Steven Wolt

And if you don't do a deeper dive around intimacy and what's blocking you from connection, you stay in pain and lonely.

So kind of all three of these need to be addressed in order for lasting recovery to occur.

But it's more than that.

And I'll tell you a few other thoughts I have on why this is so hard.

Early recovery can be very painful.

And so when you so overstimulate your brain from pornography and from sexualized social media, when you stop engaging those behaviors, your mood can be flat, you can have low energy, and you can have intolerable boredom.

And people think that boredom is the enemy.

It's not.

It's actually your body recalibrating.

Everything you want in life is on the other side of you learning how to tolerate boredom.

But for so many men, they quit too early because they can't sit with this discomfort.

The other challenge we see constantly is that so many guys quit before the miracle happens.

I mean, I struggled for many years before I was able to make real progress in my recovery.

You know, oftentimes in recovery circles, we measure sobriety success by continuous days of sobriety, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months, a year, all good stuff, all good stuff.

However,

However, that cannot be the sole measurement of progress because for many guys, myself included, they're not going to get it right away.

it's going to be a journey.

And if you keep kind of having to relapse and you go down this massive shame spiral that you're failing, that you're a failure, you give up.

So recovery is about becoming emotionally regulated, socially connected, learning to live with honor and integrity so that you don't need porn anymore.

That can take time.