Another not so great day. Started fine, got up and helped K cook some apple crisp for her mom's birthday. Got a little frisky with K afterwards before I hit the shower, and we were sharing some nice intimate moments with the promise of more to come after we delivered her mom's apple crisp. And then it went downhill after I got out of the shower.

As soon as I stepped out, the first thing that hit me was the smell of burning electrical. If you've ever smelled this, you KNOW that smell, and might even know how that can induce panic. I went searching and found the source almost immediately. Fortunately, the main breaker blew before the failed electrical outlet in the spare room could really catch alight. But fuuuuuu what an anxiety inducer that was. I killed the power, pulled out the outlet and disconnected the wires, made them all safe before turning power back on. Made sure nothing else was short-circuiting. Everything seemed fine.

We left an hour later to deliver the crisp. Came back after dark. No lights in the kitchen or the spare room, and the fridge wasn't working. WTF??? More anxiety. K starts pulling stuff out of the fridge to put in the snow while I tried to diagnose the problem. A phone call to my parents later, and I've figured it out. Disconnecting the plug cut the entire circuit, and apparently our kitchen lights and fridge are on the same circuit as an electrical outlet in the spare room... What. TF? So I've got the circuit restored by direct wiring the wires together until I can get replacement outlets, but talk about frustration. Thankfully, it doesn't appear anything in the fridge got too warm.

But hey, guess where that leaves me? If you guessed "foiled and sexually frustrated once again", winner winner chicken dinner, you're correct. So here I am, trying to distract myself away from a relapse.

Btw, I was browsing through some porn addiction forums today, looking for more information and people directly dealing with similar problems to me, and... man, I don't know if I can join those forums. I might suck it up and deal in the hopes of camaraderie and useful information, but I'm not sure I'll find it there. Seriously, one of the threads I had the misfortune of clicking on was a guy trying to claim that masturbation caused all kinds of physical defects and deficiencies, like stunting your growth and de-calcifying your teeth. I wish I was making that up. Worse, the first five responses were people basically thanking him for "preaching the truth, brother!" before someone sane stepped in to debunk his crap. To be fair, most of the rest were similar posts of mockery and disbelief, but this first encounter has still left a bad taste on my tongue.

Most of the other threads I saw were less informative and more people begging for help quitting porn, which is less than useful for me. I'll probably go back to browse some more before I give up on it, but I'm not hopeful.


In good news, however, I have started using a daily journal to help me track my progress and goals, and I have to say, while only a few days in now, it seems promising. Will update on that more as I get further along.

Finally, I've been struggling with another old habit of mine lately, related to porn but not nearly as visually explicit. I believe I mentioned I feel I'm addicted to erotic literature as well (I mean, it is in the title). My mind has been trying to play the "but it's not porn" game with this, and while technically true, this is not good for me because I still had similar habits and failings using that medium as I did with porn. I had one site that was my go to, and I could spend hours browsing through stories on there. Wasted way more time than I can admit on that site. In fact, I often enjoyed stories more than I did porn. I found them more mentally stimulating (which I've found a key factor in my arousal) and this in turn influenced my porn tastes. I hated porn that was poorly acted, because while it might have all the visuals, it was so jarringly immersion breaking. Also, if it didn't have some sort of context or story or setting, I had trouble enjoying it. Porn for porn's sake was just not my forte typically (though not a hard rule. hehe, hard... I'll show myself out).


However, one thing porn provided that stories could not... was audio. Oh lord, that was one thing that definitely got me going back to porn over and over was the audio. I loved the sounds, especially when it was evident the actress was thoroughly enjoying herself (or was just incredibly good at faking it). In turn, if it was evident that they were forcing their vocalizations, there was no greater turn off for me. This one puzzles me though. I'm not sure why I'm such an audiophile. Is it just built into me? Did I develop it? Was there a trigger in my youth perhaps? Maybe it's the imagination of it that gets me going. Like, if I was sleeping in a room next to a girl's room, and I started hearing the faint sounds of her masturbating, especially if she was trying to keep it quiet, but just wasn't quite managing... this gets me incredibly aroused. Even just thinking about it increases my heart rate. Is this unusual or more common than I think?


Another line of musing I've been pondering is whether porn was ENTIRELY bad for me or if it was an aid in helping me explore my own likes and desires without the risk of involving other people before I was ready. I don't think I'd have figured out what some of my core turn-ons are without having been exposed to them through porn. The feeling would have been there, but perhaps porn helped bring it out in the open and caused me to realize it? Again, I don't want to go back to porn, the addiction is real and fearsome, but... if not porn, what then would have helped me figure these things out? Is there healthier means of exploration? Because I can't help but think blundering into these things through sex might have turned really messy... even dangerous in some cases. Does that make sense? Am I just blowing smoke up my own rear?