"I want my previous life,
just with the porn switch off."

"How long does it take? Surely no more than 3-5 months."

When men or women reach the point where they realize their sexual behaviors have become something they no longer want, it's common to assume that to make changes in this one area will be an ISOLATED EFFORT that will not need to impact any other areas of life.  A "siloed" mentality, so to speak.

Notice how this MRC grad wanted to "shut the switch off and just keep livin' the life."  However with significant recovery work, this man came to realize that simple sobriety is not what he really wanted... not what he was "truly working towards."

He realized just how long it would really take to build new neural pathways in his mind, atrophy the old ones and learn how to DO LIFE in healthy ways.

Listen to the full interview here or by clicking on the link below. 

Here's a bit more of what he discovered on his recovery journey that led to much, much deeper growth and transformation.

"After my wife uncovered my hidden relationship with sexualized content, porn, and masturbation, she set a boundary and wouldn’t tolerate it in our marriage. I regret that I didn’t initiate ridding my life of this destructive aspect on my own. That was largely because I believed that I could ‘just stop’ if I wanted to and tried hard enough.

However, years of “trying hard enough” failed and I continually went back to it. Now, I really needed to figure it out – my marriage was at stake.

I remember the first time I heard that this process might take three to five years and I was shocked. I figured this would only take a few months and I would just need to try some new technique that I obviously hadn’t tried before but, it seemed like, other than this unwanted behavior, the rest of my life was good, I just needed to figure out how to stop looking at women.

What I didn’t understand at the time was that the urge to look at women was deeply seated in the way that I processed emotions and how I had learned to cope with negative emotions over the prior 20 years of my life. There were a lot of unhealthy reasons I used sex, porn, and masturbation and most of them were techniques to avoid negative emotions or counteract them with the positive feelings that came through my addictive escape.

What lay ahead was a journey of deep exploration into myself and my emotions and understanding what had prompted me to turn to sexualized content, even when I didn’t want to. It involved digging into the messages I had internalized about myself, the people and situations around me from all sorts of sources and even the ways I had disconnected from the highs and lows of my emotions – not even being able to identify what I felt or what I wanted… unaware of what I was doing.

The more I dug into my motives, the more I learned about myself and, the more it uncovered new things to dig into. Six and a half years later, I’m still identifying things that have led to unhealthy beliefs and how to ‘reprogram’ my responses.

While I experienced major progress and started rebuilding trust within the first several months, it took years to really start seeing it all come together, for things to really ‘click’ and be able to truly feel like a different person.

What I ultimately realized was, the unwanted sexual thoughts and actions were just a symptom of deeper and larger unhealthy aspects of myself which impacted our relationship. What I truly want isn’t just the same life without porn, I want to develop a new self, a new life and a new marriage, one where I am more aware of myself, my needs and how I can accept all of my emotions and deal with them in positive ways.

While it’s taken time, the journey and the benefits of the journey have been unimaginably valuable and worth it!

We live in a society of instance results and quick fixes. It seemed like cutting porn out of my life would be a quick ‘flip of switch’. I’m thankful I learned through recovery how much more goes into it and have a newfound, deep understanding about myself and my world that allows me to enjoy both so much more. "

If you want to hear more about this and other hot topics about addiction, betrayal and recovery, click below to listen to an interview between two couples who experienced radical transformation due to the Marriage Recovery Course.