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Sex/Porn Addiction: Initial Steps Toward Healing

Dr. Robert Weiss LCSW, CSAT

First and foremost, let me state that sex and porn addicts nearly always require outside assistance if they hope to heal. If they could stop their addictive behavior on their own, they would do so. In fact, they would have done so months or even years ago. But stopping on their own and then staying stopped for more than a few days is not something they’ve been able to manage.

If you’re a sex/porn addict, once you’ve decided to ask for outside help, you should do exactly that. If you are unsure how to reach out, please either email us and ask for a referral to a therapist in your area or sign up for a personalized online consultation with one of our staff members. The next step is to find an accountability partner of some sort – most often a fellow recovering sex/porn addict met in group therapy or a 12-step sexual recovery meeting.

An accountability partner is a person who holds you accountable for the work you must do, often providing feedback and support as it happens. The best choice for an accountability partner, as stated above, is another recovering sex/porn addict. You should never use your spouse or any other sexual or romantic partner as your accountability partner, as those individuals are too close to the situation to provide the honest, objective, empathetic feedback you require.

Ultimately, the job of an accountability partner is to assist you – in person, by phone, or even online – with identifying your recovery-related commitments and priorities and helping you find ways in which those commitments can be met. Accountability partners are also there for support when you experience moments of weakness.

A few of the early-recovery commitments an accountability partner might ask you to make are:

  • Promise to reach out immediately if you feel triggered toward relapse. (Feeling triggered is inevitable, and there is nothing wrong with it, as long as you start dealing with your triggers in a healthy, non-addictive way.)
  • Promise to reach out immediately if you actually do act out sexually. (Slips are common in early recovery from sex and porn addiction.)
  • Throw away all physical material related to your addiction. This might include books, magazines, VHS tapes, DVDs, flash drives and other digital storage devices, lubricants, sex toys, etc. It is wise to throw this material into a commercial dumpster at least a mile from home. Sometimes your accountability partner will supervise this process to make sure you do not choose to enjoy the material one last time.
  • Go through your computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc., deleting any and all files, emails, texts, sexts, bookmarks, profiles, apps, and contact information related to your addiction. Again, accountability partners often supervise this process to make sure you do not choose to enjoy the material one last time.
  • Cancel memberships to websites, apps, and brick-and-mortar establishments related to your addiction. Also cancel credit cards you’ve used to pay for these memberships to make sure they don’t automatically renew. If you don’t want to cancel these cards, you can call the credit card company and report the card as lost. The company will gladly send you a replacement card with different numbers, and this serves the same purpose as cancellation.
  • Stay away from “gray area” activities. In the same way that alcoholics should not hang out in bars, you shouldn’t peruse the Victoria’s Secret catalog, frequent NC-17 movies, or get massages. People who are not sexually addicted can handle these things without becoming triggered; you cannot. So it is best to stay away from them.
  • Commit to only using digital devices where others can see you. You need to understand that using these devices in private, even for a legitimate nonsexual purpose, is a gray area activity that could easily trigger the desire to act out.
  • Create reminders of why you want to change your behavior. You might choose to use pictures of your spouse or kids as background imagery on your digital devices. You might also use your wedding song or your spouse’s voice as your ringtone. Etc.
  • Purchase and install “parental control software.” These filtering and accountability software products prevent access to problematic online venues and monitor your overall use of digital devices, typically providing reports to your accountability partner.
  • Create and implement a plan for sexual sobriety. This plan will likely take the form of a sexual boundary/circle plan. For more information, click this link.

Again, if you are struggling to get started in sex/porn addiction recovery, please either email us and ask for a referral to a therapist in your area or sign up for a personalized online consultation with one of our staff members. We also offer residential treatment and online workgroups for sex and porn addicts.