Year 4
4 years of not looking at porn or masturbating.
Honestly looking forward to next year most of all because I once read in 1 comment that if you can make it past 5 years (1825 days) that the temptation really starts to go away. I don’t know if its true or not and I only read it in a comment, not even an article so I am curious to see if its true.
As for my fourth year, I honestly think its been my easiest year, but also the year I learned the least about my addiction.
At this point I am not tempted by what I see because I practice guarding my eyes. I am not saying that I could not be tempted to lust with my eyes, its just that its my ingrained habit to guard my eyes at this point, and if I was to be totally honest, when I was bound by porn I would spend hours and hours looking at nudity to find something I was attracted to, so really is it a surprise now that I am not attracted to every little thing?
Case in point a few months ago I saw a marvel comic that I read a long time ago and loved and I opened it up to read it again and I was offended and repulsed as to how they were sexualizing the marvel characters and so put it down. When I first read the comic I probably didn’t even notice since porn had utterly desensitized me to that sort of thing. But again, out of all the marvel characters there is only one I ever found attractive, and I doubt that she was even in the comics for a year. Which goes back to the idea that honestly I am not attracted to every females looks, which honestly really helps in guarding my eyes.
I very rarely feel the lust of the flesh, in that I mean, during the first 90 days you have to get past the dopamine withdrawals, and at this point I am totally past that. I mean I have gone more than 1460 days which is more than 16 times 90 days. At this point I rarely have blue balls, and even when I have a wet dream its much easier to deal with the flesh afterwards than it used to be. Not to say there is no temptation there, but its much easier to deal with.
I think at this point my biggest temptations have all come from the pride of life. I am still single so I am still somewhat envious of the married folks around me, I am somewhat isolated granted it is due to the ministry I am in, and well I can get rather tempted when I get tired.
Honestly I am surprised how being tired can open up the door to temptation. Last year the doc found a hereditary issue and I had to give a pint of blood every week for 9 weeks, and I have to tell you I have never been so tired, and I don’t know if it was my flesh or the devil attacking me but that was the hardest time I had all year resisting the flesh.
But the enemy isn’t going to attack you when you are ready.
At times my pride will rear its ugly head and point out how others are married and that I should look at porn due to envy. Those attacks are rather annoying.
At other times I am tempted because I am isolated.
Honestly it would be pretty nice to be married but that isn’t what God has for me right now. You know a lot of guys fail because they are saying they are bored, but I wonder if what they call boredom is really isolation. To some degree you can fight against that by developing close relationships, but really until you have children you will have alone time, so you just got to learn to deal with that.
Although I have talked a lot about my temptations this year, I would also like to say that my best weapon against temptation this year has been studying my Bible.
Look there is a difference between reading your Bible and studying your Bible. If you want to know the difference go talk with your pastor.
I don’t remember when I started it but sometime ago I started a Bible study with the intention of doing a year long lesson series, and just being able to put together so many lessons has helped me tremendously ignore temptation. Probably somewhere around half way done now.
To sum everything up, lust of the eyes and flesh eventually leave you alone for the most part, but the pride of life stuff still tempts you. For me studying my Bible has helped immensely.