Addiction
I’m an 18 yr old in high school who has dealt with addiction and am now in my first relationship. I had a weed addiction that I basically dropped and that seems like it was so much easier than dropping the addiction I’m about to talk about. It started back in middle school which might be a part of why it’s been so hard to quit, but now it goes further than that. I have a porn addiction. And I’ve been honest with my girlfriend since she asked if I did, I’m ashamed that’s what it took for me to be honest with her, but it is what it took. And since then I’ve put measures in place to stop myself, including screen time, deleting YouTube, and throwing away the device I originally used. I’ve tried to quit this since before we got together but now it’s even more serious because at the end of the day it’s basically cheating, this is a realization that I didn’t come to myself, she had to tell me. And for a couple days it worked, but recently I’ve had this thing which I know is what happened with weed where I outright wanted to do it. It wasn’t even about the porn it felt like I needed to. And this has actually gotten worse since the first time it happened, pretty sure I basically started relapsing. And even outside of that I see other girls sometimes and it almost have to physically make sure I don’t look at them. So I know that I’m also having attraction issues. This girl feels like one of the best things that has happened to me and she’s so sweet and she’s definitely too good for me. And she’s said it is something we can work through, and as long as I have the chance I want to keep trying to be with her. I did some research and got the advice to edge off of it, but that’s not realistic in this situation, I was considering starting weed again to replace the dopamine, and a lot of the reason I quit weed was because I thought it gave me motivation issues, turns out my base motivation is just low. And I’m well aware that this is one of the crappiest things I could be doing to her, I don’t need a bunch of reminders about that. Any advice on how to fix this?