask him to plan something. And resist all temptation to get involved! I say again - do not get involved! This is assuming that you can get a babysitter for an overnight trip. This is also after you guys have built some intimacy back into your marriage.

3. Give him specific compliments. Don't just say thank you, which is just being polite. Say something good about something and be specific about it. (of course this is assuming you have something to compliment!). For example you could say " I noticed you bought some of my favorite flowers that was awesome!". Or "I noticed you were really helpful with ___ when he needed help with his homework. You took the time to explain how the water cycle works. That was really nice to see". The more specific the better. My wife used to say thank you a lot but it seemed as if she was just saying it to be polite. Specific compliments are so much better. Ofcourse you want these too so let him know that!

4. Find something that you can do every night where you can share your days to each other. This can be hard with kids but dinner can be a good time and so can 10 minutes when you are laying in bed. If he doesn't seem like he wants to talk then share your day and hopefully he will eventually share something from his day. Men eventually see how awesome it is to have a partner that you can share your day with and he will eventually open up more and more if you have the time to listen. He might not shut up soon! This is something I really miss from being with my wife.

5. You have to be very careful the first few times he opens up. Try not to judge or get upset even if he says something about his day that you don't agree with. Like if he says "my boss is a jerk he doesn't even listen to me when I tell him that we should do it a different way". Don't say something like - "well maybe your boss is right". My wife did this all the time and it really turned me off. Sometimes we know that we're probably being irrational and stupid sometimes but its my world so dont judge it! This might seem fake to not say what you think but what you want is your husband feeling comfortable expressing himself to you. Just listen to him if you want him to talk. Eventually you will be able to disagree and be fine with it but for now just hope he talks. You want to build intimacy and trust and that might be hard if you offer your opinion about his world right away. Just like you don't want him to judge you about your world when you share your day.

There are probably a lot of mistakes in this as I am writing from my phone. But I only wish my wife had been as interested in this stuff as you are and these are some of the things I wish she would have done for me. This all assumes that you are ready to move on from the hurt and pain and loss of trust from your husband and his addiction to porn.

For healing,
JJ

Eadeca, the short answer is that I don't have the answers yet. I am still trying to find them for myself. However, I think I have some clues as to what my underlying problems are, and I am starting the quest to find solutions.

For me, I believe the root of my problems are anxiety and lack of confidence. I grew up in a great, close-knit family. However, my family wasn't very expressive emotionally. I didn't have siblings close to my age. I was a shy kid who had some awkward teenage years, where I was sometimes picked on by other kids. As a result, I never really gained confidence in my social skills. During my teenage years, I learned to hide my emotions, as I viewed it as a sign of weakness. One thing you learn when you are getting bullied is that if you show any emotion (fear, anger, etc.) it will often result in a stronger reaction from your tormentors. You learn to blend in and not draw attention to yourself. That usually means not being expressive.

When you do turn to porn, it numbs your emotions even more. I think porn, TV, and the internet in general have a way of turning people into zombies if they are over used.

As I have mentioned before, I think there is a viscous cycle in play. In my case, the anxiety and lack of confidence caused me to shut off my emotions and turn to porn. Porn then dulled my emotions even further, and trapped me in my anxiety.

So what am I attempting to do to dig myself out of this hole? First I am working on my porn addiction. I think I will naturally get in touch with some of my emotions once I break free from porn.

Secondly, I need to work on the anxiety and lack of confidence issues that are the underlying problem. I am an avid reader, so I have been reading all kinds of different self improvement materials from a variety of different sources. For example, I have never had much confidence around women, so I have read various books on dating and relationships. Some of the books have been somewhat sleazy, "how to pick up women" type books, and I don't recommend them, but even they gave me some insight into the psychology of attractiveness and what I might be missing. I have also read books and articles on body language and developing presence.

I realized that I never really felt masculine. I read "No More Mr Nice Guy" which deals with nice guy syndrome, which I show some symptoms of. I have become a regular reader of The Art of Manliness website, as I try to learn what it truly means to be masculine. I have picked up some good tips from these sources. One thing I learned is that if I shut off the computer and TV and go do physical things, such as lift weights, work on the house, etc., it builds my confidence.

I have also been reading about and and practicing Mindfulness Meditation. This is helpful for both getting in touch with your feelings as well as overcoming anxiety.

These are just some of the things I have been working on. I don't know if any of these would be useful to your husband or not. My main advice is figure out what is driving your porn addiction and take steps to battle that while you are battling your porn addiction. In other words, you have to wage the war on multiple fronts.